Now the leading men and the most prominent journals of New York and New

England, confess that the greater part of the wide-spread immorality in

our day and country is to be traced to the separation of religion from

the instruction in our Public Schools.

Governor Brown, addressing the Seventh National Teachers' Convention in

St. Louis, in August last, said: "It is a very customary declaration to

pronounce that education is the great safeguard of republics against the

decay of virtue and the reign of immorality. Yet the facts can scarcely

bear out the proposition. The highest civilizations, both ancient and

modern, have sometimes been the most flagitious. Nowadays, certainly,

your prime rascals have been educated rascals."

And indeed if we go to Auburn, Sing Sing, and other prisons, and examine

some of the criminals confined there, we will find that there is truth

in the Governor's words.

Do the managers of the Erie Railway lack any kind of intelligence that

could be communicated in a common school? Are not those pests, the

Washington and Albany lobbies, rather _too_ knowing? Had not those

blood-suckers, the shoddy-ites and army contractors, an average common

school education? Do not the "gold rings" and the "whiskey rings" know

how to read and write? Were not Catiline of old, and Aaron Burr and

Benedict Arnold of more recent times, men of intelligence? Were not the

parties to the recent tragedy, two of whom Mr. Beecher united in unholy

wedlock, passable enough in point of merely intellectual cultivation?

Mephistopheles was a person of surprising accomplishments, and the

ablest debates in literature are those which Milton puts in the mouths

of the grand synod of devils in Pandemonium. Byron was a prodigy of

intelligence; but, whether Mrs. Stowe's revolting accusation be true or

not, he was certainly a profligate.

No one, certainly, gifted with ordinary power of observation, will

ascribe crime solely to ignorance, nor will such a one fail to see that

a large class of the most audacious and dangerous offenders of both

sexes are educated, nay, over-educated, according to the Public School

standard.

The Boston Daily _Herald_, of October 20th, published the following as

an editorial article:

"Year after year the Chief of Police publishes his statistics of

prostitution in this city, but how few of the citizens bestow more than

a passing thought upon the misery that they represent! Although these

figures are large enough to make every lover of humanity hang his head

with feelings of sorrow and shame at the picture, we are assured that

they represent but a little, as it were, of the actual licentiousness

that prevails among all classes of society. Within a few months, a

gentleman[F] whose scientific attainments have made his name a household

word in all lands, has personally investigated the subject, and the

result has filled him with dismay; when he sees the depths of

degradation to which men and women have fallen, he has almost lost faith

in the boasted civilization of the nineteenth century. In the course of

his inquiries he has visited both the well-known 'houses of pleasure'

and the 'private establishments' scattered all over the city. He states

that he has a list of both, with the street and number, the number of

inmates, and many other facts that would perfectly astonish the people

if made public. He freely conversed with the inmates, and the

life-histories that were revealed were sad indeed. To his utter

surprise, a large proportion of the 'soiled doves' _traced their fall to

influences that met them in the Public Schools_; and although Boston is

justly proud of its schools, it would seem, from his story, that they

need a thorough purification. In too many of them the most obscene and

soul-polluting books and pictures circulate among both sexes. The very

secrecy with which it is done throws an almost irresistible charm about

it; and to such an extent has the evil gone, that we fear a large

proportion of both boys and girls possess some of the articles, which

they kindly (?) lend to each other. The natural result follows, and

frequently the most debasing and revolting practises are indulged in.

And the evil is not confined alone to Boston. Other cities suffer in the

same way. It is but a few years since the second city in the

Commonwealth was stirred almost to its foundations by the discovery of

an association of boys and girls who were wont to indulge their passions

in one of the school-houses of the city; and not long ago another

somewhat similar affair was discovered by the authorities, but hushed up

for fear of depopulating the schools."

"That the devil is in the _Public Schools_, raging and rampant there

among the _pupils_ as well as among the _teachers_, no one can well

doubt who has sent a little child into them, as guiltless of evil or

unclean thoughts as a newly fallen snowflake, and had him come home, in

a short time, contaminated almost beyond belief by the vileness and

filth which he has seen, and heard, and learned _there_."--(Hathe Tyng

Griswold, in _Old and New_, for March; or _Boston Pilot_, April 6,

1872.)

A celebrated physician of this country says in his book, "Satan in

Society," as follows:

"The evils and dangers of the present system of educating and bringing

up the boys and girls of our country, are too obvious to require minute

description. Irreligion and infidelity are progressing _pari passu_ with

the advance guards of immorality and crime, and all are _fostered_, if

_not engendered_, by the _materialistic system of school instruction_,

and the consequent wretched training at home and on the play-ground. The

entire absence of all religious instruction from the school-room is fast

bearing fruit in a generation of infidels, and we are becoming worse

even than the Pagans of old, who had at least their positive sciences of

philosophy, and their religion, such as it was, to oppose which was a

criminal offence. To those who would dispute this somewhat horrible

assertion, the author would point to the published statistics of church

attendance, from which it appears that of the entire population but a

very small proportion are habitual church-goers. Deducting from these,

again, those who attend church simply as a matter of fashion, or from

other than religious motives, and there remains a minimum almost too

small to be considered, abundantly sustaining our charge. The

disintegration of the prevalent forms of religious belief, the rapid

multiplication of sects, the increase in the ranks of intellectual

sceptics, the fashionable detractions from, and perversions of, the Holy

Scriptures, acting with the influences already mentioned, may well cause

alarm.

"But we have not only the removal of the salutary restraints of

religious influence from our popular system of education; we have the

promiscuous intermingling of the sexes in our Public Schools, which,

however much we may theorize to the contrary, is, to say the least,

subversive of that modest reserve and shyness which in all ages have

proved the true aegis of virtue. We are bound to accept human nature as

it is, and not as we would wish it to be, and both Christian and Pagan

philosophy agree in detecting therein certain very dangerous elements.

Among the most dangerous and inevitable is the sexual instinct, which,

implanted by the Creator for the wisest purposes, is, perhaps, the most

potent of all evils when not properly restrained, retarded, and

directed. This mysterious instinct develops earlier in proportion as the

eye and the imagination are soonest furnished the materials upon which

it thrives; and, long before the age of puberty, it is strong, and

well-nigh ungovernable, in those who have been allowed these unfortunate

occasions. The boy of the present generation has more practical

knowledge of this instinct at the age of fifteen, than, under proper

training, he should be entitled to at the time of his marriage; and the

boy of eleven or twelve boastfully announces to his companions the

evidences of his approaching virility. Nourished by languishing glances

during the hours passed in the school-room, fanned by more intimate

association on the journey to and from school, fed by stolen interviews

and openly-arranged festivities--picnics, excursions, parties and the

like--stimulated by the prurient gossip of the newspaper, the flash

novels, sentimental weeklies, and magazines, the gallant of twelve years

is the libertine of fourteen. That this picture is not overdrawn, every

experienced physician will bear witness.

"And as for the Public School-girls, they return from their '_polishing

schools_'--these demoiselles--cursed with a superficial smattering of

everything but what they ought to have learned--physical and moral

wrecks, whom we physicians are expected to _wind up_ in the morning for

the husband-hunting excitements of the evening. And these creatures are

intended for wives! But _wives_ only, for it is fast going out of

fashion to intend them for _mothers_--an 'accident' of the kind being

regarded as'_foolish_'!

"We assert, then, that the present system of education, by its faults of

omission and commission, is directly responsible, not, it is true, for

the bare existence, but for the enormous prevalence of vices and crimes

which we deplore; and we call upon the civil authorities to so modify

the obnoxious arrangements of our schools, and upon parents and

guardians to so instruct and govern their charges, that the evils may be

suppressed, if not extinguished."

The attempt to prepare man for his duties in social life with morals and

religion left out, is not only a failure, but a crime. Yes, it is not

only a failure, but a crime of such magnitude, that society has already

begun to suffer its consequences in a demoralization and _general

libertinage_ of the most shameful kind. This education without religion

and morals is the poisoned fountain from which flows, and will flow, if

not purified by adding the essential elements now omitted, the impure

streams of all kinds of vice. If God is despised, governments will be

trampled on; if God's law is hated, the laws of men will be violated;

man will see only his own interest, his neighbor's property will only

whet his appetite; his neighbor's life will be only a secondary

consideration; he would, according to his creed, be a fool not to shed

blood when his interest requires it; his fellow-men become imbued with

his principles--anarchy succeeds subordination--vice takes the place of

virtue--what was sacred is profaned--what was honorable becomes

disgraceful--might becomes right--treatises are waste paper--honor is an

empty name--the most sacred obligations dwindle down into mere optional

practices--youth despises age--wisdom is folly--subjection to authority

is laughed at as a foolish dream--the moral code itself soon becomes

little more than the bugbear of the weak-minded--crowns are trampled

under foot--thrones are overturned--nations steeped in blood, and

republics swept from the face of the earth.

Yes, continue a little longer to educate the greater part of the

community according to the present system of the Public Schools, and

rest assured we shall soon have a hell upon earth--society will be

stabbed to the heart by the ruffian assassin called _godless Public

School education_--it will reel, stagger, and sink a bleeding victim to

the ground, expiring, like the suicide, by the wound itself has

inflicted. I truly believe that if Satan was presented with a blank

sheet of paper, and bade to write on it the most fatal gift to man, he

would simply write one word--"godless schools." He might then turn his

attention from this planet; "godless Public Schools" would do the rest.

Now what is to be done to stop the poisoned source from which the

diabolical spirit and the crimes of our country flow? A certain class

come forward and say, "Let the Bible be read in our Public Schools. The

Bible is the grand source of religion and morality. The Bible alone,

without note or comment, is the grand source of life and civilization."

Very well, let the Bible be admitted, but with the Bible you must send

the key--the interpreter. And then, which of all the Bibles, and whom

among the numerous sects, shall be sent?

To read the Bible, without note or comment, to young children, is to

abandon them to dangerous speculation, or to leave them dry and barren

of all Christian knowledge. In mixed schools there is no other resource,

because it is impossible to make any comment upon any doctrinal teaching

of Christ and His Apostles, without trenching upon the conscientious

opinions of some one or other of the listeners. "The Father and I are

One." "The Father is greater than I." Here at once we have the Unitarian

and the Trinitarian at a dead-lock! "This is My Body." "It is the spirit

which quickeneth, the flesh profiteth nothing." Here we have

the primitive Lutheran, who believed in the real presence

(consubstantially), and his Calvinistic coadjutor in reform, squarely at

issue! "Unless you be born again of water and the Holy Ghost," etc. Here

we have the Baptist and the Quaker very seriously divided in opinion.

Nevertheless, widely as they differ the one from the other, there is a

fundamental assimilation between all the Protestant sects which may

render it possible for them to unite in one educational organization;

and yet we find many of the most enlightened and earnest among the

Protestant clergy of America now zealously advocating the denominational

system, such as we find it in the European countries. They believe that

education should be distinctly based upon doctrinal religion, and they

are liberal enough to insist that, by natural right as well as by the

constitutional guarantees of our free country, no doctrine adverse to

the faith of a parent may lawfully be forced or surreptitiously imposed

upon his child. It is well known, however, that between the Catholic

faith and all Protestant creeds, there is a gulf which cannot be bridged

over. It would, therefore, be simply impossible to adopt any religious

teaching whatever in mixed schools, without at once interfering with

Catholic conscience. No such teaching is attempted, as a general rule,

we believe, in the Public Schools of the United States, and hence we

have only a vague announcement of moral precepts, the utter futility

and barrenness of which must be evident to every one. Catholics,

agreeing with very many enlightened and zealous Protestants, believe

that secular education, administered without religion, is not only vain,

but exceedingly pernicious; that it is fast undermining the Christian

faith of this nation; that it is rapidly filling the land with

rationalism; that it is destroying the authority of the Holy Scriptures;

that it is educating men who prefix "Reverend" and affix "D.D." to their

names, the more effectually to preach covert infidelity and immorality

to Christian congregations; that, instead of the saving morality of the

Gospel of Christ, which rests upon revealed mysteries and supernatural

gifts, it is offering us that same old array of the natural virtues or

qualities which helped, for a while, like rotten pillars, to prop up the

heathen nations of old. It must, then, be evident to every man of common

sense that the reading of the Bible alone, though it be the Word of God,

will _not_ counterbalance the results of Pagan education. Indeed the

reading of the Bible alone is by no means an adequate remedy to stem the

torrent of the evils in our country. What impurities have not been

committed under the sanction of those words of the Lord, "Increase and

multiply"! A host of sectarians, following in the wake of the

Anabaptists of Munster, in Germany, have, on the authority of those

words, dared to legitimate polygamy. On such misapplication of a text

from the Gospel, Luther, Bucerus, and Melanchthon have permitted Philip,

the Landgrave of Hesse, to have two wives.

In the name of the Bible, of the Word of God, Luther at first incited

the German peasantry to revolt against their rulers, and then,

frightened at his own work, he persuaded the princes to massacre the

peasants. John of Leyden found, in his studies of the Bible, that he

should marry eleven women at once. Herman felt himself clearly

designated, in the Bible, as the Envoy of the Lord. Nicholas learned

from it that there was no necessity of anything connected with faith,

and that we must live in sin in order that grace may abound. Sympson

pretends to find in the Scriptures an ordination that men should walk in

the streets stark naked, to teach the rich a lesson that they must

divest themselves of everything. Richard Hill justified, with the Bible

in hand, adultery and manslaughter as deeds never failing to work out

some good purpose, especially when joined to incest, in which case more

saints are added to the earth and more blessed to the heavens. Even on

the avowal of honest Protestants, no crime or abomination has ever

failed to find its pretended justification in some scriptural text.

What, then, must we think of the reading of the Bible, when its reading,

without note or comment, leads to such consequences? Indeed what has

been said on the evil consequences of the Public School system on

society proves sufficiently that the reading of the Bible is no adequate

means at all to stem the torrent of crimes in our country. Nowhere has

the Bible been read more frequently, during school-hours, than in the

Public Schools of the New England States, and yet nowhere have the

results of these schools proved more fatal than in these very States.

The reading of the Bible alone, therefore, though it be the Word of God,

will _not_ counterbalance the results of Pagan education.

There are others who maintain "that religious instruction should be left

to parents."

Now it is not only idle, but cruel, to say that the place and provision

for such Christian instruction and formation is under the roof of the

parents' home; that the best school is the family. This is indeed true

of the early formation by affection, influence, example, by which

fathers and mothers fashion the first outlines of character, and mature

them while the education of their children is advancing. None have

reminded parents of this more faithfully than the Pastors of the Church.

But to say that fathers and mothers are to educate their children, and

that their home is to be the school of Christian instruction,

catechetical teaching, formation of conscience, preparation for

sacraments, and the like, is either the shallow talk of men who know

nothing of Christian education, or care nothing for it, or a heartless

mockery of our poor. The rich, the refined, the educated, whose time is

their own, do not educate their own children. They systematically send

them to schools and colleges, or pay for tutors or governesses under

their own roof. They wisely shrink from a work for which, if they have

the time, they seldom have the acquirements or the gift, or the method

of the perseverance or the patience. And if this be, as it is,

universally true of those who are the most competent, and the most

provided with all the means and opportunities for the work, now is it

not hardness of heart, or want of common sense, to say that the children

of the poor are to learn reading, and writing, and summing, indeed, at

school, but that their Christian teaching and formation must be provided

at home? The workingmen of these countries are at labor from twilight to

twilight. Their wives have the burden of the whole family; the poor

mother is alone both the head and the servant of the whole house. When

is she to teach, and train, and shape, and fashion the characters,

hearts, consciences, intellects of the children? Is it to be done in the

midst of a day's work, or in the weariness after the day's work is done?

And are they competent to do what the mother of the rich cannot do?

Broken with cares, wearied by work, suffering from poverty, often

fainting from sickness because worn out with all these burdens, how

shall the father or mother of a family, huddled into a single room, do

what the rich and the educated, in their spacious houses, and with

abundant leisure, never dream of attempting?

Moreover, as I have shown in a preceding chapter, it must be admitted

that a mother not educated in religious and moral principles cannot

inform the mind and heart of the young child; this fully disposes of the

argument that domestic teaching alone will supply what is acknowledged

to be wanting in the "Public Schools." It is to be hoped that we shall

hear no more of this heartless talk.

"Well, then," some will say, "let our children receive, _in

Sunday-schools_, that amount of religious culture and instruction which

the State says shall not be given in the school, and which is believed

to be so essential in the education of the young."

Now it is in vain to open our Sunday-schools and expect to cure, on one

day of the week, or rather a few hours of that day (when this even

depends, in a great part, on the weather), the work not only of the

other six, but the fruits of years of an ill-directed and godless State

education. The Sunday-schools are nothing but so many "_Poor-man's

soothing plasters_" on Christian consciences. The want of religious

training for six days in the week, added to the positive knowledge of

error on all religious subjects which youths may acquire during that

time, will more than counterbalance the best-directed efforts of parents

and the clergy to give any definite knowledge on the truths of

revelation. The question whether or not religious education is

compatible with Public School education, has been tried in all

English-speaking countries, and in parts of Germany, with this result:

that, a class, the Public School children are without any adequate

religious knowledge or training. The clergy may have Sunday-schools, as

they have, in all their churches; but what can children learn, in a few

hours, of a subject which took three years from the Saviour of man to

teach even to the apostles? And then the apostles, after three years of

instruction from the lips of Christ, did not understand the Christian

religion; they were slow to understand, and, after His resurrection,

Christ upbraided them with incredulity and hardness of heart. Even the

children of the Public Schools, as far as experience goes, lose all

taste for the study of religion, which is developed among the children

of Christian schools without any effort. Sunday-schools, at best, may

train children to be Christians _one day_ in the week, and Pagans six

days. School-days over, the usual result will be _Pagans_ all the seven

days of the week.

If it is in vain to say, "Let the Bible be read in our Public Schools,"

or "let our children receive religious instruction from their parents,

or in Sunday-schools, in order to arrest the fast-spreading crimes of

the land," it is still more in vain to say, "Let the Legislature be

called upon."

It cannot be denied that the higher culture of America has, from the

time of the introduction of the present Public School system, ceased to

be Christian. What is the natural harvest of this sowing? It is that we

have already a generation of men, thousands of whom are not fit to be

the heads and fathers of families. But this is not all; we have also

ever so many guides of public opinion, ever so many ministers of public

affairs, and ever so many lawgivers of the United States, who are

infidels and profligates; who see _only themselves_ in all they do, who

desire only to fret out their little hour on the political stage _with

a sharp eye to their own interests_, without the smallest desire to

secure the Republic against future disasters--who cannot, or _will_ not,

see the disastrous storms the ship of the Republic will soon have to

encounter. What good, then, could be expected from calling upon the

Legislature? It would only show its impotency, or, what is more, its own

corruption. The executive is unable, suspected, or often found in the

"_ring_," or, to use a common expression, "Justice stinks." The

judiciary, by its very nature, always timid, and too often time-serving,

can do nothing. Well, then, the press: what shall be said of it? Only

this: that it would be unreasonable to expect it to possess the

supernatural powers of healing such a multitude of foul lepers, or to be

able at any time to lift itself far above the level of the general

average of the age and country.

What, then, must be done to save society from the perils that menace

it--to stem the tide that bids fair to sweep away, eventually, even

civilization itself? We must proceed on a true principle. When we

proceed on a true principle, the more logically and completely we carry

it out the better; but when we start with a false principle, the more

logical we are, and the farther we push it, the worse. Our consistency

increases, instead of diminishing, the evils we would cure. The

reformers started wrong. They would reform the Church by placing her

under human control. Their successors have in each generation found they

did not go far enough, and have, each in its turn, struggled to push it

farther and farther, till they find themselves without any church life,

without faith, without religion, and beginning to doubt if there be even

a God. So, in the question of education, the upholders of the Public

School system have pushed the false principle "that all individual,

domestic, social, and political evils are due to ignorance, and can only

be prevented by high intellectual culture," till they have nearly taught

away all religious belief and morality, have well-nigh abolished the

family which is the social unit, and find that the evils they pretended

to prevent, and the wrongs they sought to redress, are fast increasing.

We must, then, proceed on a true principle in trying to remedy the

profligacy that disgraces so many of our crowded centres, and the

demoralization that is fast gangrening even our rural districts.

One thousand eight hundred and forty-odd years ago, you might have

observed a poor, meanly-clad wanderer, wending his steps on the Appian

way to the Capitol of the world,--the wealthy, magnificent, and ungodly

city of Rome. He has passed its gates, and threads his way unobserved

through its populous streets. On every side he beholds gorgeous palaces

raised at the expense of downtrodden nationalities; stately temples

dedicated to as many false gods as nations were congregated in Rome;

public baths and amphitheatres devoted to pleasure and to cruelty;

statues, monuments, and triumphal arches raised to the memory of

blood-thirsty tyrants. He passes warriors and senators, beggars and

cripples, effeminate and dissolute women, gladiators and slaves,

merchants and statesmen, orators and philosophers;--all classes, all

ranks, all conditions of men of every language and color under the sun.

Everywhere he sees a maddening race for pleasure; everywhere the impress

of luxury, everywhere the full growth of crime, side by side with

indescribable suffering, diabolical cruelty and barbarity. And this

poor, meanly-clad wanderer was St. Peter. Oh! how the noble heart of the

fisherman of Galilee must have bled, when he observed the empire of

Satan so supreme--when he witnessed the shocking licentiousness of the

temple and the homestead; when he saw the fearful degradation of woman

groaning under the load of her own infamy; when he saw the heart-rending

inhumanity which slew the innocent babes and threw them into the Tiber;

when he saw how prisoners of war, slaves, and soldiers were trained for

bloody fights, and entered the arena of the amphitheatre, and strove

whole days to strangle one another, for the special entertainment of the

Roman people. When Peter came to Rome, that city was the condensation of

all the idolatry, all the oppression, all the injustice, all the

immoralities of the world; for the world was centred in Rome.

Here, then, were evils to be remedied similar to those of our day and

country. Pagan philosophers, poets and orators, had tried their best to

cure these evils and to elevate mankind, but they had tried in vain.

What they were unable to bring about, St. Peter accomplished by

preaching to the Roman people Christianity--the religion of Jesus

Christ--which imparts to the mind infallibly the light of truth, and

lays down for the will authoritatively the unchangeable principles of

supernatural morality, true prosperity, true happiness, and peace on

earth and for eternity. Indeed, it is a well-known fact that the

Capitoline temple, and with it the many shrines of idolatry, the golden

house of Nero, and with it Roman excess and Roman cruelty, the throne of

the Caesars, and with it Roman oppression and Roman injustice, gave way

and disappeared in proportion as the light of Christianity was infused

into that foul mass, into that rotten society, centred in Rome. It was

this Christian religion that changed a sinful people into saints, and so

many holy inhabitants of heaven. And what the blessings of the religion

of Christ brought about in Rome, they bring about wherever they are

diffused. Hence all true lovers of the country tell us that there is but

one remedy for the cure of the diabolical spirit and the crimes of our

country--it is to teach our children the truth and blessings of the

Christian religion. It is the Christian religion that infallibly and

authoritatively teaches the duties of civil authorities towards their

subjects, of husbands towards their wives, of parents towards their

children, of masters towards their servants, of pastors towards their

flocks, of the faithful towards their pastors, of servants towards their

masters, of wives towards their husbands, of children towards their

parents, of subjects towards their lawfully constituted civil

authorities, of all men towards God, their Supreme Master, and just

Rewarder of good and evil. Moreover, it is the Christian religion alone

that affords men the means to obtain God's grace, which enlightens the

mind to see the beauty of virtue, inflames the heart with love for it,

and inclines the will to practise it with perseverance. If we then wish

to be sure of having a virtuous and virile people, we must Christianize

our youth, especially during their school hours; we must bring up our

children in a religious atmosphere. I have already remarked that

religion may be compared to leaven. As leaven must be diffused

throughout the entire mass in order to produce its effects, so the

Christian religion must be thoroughly diffused throughout the child's

entire education, in order to be solid and effective.

Not a moment of the hours of school should be left without religious

influence. It is the constant breathing of the air that preserves our

bodily life, and it is the constant dwelling in a religious atmosphere

that preserves the life of the youthful soul. Religion is not a study,

or an exercise that may be restricted to a certain place, or a certain

hour. It is a faith and a law which ought to be felt everywhere, and

which in this manner alone can exercise all its beneficent influence

upon our minds and lives. It will never do to suffer the child to devote

six days in the week to worldly science, and to depend on Sunday for a

religious training. This would be like reserving the salt which should

season our food during the week, and taking it all in a dose on Sunday.

By such a system we may make expert shop-boys, first-rate accountants,

shrewd and thriving "earth-worms"; but it would be presumption to think

of thus making good citizens, still less virtuous Christians.

Let us be assured that our young men know their duties to God, to their

neighbors, and to themselves, and they will then, but not till then, be

true Christians. In being true Christians they will be dutiful sons,

faithful husbands, affectionate fathers, gentle masters, honest

servants, law-loving and law-abiding citizens, true statesmen, good

soldiers, and valiant defenders of the country, chaste and sober

companions, the joy of God and of society.

But, above all, let us be assured that our daughters are educated as

women, not as men. Women are not needed as men; they are needed as

women: to do, not what men can do as well as they, but what men cannot

do. Woman was created to be a wife and a mother; that is her destiny. To

that destiny all her instincts point, and for it nature has specially

qualified her. Her proper sphere is home, and her proper function is the

care of the household, to manage a family, to take care of children, and

attend to their early training. For this she is endowed with patience,

endurance, passive courage, quick sensibilities, a sympathetic nature,

and great executive and administrative ability. She was born to be a

queen in her own household, and make home cheerful, bright, and happy.

There it is that she is really great, noble, almost divine.

Now the general complaint is that the greater part of our Public

School-girls are not fit to be good wives, mothers and housekeepers. As

wives, they forget what they owe to their husbands, are capricious and

vain, often light and frivolous, extravagant and foolish, bent on having

their own way, though ruinous to the family, and generally contriving,

by coaxings, blandishments, or poutings, to get it. They hold obedience

in horror, and seek only to govern their husbands and all around them.

As mothers, they not only neglect, but disdain, the retired and simple

domestic virtues, and scorn to be tied down to the modest but essential

duties--the drudgery, they call it--of mothers; they manage to be

relieved of household cares, especially of child-bearing, and of the

duty of bringing up children. They repress their maternal instincts, and

the horrible crime of infanticide before birth now becomes so fearfully

prevalent, that the American nation is actually threatened with

extinction. If they condescend to have one or two children, they set

them an ill example; for if children see that their mother, as a wife,

forgets to honor and obey her husband, and always wants to have her own

way with him, they soon lose all respect for her, and insist on having

their own way with her, and usually succeed.

As housekeepers they devote their time to pleasure or amusement, wasting

their life in luxurious ease, in reading sentimental or sensational

novels, or in following the caprices of fashion; thus they let the

household go to ruin, and the honest earnings of the husband becomes

speedily insufficient for the family expenses, and he is sorely tempted

to provide for them by rash speculation or by fraud, which, though it

may be carried on for a while without detection, is sure to end in

disgrace and ruin at last.

There is indeed nothing which more grieves the wise and good, or makes

them tremble for the future of the country, than the way in which our

daughters are educated in the Public Schools. When they become wives and

mothers, they have none of the habits or character necessary to govern

their household and to train their children properly. Hence arise that

growing neglect or laxity of family discipline; that insubordination,

that lawlessness, and precocious depravity of Young America; that almost

total lack of filial reverence and obedience with the children of this

generation. Exceptions there happily are; but the number of children

that grow up without any proper training or discipline at home is

fearfully large, and their evil example corrupts not a few of those who

are well brought up. The country is no better than the town. As a rule,

children are no longer subjected to a steady and firm, but mild and

judicious, discipline, or trained to habits of filial love, respect and

obedience. These habits are acquired only in a school of obedience, made

pleasant and cheerful by a mother's playful smile and a mother's love.

The care and management of children during their early years belong

specially to the mother. The education of children may be said to

commence from the moment they open their eyes and ears to the sights and

sounds of the world about them; and of these sights and sounds the words

and example of the mother are the most impressive and the most enduring.

Of all lessons, those learned at the knees of a good mother sink the

deepest into the mind and heart, and last the longest. Many of the

noblest and best men that ever lived, and adorned and benefited the

world, have declared that, under God, they owed everything that was good

and useful in their lives to the love of virtue, and truthfulness, and

piety, and the fear of God instilled into their hearts by the lips of a

pious mother. It is her special function to plant and develop in their

young and impressible minds the seeds of virtue, love, reverence, and

obedience, and to train her daughters, by precept and example, not to

catch husbands that will give them splendid establishments, but to be,

in due time, modest and affectionate wives, tender and judicious

mothers, and prudent and careful housekeepers. This the father cannot

do; and his interference, except by wise counsel, and to honor and

sustain the mother, will generally be worse than nothing. The task

devolves specially on the mother; for it demands the sympathy with

children which is peculiar to the female heart, the strong maternal

instinct implanted by nature, and directed by a judicious education,

that blending of love and authority, sentiment and reason, sweetness and

power, so characteristic of the noble and true-hearted woman, and which

so admirably fit her to be loved and honored, only less than adored, in

her own household. But though the duties and responsibilities of mothers

in this matter are the heaviest and most important for themselves, and

for the society of all others, yet there are none which are more

neglected.

Now wives and mothers, by neglecting their domestic duties and the

proper family discipline, fail to offer the necessary resistance to

growing lawlessness and crime, aggravated, if not generated, by the

false notions of freedom and equality so widely entertained. It is only

by home discipline, and the early habits of reverence and obedience to

which our children are trained, that the license the government

tolerates, and the courts hardly dare attempt to restrain, can be

counteracted, and the community made a law-loving and a law-abiding

community.

Why is it that the very bases of society have been sapped, and the

conditions of good government despised, or denounced under the name of

despotism? Why is it that social and political life is poisoned in its

source, and the blood of the nation corrupted? It is because wives and

mothers have failed in their domestic duties, and the discipline of

their families. And they have failed in this, because the State did not,

and could not, bring them up to it.

The evils we have to cure cannot be reached by the reading of the

Bible, by Sunday-school training, nor by any possible political or

legislative action. Men or women cannot be legislated into virtue. That

the remedy, to a great extent, must be supplied by woman's action and

influence, we not only concede, but claim. But it is only as woman, as

wife, as mother, that she must do the work: as woman, to soften

asperities, and to refine what else were coarse and brutal; as wife, to

sustain with her affection the resolutions and just aspirations of her

husband, and render home bright and cheerful--"the sweetest place on

earth"; as mother, to direct and inspire the noble and righteous

aspirations of her sons--to train and form her children to early habits

of piety, filial love and reverence, of obedience to God's law, and

respect for authority.

There are, in our day, comparatively few mothers who are qualified to do

this. But what they can and should do is to see that they have a better

and more thorough system of education for their sons, but especially for

their daughters--a system of education that specially adapts them to the

destiny of their sex, and prepares them to find their happiness in their

homes, and the satisfaction of their highest ambition in discharging

its manifold duties, so much higher, nobler, and more essential to the

virtue and well-being of the community, the nation, the society, and to

the life and progress of the human race, than any which devolve on king

or emperor, magistrate or legislator. We would not have their generous

instincts repressed, their quick sensibilities blunted, or their warm,

sympathetic nature chilled, nor even the lighter graces and

accomplishments neglected; but we would have them all directed and

harmonized by solid intellectual instruction, and moral and religious

culture. We would have them, whether rich or poor, trained to find the

centre of their affections in their home; their chief ambition in making

it cheerful, bright, radiant and happy. Whether destined to grace a

magnificent palace, or to adorn the humble cottage of poverty, this

should be the ideal aimed at in their education. They should be trained

to love home, and to find their pleasure in sharing its cares and

performing its duties, however arduous or painful.

There are, as I have said, comparatively few mothers qualified to give

their daughters such an education, especially in our own country; for

comparatively few have received such an education themselves, or are

able fully to appreciate its importance. They can find little help in

the fashionable boarding-schools for finishing young ladies; and, in

general, these schools only aggravate the evils to be cured. The best

and the only respectable schools for daughters that we have in the

country are the conventual schools taught by women consecrated to God,

and specially devoted to the work of education. These schools, indeed,

are not always all that might be wished. The religious cannot,

certainly, supply the place of the mother in giving their pupils that

practical home-training so necessary, and which can be given only by

mothers who have themselves been properly educated; but they go as far

as is possible in remedying the defects of the present generation of

mothers, and in counteracting their follies and vain ambitions. With all

the faults that can be alleged against any of them, the conventual

schools, even as they are, it must be conceded, are infinitely the best

schools for daughters in the land, and, upon the whole, worthy of the

high praise and liberal patronage their devotedness and

disinterestedness secure them. We have seldom found their graduates

weak and sickly sentimentalists. They develop in their pupils a cheerful

and healthy tone, and a high sense of duty; give them solid moral,

religious instruction; cultivate successfully their moral and religious

affections; refine their manners, purify their tastes, and send them out

feeling that life is serious, life is earnest, and resolved always to

act under a deep sense of their personal responsibilities; meet whatever

may be their lot with brave hearts, and without murmuring and repining.

The editor of the _New York Herald_ prefaces an account of a Catholic

academy with the following remarks:

"However divided public opinion may be as to secular and religious

schools--no matter what differences in opinion may exist in the

community as to the policy of aiding or discouraging purely sectarian

systems of education--there can be but little opposition from any

quarter to the verdict of experience given by many thousand families,

that these devoted women--the Sisters of the Catholic Church--are the

best teachers of young girls, the safest instructors in this age of

loose, worldly, and rampant New Englandism. Those matters of education

which make the lady, in their hands, subordinate to the great object of

making every girl committed to their care a true woman, are imbued with

those principles which have made our mothers our pride and boast. Those

of us who cavil at Catholic pretensions, sneer at their assumption, and

ridicule their observances, must acknowledge that the Sisters are far

ahead and above any organization of the sort of which Protestantism can

boast. The self-sacrifice, the devotion, the single-mindedness, the calm

trust in a Power unseen, the humility of manner and rare unselfishness

which characterize the Sisters, has no parallel in any organization of

the reformed faith. The war placed the claims of the Sisters of Charity

fairly before the country; but these Sisters of the different branches

have, in peace, 'victories no less renowned than in war.' Educating the

poor children, directing the untutored mind of the youthful alien savage

in our midst, or holding the beacon of intellectual advancement bright

and burning before the female youth of the country, and beckoning them

to advance, they are ever doing a good and noble work."

We do not disguise the fact that our hopes for the future, in great

measure, rest on these conventual schools; if they are multiplied, and

the number of their graduates increase, and enter upon the serious

duties of life, the ideal of female education will become higher and

broader; a nobler class of wives and mothers will exert a healthy and

purifying influence; religion will become a real power in the Republic;

the moral tone of the community, and the standard of private and public

morality, will be elevated; and thus may gradually be acquired the

virtues that will enable us, as a people, to escape the dangers that now

threaten us, and to save the Republic as well as our own souls.

Sectarians, indeed, declaim against these schools, and denounce them as

a subtle device of Satan to make their daughters "Romanists"; but Satan

probably dislikes "Romanism" even more than sectarians do, and is much

more in earnest to suppress or ruin our conventual schools, in which he

is not held in much honor, than he is to sustain and encourage them. At

any rate, our countrymen who have such a horror of the religion it is

our glory to profess, that they cannot call it by its true name, would

do well, before denouncing these schools, to establish better schools

for daughters of their own. These modest, retiring Sisters and Nuns, who

have no new theories and schemes of social reform, and upon whom a

certain class of women look down with haughty contempt, as weak,

spiritless, and narrow-minded, have chosen the better part, and are

doing infinitely more to raise woman to her true dignity, and for the

political and social, as well as for the moral and religious, progress

of the country, than the Woman's Rights party, with all their grand

conventions, brilliant speeches, stirring lectures and spirited

journals. By way of parenthesis, we dare tell these women who are

wasting so much time, energy, philanthropy, and brilliant eloquence in

agitating for female suffrage and eligibility, which, if conceded, would

only make matters worse, that, if they have the real interest of their

sex or of the community at heart, they should turn their attention to

the education of daughters for their special functions, not as men, but

as women, who are one day to be wives and mothers--woman's true destiny.

Undoubtedly the special destiny of women is to be wives and mothers; but

we are told that there are thousands of women who are not and cannot be

wives and mothers. In the older and more densely settled States of the

Union, there is an excess of females over males, and all cannot get

husbands if they would. Yet, we repeat, woman was created to be a wife

and a mother, and the woman that is not fails of her special destiny.

Under the Christian dispensation honorable provision has been made for

that large class of women who, either from preference, or from any other

cause, do not marry. Virginity, which was regarded as a reproach, became

an honor under the Christian law. Those women who do not wish, or cannot

be wives and mothers in the natural order, may be both, in the spiritual

order, if they will, and are properly educated for it. They can be

wedded to the Holy Spirit, and be the mothers of minds and hearts. The

holy virgins and devout widows who consecrated themselves to God, in or

out of religious orders, are both, and fulfil in the spiritual order

their proper destiny. We hold them in high honor, because they become

mothers to the motherless, to the poor, to the forsaken, to the

homeless. They instruct the ignorant, nurse the sick, help the helpless,

tend the aged, catch the last breath of the dying, pray for the

unbelieving and the cold-hearted, and elevate the moral tone of society,

and shed a cheering radiance along the pathway of life. They have no

need to be idle or useless. In a world of so much sin and sorrow,

sickness and suffering, there is always work enough for them to do; it

is on the poor and motherless, the destitute and the downtrodden, the

sinful and the sorrowful, the aged and infirm, the ignorant and the

neglected, that, under proper direction, they can lavish the wealth of

their affections, the tenderness of their hearts, and the ardor of their

charity, and find true joy and happiness in so doing, ample scope for

woman's noblest ambition, and chances enough to acquire merit in the

sight of heaven, and true glory, that will shine brighter and brighter

forever. They thus are dear to God, dear to the Church, and dear to

Christian society. They are to be envied, not pitied. It is only because

you have lost faith in Christ, faith in the holy Catholic Church, and

have become gross in your minds, of "earth earthy," that you deplore the

lot of the women who cannot, in the natural order, find husbands, and

call them, contemptuously, "old maids"--a miserable relic of heathenism

or Protestantism, neither of which have anything to hold out to old

maids. But Jesus Christ has provided for them better than you are able

to understand.

The Father of our country, then, was right when he said, in his farewell

address to the American nation, that religion and morality are the

"props" of society, and the "pillars" of the State. Let us, then, rest

assured that the best way to check the torrent of infidelity and

immorality, to avert impending evils, to prepare the golden age of our

Republic, is to infuse good morals by the most powerful of all

means--_Christian Education_.

FOOTNOTES:

[F] Prof. Aggassiz.

CHAPTER XII.

THE DENOMINATIONAL SYSTEM ALONE SATISFIES THE WANTS OF ALL, AND CAN SAVE

THE REPUBLIC.

We live in a time of great activity and change, and intense worldliness.

"Men run to and fro and knowledge is increased." Would that we could

feel that there is an increase also in integrity and virtue, and respect

for Religion. We all know that it is not so. So far as we can form

accurate ideas of the social and religious condition of men at any

particular period in the world's history, we may doubt whether the words

of the Apostle St. Paul, describing what shall come to pass in what he

calls "the last days," ever touched any people so closely as they do

those of our times and country. "Men," he says, "shall be lovers of

themselves, covetous, haughty, proud, blasphemous, disobedient to

parents, ungrateful, wicked, without affection, without peace,

slanderers, incontinent, unmerciful, without kindness, traitors,

stubborn, puffed up, and lovers of pleasure, more than lovers of God."

Well may the Apostle speak of such times as "dangerous times." When the

moral atmosphere we breathe is so full of what the Scriptures call "the

spirit of this world," we can only hope to escape its corrupting

influences by doing all in our power to diffuse Christian principles

among the rising generation, by means of truly Christian schools.

The arrangements can be made without disturbing the general system. It

is this: "Let the State aid, but not direct, a system of plain English

education, confined to all those whose circumstances are limited, or who

are left destitute, or orphans. Let all religious denominations, when

they desire it, have the privilege of conducting their own schools,

subject only to general uniform inspection and examination on the part

of the State, and have their proportion of the school-moneys." The

wealthy classes will know how to take care of the education of their

own children, as they do of their family affairs in other matters.

The advocates of this "Denominational System" yield to none in their

endeavors to secure to _all_ the children within the State a good,

solid, and practical education, according to the religious convictions

and circumstances of all. This, they claim, is not, and cannot be

furnished on the present plan. They do not, as falsely charged, desire

to distract or divide, or introduce sectarianism into the Public

Schools; on the contrary, they _wish_ to satisfy conscience by yielding

_to all others what they claim for themselves_, and cannot help

denouncing the present system as practically resulting in a form of

sectarianism worse than any yet professed: to wit, "Indifferentism."

If the "Denominational System" was adopted, it would satisfy and do

justice to all, and, at the same time, excite such rivalry and

competition among teachers as to advance education, whilst it diminishes

its cost in the same ratio. We have seen that it costs about four times

as much to give the miserable infidel instruction in the Public Schools,

as it does to give a good Christian education in the denominational

schools. What possible objection, then, can there be to adopt the

denominational, or separate system, when it costs four times less, and

imparts, to say the least, as good an education to the greatest number

of children? It is no argument to urge that schools would be sectarian.

We have sectarian churches, and various shades and differences of

belief, already. This would not alter one or the other a particle. The

State cannot impose uniformity on churches; why force it on schools?

Indeed it is worse, inasmuch as this scholastic conformity or uniformity

is against all religions, and in favor of infidelity, or the

no-religious sect, if there be such a one. It discriminates against the

believers, and is in favor of the unbelievers.

But it is easy to see what the matter is. It is not religion these men

fear so much as _competition_. One session's trial of the separate

system would so clearly demonstrate to the public the economy and

advantages of this plan, that the troop of paid teachers, officers,

musicians, and others, who are fattening at the expense of a credulous

people, would be exposed, and have to take their "carpet-bags" and

tramp. However, I have no cause of quarrel with the employes, male or

female, of the Public Schools. They do not elect themselves, nor make

their salaries, and they are not to be blamed for taking them. If the

clever gentleman who draws (in one State, at least) $2,750 for ten

months, four hours' a day work, or the accomplished lady who gets $2,000

for the same time and labor, or the three musicians at $2,000 each, or

the humble, but perhaps not less useful, corps of "school-sweepers"

(janitors), who are rewarded with $16,886.50, or the officers (three),

who pocket $14,457.90 salary, and $20,771.96 office-expenses!! are so

handsomely rewarded, it is their good fortune, and not their fault.

There is, doubtless, a great deal of human nature in their composition,

as well as others.

There is no earthly way of giving satisfaction to all, except by

granting the denominational system, thereby leaving to all sects and

denominations, as well as to those who do not range themselves under any

specific form at all, to apply a fair proportion of the school-money.

All those who prefer the present plan would have no change to make, and

all those who desire the separate plan would have the right to select

their own class-books and teachers; in other words, would have the

interior management of their own schools. This is the way church matters

are managed to the satisfaction of all. Peoples' views and convictions

on education are just as conscientious and distinct as on religion, and

they have just as good a right to them. If any man denies this truth, I

would like him to give his reasons.

There is one other thing to be taken into consideration here: if, as is

claimed, all, from the highest to the lowest, have a right to an

education at the hands of the State, and if, as is admitted, all should

be instructed in their moral and religious duties, if not by the State,

at least by their parents and pastors, who will instruct the poor little

orphans, the very class for whose benefit the public provide an

education--who, I say, will instruct them in the way they should go? who

will answer for these little "waifs of society"? They ask for bread, and

the State gives them a stone; it has, with the best intentions in the

world, no better to give them. These considerations have compelled most

of the European States, as well as our neighbors--the Canadians--to

abandon the _godless system_, and establish separate schools, when

asked to do so by the members of any denomination.[G]

There _is no exception to this rule, except here!_ With all our boasted

progress, we are behind all civilized nations in this important

particular.

Now by adopting this fair method, the poor orphans and ragged children,

who have the first and best claim of all, would be educated. As it is,

it is a notorious fact, that as far as Public Schools are concerned,

they are left out in the cold. This fact is capable of being

demonstrated to any lady or gentleman who will visit the Catholic

orphanages and poor schools of any city. If any one doubts this, and

does me the honor of putting himself at my disposal, I will show him or

her thousands of such poor ragged little ones in one evening. Now is it

not drawing largely upon public credulity, as well as on the public

purse, to ask for thousands for high schools, and normal schools, etc.,

to educate the children, in great part, of the rich, or, at best,

comparatively well to do, and turn their backs on the poor fatherless

orphans and the ragged children of the poor widow or laboring man? Will

anybody who has his eyesight doubt or deny this? If so, he can be

convinced, any day of the week, by looking at the class and style of

boys and girls who go to the upper Public Schools, and observing the

boys and girls (several hundreds in number) who go to the poor schools

of the Sisters of Mercy, or, in fact, to any other charity convent

school.

The Bible, or religious education in schools, will ever come up to vex

and torment the public, especially the Catholic portion of the

community, until the right of separate schools is granted. It is

especially the Catholics that do and must insist upon having separate

schools, for it is the Catholics that have always done all in their

power to establish and maintain the republican form of government, and

it is through the influence of Catholicity alone that our Republic can

be maintained, and increased in power and glory.

A body which has lost the principle of its animation becomes dust. Hence

it is an axiom that the change or perversion of the principles by which

anything was produced, is the destruction of that very thing; if you can

change or pervert the principles from which anything springs, you

destroy it. For instance, one single foreign element introduced into the

blood produces death; one false assumption admitted into science,

destroys its certainty; one false principle admitted into morals, is

fatal. Now our American nation is departing from the principles which

created their civilization, and upon which their grand Republic is

based. Their civilization is becoming every day more and more material,

and this material civilization, while more and more material, is

becoming less moral; society is becoming less solid, less safe, less

stable; individuals are becoming more anarchical, the intellect more

licentious, the wills of men more stubborn, and this self-will expresses

itself in their actions, so that it is true to say that, by means of

godless education, the principles of Christianity upon which the

American Republic was founded, and by which it has hitherto been

preserved, have been rejected, and are being violated on every side. Our

Republic, therefore is no more progressing, but is going back.

About fifteen years ago a number of leading politicians and statesmen of

America, of highest name and note, met together to consider the

condition of the United States. It was before the war, when there were

already many causes of anxiety. It was said that there was a universal

and growing license of the individual will, and that law and government

were powerless to restrain it; that if the will of the multitude became

licentious, it would seriously threaten the public welfare and liberty

of the country. The conclusion they came to was, that, _unless there

could be found some power which could restrain the individual will_,

this danger would at last _seriously menace the United States_.

Now it is easy to say what that power is. It is the power which created

the Christian society--it is the power which drew the world out of the

darkness of heathenism, abolished slavery, restored woman to her true

dignity--it is the power which established and maintained republican

governments, and that power is the power of Catholicity. Whensoever this

power is weakened or lost, immediately all political society decays.

There will be a bright future for America if this power will be

maintained and preserved.

The Catholic Church is the grandest Republic that was ever established.

But it is a Republic of a supernatural order. It has for its Founder

Jesus Christ, the Son of God Himself. He chose St. Peter for its first

President. This grand Republic is divided, as it were, into as many

States as there are dioceses; each diocese has a Bishop--a true

successor of the Apostles--for Governor, and each Bishop has priests to

assist him in the spiritual government of the diocese. The Constitution

of this Republic was made by Jesus Christ. It cannot be changed or

altered at all, either by the President, or by the votes of its

citizens. St. Peter and the other Apostles, and their lawful successors,

were bound in conscience, by Jesus Christ, to keep His Constitution--His

doctrine--and teach others to keep it, under pain of forfeiture of

eternal life. The President and the Governors of this Republic--the

Pope and the Catholic Bishops--are not at liberty to govern its

citizens, the Catholics, as they please; they have to govern them

according to the Constitution--the Doctrine of Jesus Christ. Now

Almighty God governs men in accordance with the nature with which He has

created them, as beings endowed with reason and free-will. God adapts

His government to our rational and voluntary faculties, and governs us

without violence to either, and by really satisfying both. The rulers of

the Catholic Church have to do the same; they must govern men as

freemen. Hence the Catholic Church leaves to every people its own

nationality, and to every State its own independence; she ameliorates

the political and social order, only by infusing into the hearts of the

people and their rulers the principles of justice and love, and a sense

of accountability to God. The action of the Church in political and

social matters is indirect, not direct, and in strict accordance with

the free-will of individuals and the autonomy of states. Servile fear

does not rank very high among Catholic theologians. The Church, when she

can, resorts to coercive measures only to repress disorders in the

public body. Hence her rulers are called shepherds, not lords, and

shepherds of their Master's flock, not of their own, and are to feed,

tend, protect the flock, and take care of its increase for Him, with

sole reference to His will, and His honor and glory. The Catholic Church

proffers to all every assistance necessary for the attainment of the

most heroic sanctity, but she forces no man to accept that assistance.

Catholics believe the doctrines of the Church, because they believe the

Catholic Church the Church of God--they believe that Jesus Christ

commissioned St. Peter and the Apostles, and their lawful successors, to

teach all men in His name--to teach them infallibly and authoritatively

His divine doctrine--they believe that this Church is the medium through

which God manifests His will and dispenses His grace to man, and through

which alone we can hope for heaven; they believe that nothing can be

more reasonable than to believe God at His word, and that, above all,

they must seek the kingdom of God and secure their eternal salvation.

Being governed by the Church, as freemen, in the spirit of a republican

government, and enjoying, as they do, the freedom of the children of

God, Catholics feel nowhere more at home than under a republican form of

government. If a great pope could say in truth that he was nowhere more

pope than in America, every Catholic can, and does, also, say in truth,

"Nowhere can I be a better Christian than in the United States." Hence

it is that Catholics are very generally attached to the republican

institutions of the country--no class of our citizens more so--and would

defend them at the sacrifice of their lives. Catholics far more readily

adjust themselves to our institutions than non-Catholics, and among

Catholics it must be observed that _they_ succeed best who best

understand and best practise their religion. They who are least truly

American, and yield most to demagogues, are those who have very little

of Catholicity, except the accident of being born of Catholic parents,

who had them baptized in infancy.

Practical Catholics are the best Republicans! If we consult history, we

find that they were always foremost in establishing and maintaining the

republican form of government. Who originated all the free principles

which lie at the basis of our own noble Constitution? Who gave us trial

by jury, _habeas corpus_, stationary courts, and the principle--for

which we fought and conquered in our revolutionary struggle against

Protestant England--that taxes are not to be levied without the free

consent of those who pay them? All these cardinal elements of free

government date back to the good old Catholic times, in the middle

ages--some three hundred years before the dawn of the Reformation! Our

Catholic forefathers gave them all to us.

Again, we are indebted to Catholics for all the republics which ever

existed in Christian times, down to the year 1776: for those of

Switzerland, Venice, Genoa, Andorra, San Marino, and a host of minor

free Commonwealths, which sprang up in the "dark ages." Some of these

republics still exist, proud monuments and unanswerable evidences of

Catholic devotion to freedom. They are acknowledged by Protestants, no

less than by Catholics. I subjoin the testimony of an able writer in the

New York _Tribune_, believed to be Bayard Taylor. This distinguished

traveller--a staunch Protestant--appeals to history, and speaks from

personal observation. He writes:

"Truth compels us to add that the oldest republic now existing is that

of San Marino, not only Catholic, but wholly surrounded by the especial

dominion of the popes, who might have crushed it like an egg-shell at

any time these last thousand years--but they didn't. The only republic

we ever travelled in besides our own is Switzerland, half of its cantons

or states entirely Catholic, yet never, that we have heard of,

unfaithful to the cause of freedom. We never heard the Catholics of

Hungary accused of backwardness in the late glorious struggle of their

country for freedom, though its leaders were Protestants, fighting

against a leading Catholic power avowedly in favor of religious as well

as civil liberty. And chivalric, unhappy Poland, almost wholly Catholic,

has made as gallant struggles for freedom as any other nation; while of

the three despotisms that crushed her, but one was Catholic."

Let us bring the subject home to our own times and country. Who, I would

ask, first reared in triumph the broad banner of universal freedom on

this North American Continent? Who first proclaimed in this new world a

truth too wide and expansive to enter into the head of, or to be

comprehended by, a narrow-minded bigot--a truth that every man should

be free to worship God according to the dictates of his conscience? Who

_first_ proclaimed, on this broad continent, the glorious principles of

universal freedom? Read Bancroft, read Goodrich, read Frost, read every

Protestant historian of our country, and you will see there inscribed,

on the historic page, a _fact_ which reflects immortal honor on our

American Catholic ancestry--that Lord Baltimore and his Catholic

colonists of Maryland were the _first_ to proclaim universal liberty,

civil and religious; the _first_ to announce, as the basis of their

legislation, the great and noble principle that no man's faith and

conscience should be a bar to his holding any office, or enjoying any

_civil privilege_ of the community.

What American can forget the names of Rochambeau, De Grasse, De Kalb,

Pulaski, La Fayette, Kosciusko? Without the aid of these noble Catholic

heroes, and of the brave troops whom they led on to victory, would we

have succeeded at all in our great revolutionary contest? Men of the

clearest heads, and of the greatest political forecast, living at that

time, thought not; at least they deemed the result exceedingly

doubtful.

And during the whole war of the Revolution, who ever heard of a Catholic

coward, or of a Catholic traitor? When the Protestant General, Gates,

fled from the battle-field of Camden with the Protestant militia of

North Carolina and Virginia, who but Catholics stood firm at their

posts, and fought and died with the brave old Catholic hero, De Kalb?

the veteran who, when others ingloriously fled, seized his good sword,

and cried out to the brave old Maryland and Pennsylvania lines, "Stand

firm, for I am too old to fly!" Who ever heard of a Catholic Arnold? And

who has not heard of the brave Irish and German soldiers who, at a

somewhat later period, mainly composed the invincible army of the

impetuous "Mad Anthony" Wayne, and constituted the great bulwark of our

defence against the savage invasions which threatened our whole

northwestern frontier with devastation and ruin?

All these facts, and many more of a similar kind which might be alleged,

cannot have passed away, as yet, from the memory of our American

citizens. Americans cannot have forgotten, as yet, that the man who

perilled most in signing the Declaration of Independence was a Roman

Catholic, and that when Charles Carroll, of Carrolton, put his name to

that instrument, Benjamin Franklin observed, "There goes a cool million

in support of the cause!"

And when our energies were exhausted, and the stoutest hearts

entertained the most gloomy forebodings as to the final issue, Catholic

France stepped gallantly forth to the rescue of our infant freedom,

almost crushed by an overwhelming English tyranny! Catholic Spain also

subsequently lent us her aid against England. Many of our most sagacious

statesmen have believed that, but for this timely aid, our Declaration

of Independence could scarcely have been made good.

These facts, which are but a few of those which might be adduced, prove

conclusively that Catholicity is still what she was in the middle

ages--the steadfast friend and support of free institutions.

The great roots of all the evils that press upon society, and make man

unhappy, are--

"THE IGNORANCE OF THE MIND, AND THE DEPRAVITY OF THE WILL."

Hence he who wishes to civilize the world, and thus assist in executing

the plans of God's providence, must remove these two great roots of evil

by imparting to the mind infallibly the light of truth, and by laying

down for the will authoritatively the unchangeable principles of

morality. It is the Catholic Church that has accomplished in society

this twofold task, by means of education.

In the Pagan world, education was an edifice built up on the principles

of slavery. The motto was, "Odi profanum vulgus et arceo." Education was

the privilege of the aristocracy. The great mass of people was

studiously kept in ignorance of the treasures of the mind. This state of

things was done away with by the Roman Catholic Church, when she

established the monastic institutions of the West. The whole of Europe

was soon covered with schools, not only for the wealthy, but for the

poorest even of the poor. Yes, education was systematized, and an

emulation was created for learning, such as the world had never seen

before. Italy, Germany, France, England, and Spain, had their

universities; but side by side with these, their colleges, gymnasiums,

parish and village schools, as numerous as the churches and monasteries,

which the efforts of the Holy See had scattered with lavish hand over

the length and breadth of the land.

And where was the source of all this light? I answer, at _Rome_. For

when the barbarian hordes poured down upon Europe from the Caspian

Mountains, it was the Popes who saved civilization. They collected, in

the Vatican, the manuscripts of the ancient authors, gathered from all

parts of the earth at enormous expense. The barbarians, who destroyed

everything by fire and sword, had already advanced as far as Rome.

Attila, who called himself the scourge of God, stood before its walls;

there was no emperor, no praetorian guard, no legions present to save

the ancient Capital of the world. But there was a Pope--Leo I. And Leo

went forth, and by entreaties, and threats of God's displeasure, induced

the dreaded king of the Huns to retire. Scarcely had Attila retired,

before Genseric, king of the Vandals, made his appearance, invited by

Eudoxia, the empress, to the plunder of Rome. Leo met him, and obtained

from him the lives and the honor of the Romans, and the sparing of the

public monuments which adorned the city in such numbers. Thus Leo the

Great saved Europe from barbarism. To the name of Leo, I might add those

of Gregory I., Sylvester II., Gregory XIII., Benedict XIV., Julius III.,

Paul III., Leo X., Clement VIII., John XX., and a host of others, who

must be looked upon as the preservers of science and the arts, even amid

the very fearful torrent of barbarism that was spreading itself, like an

inundation, over the whole of Europe. The principle of the Catholic

Church has ever been this: "By the knowledge of Divine things, and the

guidance of an infallible teacher, the human mind must gain certainty in

regard to the sublimest problems, the great questions of life: by them

the origin, the end, the norm and limit of man's activity must be made

known, for then alone can he venture fearlessly upon the sphere of human

efforts, and human developments, and human science." And, truly, never

has science gained the ascendancy outside of the Church that it has

always held in the Church. And what I say of science I say also of the

arts. I say it of architecture, of sculpture, and of painting. I need

only point to the Basilica of Peter, to the museums and libraries of

Rome. It is to Rome the youthful artist always turns his steps, in order

to drink in, at the monuments of art and of science, the genius and

inspiration he seeks for in vain in his own country. He feels, only too

keenly, that railroads and telegraphs, steamships and power-looms,

banking-houses and stock companies, though good and useful institutions,

are not the mothers of genius, nor the schools of inspiration; and

therefore he leaves his country, and goes to Rome, and there feasts on

the fruits gathered by the hands of St. Peter's successors, and then

returns home with a name which will live for ages in the memory of those

who have learned to appreciate the true and the beautiful.

It is thus that the Catholic Church has accomplished the great work of

enlightening society. She has shed the light of Faith over the East and

the West, over the North and the South, and with the faith she has

established the principles of true science on their natural bases. She

has imparted education to the masses, wherever she was left free to

adopt her own, and untrammelled by civil interference. She has fostered

and protected the arts and the sciences, and to-day, if all the

libraries, and all the museums, and all the galleries of art in the

world were destroyed, Rome alone would possess quite enough to supply

the want, as it did in former ages, when others supplied themselves by

plundering Rome.

The depravity of man shows itself in the constant endeavor to shake off

the restraint placed by law and duty upon his will; and to this we must

ascribe the licentiousness which has at all times afflicted society.

Passion acknowledges no law, and spares neither rights nor conventions;

where it has the power, it exercises it to the advantage of self, and to

the detriment of social order. The Church is by its very constitution

Catholic, and hence looks upon all men as brothers of the same family.

She acknowledges not the natural right of one man over another, and

hence her Catholicity lays a heavy restraint upon all the efforts of

self-love, and curbs with a mighty hand the temerity of those who would

destroy the harmony of life implied in the idea of Catholicity.

One of the first principles of all social happiness is, that before the

law of nature, and before the face of God, all men are equal. This

principle is based on the unity of the human race, the origin of all men

from one common father. If we study the History of Paganism, we find

that all heathen nations overturned this great principle, since we find

among all heathen nations the evil of _Slavery_. Prior to the coming of

Christ, the great majority of men were looked upon as a higher

development of the animal, as animated instruments which might be bought

and sold, given away and pawned; which might be tormented, maltreated,

or murdered; as beings, in a word, for whom the idea of right, duty,

pity, mercy, and law had no existence. Who can read, without a feeling

of intense horror, the accounts left us of the treatment of their slaves

by the Romans? There was no law that could restrain in the least the

wantonness, the cruelty, the licentious excess of the master, who, as

master, possessed the absolute right to do with his slaves whatsoever he

pleased. To remove this stain of slavery has ever been the aim of the

Catholic Church. "Since the Saviour and Creator of the world," says Pope

Gregory I., in his celebrated decree, "wished to become man, in order,

by grace and liberty, to break the chains of our slavery, it is right

and good to bestow again upon man, whom nature has permitted to be born

free, but whom the law of nations has brought under the yoke of slavery,

the blessing of their original liberty." Through all the middle

ages--called by Protestants the _dark ages of the world_--the echo of

these words of Gregory I. is heard; and in the thirteenth century Pope

Pius II. could say, "Thanks to God, and the Apostolic See, the yoke of

slavery does no longer disgrace any European nation." Since then slavery

was again introduced into Africa, and the newly-discovered regions of

America, and again the Popes raised their voices in the interests of

liberty,--from Pius II. to Pius VII., who, even at the time Napoleon had

robbed him of his liberty, and held him captive in a foreign land,

became the defender of the negro, to Gregory XVI., who, on the third of

November, 1839, insisted in a special Bull on the abolition of the slave

trade, and who spoke in a strain as if he had lived and sat side by side

with Gregory I., thirteen hundred years before. But here let us observe,

that not only the vindication of liberty for all, not only the

abolition of slavery, but the very mode of action followed in this

matter by the Popes, has gained for them immortal honor, and the esteem

of all good men. When the Church abolished slavery in any country where

it existed, the Popes did not compel masters, by harshness or threats,

to manumit their slaves; they did not bring into action the base

intrigues, the low chicanery, the canting hypocrisy of modern statesmen;

they did not raise armies, and send them into the lands of their masters

to burn and to pillage, to lay waste and to destroy; they did not

slaughter, by their schemes, over a million of free men and another

million of slaves; they did not make widows and orphans without numbers;

they did not impoverish the land, and lay upon their subjects burdens

which would crush them into very dust. Nothing of all this. That is not

the way in which the Church abolished slavery. The Popes sent bishops

and priests into those countries where slavery existed, to enlighten the

minds of the masters, and convince them that slaves were men, and

consequently had souls, like other people, too. The Popes, bishops and

priests infused into the hearts of masters a deep love for Jesus Christ,

and consequently a deep love for souls. The Popes, bishops and priests

taught masters to look upon their slaves as created by the same God,

redeemed by the same Jesus Christ, destined for the same glory. The

consequence was, that the relations of slave and master became the

relations of brother to brother; the master began to love his slave, and

to ameliorate his condition, till at last, forced by his own

acknowledged principles, he granted to him his liberty. Thus it was that

slavery was abolished by the preaching of the Popes, bishops and

priests. The great barrier to all the healthy, permanent, and free

development of nations was thus broken down; the blessings, the

privileges of society, were made equally attainable by the masses, and

ceased to be the special monopoly of a few, who, for the most part, had

nothing to recommend them except their wealth.

If any doubt remain as to the favorable influence of Catholicity on

civil liberty, it would be dispelled by the express teaching of the

theologians, writing in accordance with the principles and the spirit of

the Church. Not to extend this point too much, I will confine myself to

the authority of the great St. Thomas Aquinas, who, as a theologian,

has perhaps had greater weight in the Catholic Church than any other

man. His testimony may also show us what were the general sentiments of

the school-men in the thirteenth century, when he wrote.

Speaking of the origin of civil power and the objects of law, he lays

down these principles: "The law, strictly speaking, is directed

primarily and principally to the common good; and to decree anything for

the common benefit _belongs either to the whole body of the people, or

to some one acting in their place_." (Summa Theologiae, i. 2, I. Quaest.

Art. iii., Resp.) He pronounces the following opinion as to the best

form of government: "Wherefore the choice of rulers in any state or

kingdom is best, when one is _chosen for his merit to preside over all_,

and under him are other rulers _chosen for their merit; and the

government belongs to all, because the rulers may be chosen from any

class of society; and the choice is made by all_." (Ibid, Quaest. cv.

Art. 1.) One would think that he is hearing a Democrat of the modern

stamp, and yet it is a monk of the dark ages! Many other testimonies of

similar import might be cited, but these will suffice.

And what has Protestantism done for human freedom? The Reformation

dawned on the world in the year 1517. What did it do for the cause of

freedom from that date down to 1776--when our Republic arose? Did it

strike one blow for liberty during these two centuries and a half? Did

it originate one republican principle, or found one solitary republic?

Not one. In Germany, where it had full sway, it ruthlessly trampled in

the dust all the noble franchises of the Catholic middle ages; it

established political despotism everywhere; it united church and state;

in a word, it brought about that very state of things which continues to

exist, with but slight amelioration, even down to the present day. In

England, it did the same; it broke down the bulwarks of the British

Constitution, derived from the Catholic Magna Charta; it set at naught

popular rights, and gave to the king or queen unlimited power in church

and state; and it required a bloody struggle and a revolution, one

hundred and fifty years afterwards, to restore to something of their

former integrity the old chartered rights of the British people.

Protestantism has always boasted much, but it has really done little for

the cause of human freedom. As to the liberties which we enjoy in our

country, we cheerfully award to our Protestant fellow-citizens the

praise which is so justly due them for _their_ share in the glorious

struggle.

But as to the power of Protestantism to maintain the Republic by

checking the great evils that have already sapped its foundations, it

has not any at all. How could Protestantism check infidelity, since it

leads to it? There are two causes of infidelity that have existed from

the beginning of the world. But about three centuries ago Protestantism

opened a very wide avenue to infidelity. Protestantism introduced the

principle, "There is no divinely-commissioned authority to teach

infallibly." Now infidelity exists in this principle of Protestantism,

as the oak exists in the acorn, as the consequence is in the premise. On

the claim of private judgment, Protestants reject the authority of St.

Peter, the Vicar of Christ. The Calvinists, going, as they do, by the

same principle, reject the Real Presence of our Lord in the Blessed

Sacrament.

The Socinians, following the same principle, reject, to-day, the

Divinity of Christ, and therefore abjure Christianity, and fall back

into utter incredulity.

The German and French philosophers, rationalists, and pantheists, of all

degrees, do not even stop at that; they go farther, and deny the

existence of a God Creator, and all by the privilege of free and private

judgment.

The individual reason taking, as it does, the place of faith, the

Protestant, whether he believes it or not, is an infidel in germ, and

the infidel is a Protestant in full bloom; in other words, infidelity is

nothing but Protestantism in the highest degree. Hence it is that Edgar

Quinet, a great herald of Protestantism, is right in styling the

Protestant sects _the thousand gates open to get out of Christianity_.

No wonder, then, that thousands of Protestants have ended, and continue

to end, in framing their formula of faith thus: "I believe in nothing."

But let us bring this subject home to our country. The disastrous issue

of the revolutionary movements which convulsed all Europe in 1848-9,

has thrown upon our shores masses of foreign political refugees, most of

whom are infidels in religion, and red republicans, or destructionists

of all social order in politics. They are men of desperate character and

fortune--outlaws from society, with the brand of infidelity upon their

brow. It is by this fast-increasing class of men that "Young America" is

attracted, and learn from them their anarchical principles. The

greatest, and, in fact, the only real danger to the permanency of our

republican institutions, is to be apprehended from this class of

infidels in our community.

Now what has contributed most towards the enormous increase of these

enemies of our republic? It is the godless education given in the Public

Schools. And who established these schools, and who robbed the money

from the people to support them--to make this source of infidelity flow

so abundantly all over the land? You find the answer to this question in

Chapter III.

Protestantism was a separation from the source and current of the

Divine-human life which exists in the Catholic Church, and which

redeems and saves the world; and Protestants are therefore thrown back

upon nature, and able to live only the natural life of the race--saving

the portion of Christian life they brought away with them at the time of

separation, and which, as not renewed from its source, must, in time, be

exhausted.

It is therefore evident that Protestantism cannot fight infidelity. It

is only the Catholic Church that can take open ground against these men

so hostile to our country, and she feels honored by their bitter

hostility. It could not be otherwise. Her principles are eminently

conservative in all questions of religion and of civil policy; theirs

are radical and destructive in both. Theirs is the old war of Satan

against Christ; of the sons of Belial against the keepers of the law; of

false and anti-social against true and rational liberty--"the liberty of

the glory of the children of God."

Let these enemies of the country unfold their banners of "Infidelity,"

"Socialism," "Free Thought," "Scepticism," "Communism," "No God," "No

Christ," "No Pope," "No Church," and a thousand others; let them grind

their teeth, let them froth and foam at the mouth, let them tremble

with rage, let them shake their heads with an air of majesty, as if they

would say to the Church, "We bury you to-morrow, we write your epitaph

and chant your De Profundis; our league is mighty, our forces are

multitudinous, our weapons are powerful, our bravery is desperate."

The Catholic Church calmly answers, "I know you hate me because I am the

palladium of truth and of public and private morality; I am the root and

bond of charity and faith; I love justice and hate iniquity. But it is

for this very reason that I will remain forever; for truth and justice

being, in the end, always victorious, I will not cease to bless and to

triumph. All the works of the earth have perished; time has obliterated

them. But I remain, because Christ remains, and I will endure until I

pass from my earthly exile to my country in heaven.

"Human theories and systems have flitted across my path like birds of

night, but they have vanished; numberless sects have, like so many

waves, dashed themselves to froth against me, this rock, or, recoiling,

have been lost in the vast ocean of forgetfulness. Kingdoms and empires

that once existed in inimitable worldly grandeur are no more; dynasties

have died out, and have been replaced by others.

"Thrones and sceptres and crowns have withstood me; but, immutable, like

God, who laid my foundation, I am the firm, unshaken centre round which

the weal and woe of nations move--weal if they adhere to it--woe if they

separate from it. If the world takes from me the cross of gold, I will

bless the world with one of wood.

"Tear down my Banner of the Cross if you can! Touch a single fold of it

if you dare! Sound your battle-cry; rally your hosts--marshal your

ranks! Storm these lofty summits. They never yet have been surrendered.

The flag that waves above them has never trailed in defeat, and the

hearts that guard that flag have never flinched before the foe, and the

bravery that shoots through every film of these hearts has never

faltered. On with the conflict! Let it rage! Our line of battle reaches

back to Calvary. That line has never been broken by wildest onset! These

soldiers have never fled! We are the sons of veterans who have marched

through a campaign of eighteen hundred years--marched and never

halted--marched and always triumphed! We belong to the old Imperial

Guard of Faith! We never yet have met a Waterloo!

"I am a queen--but a warrior-queen. You will never find me on a throne

here below. Banner in hand, I am ever in the midst of battle. I have

never granted a day of truce to my enemies. War against all who war

against God--war against all who war against Christ--war against all who

war against man--war against all who war against truth--this is my

destiny.

"Peace here below, I have never known. Rest here below, I have never

found. I am always on the march--my banner ever unfurled--my war-cry

ever sounding!

"Therefore, in the storm and shock of my battle of to-day with my

enemies, my soldier-children fear not. Around my old chieftain they

rally. What though some may desert and leave the lines? The lines close

up again--and the deserters are not missed. What though a Judas Iscariot

may betray? A brave Matthias takes his place. What though a few of

craven spirit may flee? The ranks they left are filled by brave men and

true.

"From the hill of Calvary to the hill of the Vatican, from Peter before

the Council to Pius before the Sardinian, my history has been one long,

uninterrupted battle--and my battle one long and glorious victory."

We cannot but smile when we hear infidels talk of the downfall of the

Church. What could hell and its agents do more than they have already

done for her destruction? They have employed tortures for the body, but

they could not reach the spirit; they have tried heresy, or the denial

of revealed truth, to such an extent that we cannot see room for any new

heresy; they have, by the hand of schism, torn whole countries from the

unity of the Church; but what she lost on one side of the globe, she

gained tenfold on the other. All these have ignominiously failed to

verify the prophecies of hell, that "the Church shall fall."

Look, for instance, at the tremendous effort of the so-called glorious

Reformation, together with its twin sister--the unbelief of the

nineteenth century. Whole legions of church reformers, together with

armies of philosophers armed with negation, and a thousand and one

systems of Paganism, rushed on against the Chair of Peter, and swore

that the Papacy would fall, and with it the whole Church. Three hundred

years are over, and the Catholic Church is still alive, and, to all

appearances, more vigorous than ever. The nations have proved that they

can get along very well without reformers, but not without the Catholic

Church. Men are foolish enough to dream of the destruction of the

Papacy. Napoleon tried the game, and, from the summit of his empire,

walked into exile, whilst his victim, Pius VII., leaving his prison,

entered Rome in triumph. A great statesman of France said, not long ago,

that those who tried to swallow the Papacy, and with it the whole

Church, always died of indigestion. Let the enemies of the Catholic

Church beware! If they dash their heads against this rock, they must not

be astonished to find them broken.

And what power has Protestantism to check the National Crime--the murder

of helpless innocents? Everybody knows, who knows anything about the

subject, that among the Roman Catholic population this crime is hardly

known. The reason for the rare occurrence of this crime among Catholics,

is their religion. The doctrine of the Catholic Church, her canons, her

pontifical constitutions, her theologians, without exception, teach,

and always have taught, that even the intention of preventing or

destroying human life, at any period from the first instant of

conception, is a heinous crime, equal at least in guilt to the crime of

murder.

Now as to the power of Protestantism to check this crime, Dr. Storer,

the distinguished Protestant physician of Boston, says: "We are

compelled to admit that _Protestantism_ has failed to check the increase

of criminal abortion." (Criminal Abortion, p. 55.) "There can be no

doubt that the Romish ordinance, flanked, on the one hand, by the

confessional, and by denouncement and excommunications on the other, has

saved to the world _thousands of infant lives_." (Ibid. p. 74.) "During

the ten years which have passed since the preceding sentence was

written, we have had ample verification of its truth. _Several hundreds

of Protestant women_ have personally acknowledged to us their guilt,

against whom only seven Catholics, and of these we found, upon further

inquiry, that all but two were only nominally so, not going to the

confession."--(Ibid.)

It is, then, not Protestantism, it is the Catholic Church alone that

has the power to oppose herself to the propagation of so heinous a

crime, and prevent her children from shedding the blood of helpless

innocents.

The third great evil which has made the most fearful inroad among us, so

as already to have extorted many a warning cry, is _the contempt of the

marriage tie_.

The family, as I have said in a previous chapter, is the groundwork of

civil society. If the family be Christian, the State will also be

Christian; and if the family be corrupt, the State cannot remain long

untarnished. It is the holy sacrament of marriage that gives sanctity to

the family, and strength to civil society. To reject that sacrament is

to sow the seeds of revolution. Revolution in the family begets

revolution in the State. When a government, which, by its very nature,

should restrain immorality, allows the separation of man and wife, it

sanctions the right of revolution in the family, and sooner or later

that government will feel the dire effects of its own corrupt doctrine.

Now it is a matter of fact that the contempt of the marriage tie, so

prevalent in our country, is owing to Protestantism. If any one wishes

to learn how the Continental Reformers regarded the Sacrament of

Matrimony, let him read Luther's sermon on Marriage (if he can do so

without a blush), or, better still, the dogmatical judgment of Luther,

Melanchthon, Bucer, and the rest, giving permission! to the innocent

Landgrave of Hesse to commit bigamy, pure and simple.

It is the Catholic Church alone, again, that has always regarded the

Christian marriage as the corner-stone of society; and at that

corner-stone have the Popes stood guard for eighteen centuries, by

insisting that Christian marriage is one, holy, and indissoluble. Woman,

weak and unprotected, has, as the history of the Church abundantly

proves, found at Rome that guaranty which was refused her by him who had

sworn at the altar of God to love her and to cherish her till death.

Whilst, in the nations whom the Reformation of the sixteenth century

tore from the bosom of the Church, the sacred laws of matrimony are

trampled in the dust, whilst the statistics of these nations hold up to

the world the sad spectacle of divorces as numerous as marriages, of

separations of husband from wife, and wife from husband, for the most

trivial causes, thus granting to lust the widest margin of license, and

legalizing concubinage and adultery; whilst the nineteenth century

records in its annals the existence of a community of licentious

polygamists within the borders of one of the most civilized countries of

the earth, we must yet see the decree emanating from Rome that would

permit even a beggar to repudiate his lawful wife, in order to give his

affections to an adulteress.

The female portion of our race would always have sunk back into a new

slavery, had not the Popes entered the breach for the protection of the

Unity, the sanctity, the Indissolubility of matrimony. In the midst of

the barbarous ages, during which the conqueror and warrior swayed the

sceptre of empire, and kings and petty tyrants acknowledged no other

right but that of force, it was the Popes that opposed their authority,

like a wall of brass, to the sensuality and the passions of the mighty

ones of the earth, and stood forth as the protectors of innocence and

outraged virtue, as the champions of the rights of women, against the

wanton excesses of tyrannical husbands, by enforcing, in their full

severity, the laws of Christian marriage. If Christian Europe is not

covered with harems, if polygamy has never gained a foothold in Europe,

if, with the indissolubility and sanctity of matrimony, the palladium of

European civilization has been saved from destruction, it is all owing

to the Popes. "If the Popes"--says the Protestant Von Mueller--"if the

Popes could hold up no other merit than that which they gained by

protecting monogamy against the brutal lusts of those in power,

notwithstanding bribes, threats, and persecutions, that alone would

render them immortal for all future ages."

And how had they to battle till they had gained this merit? What

sufferings had they to endure, what trials to undergo? When King

Lothair, in the ninth century, repudiated his lawful wife in order to

live with a concubine, Pope Nicholas I. at once took upon himself the

defence of the rights and of the honor of the unhappy wife. All the arts

of an intriguing policy were plied, but Nicholas remained unshaken;

threats were used, but Nicholas remained firm. At last the king's

brother, Louis II., appears with an army before the walls of Rome, in

order to compel the Pope to yield. It is useless--Nicholas swerves not

from the line of duty. Rome is besieged; the priests and people are

maltreated and plundered; sanctuaries are desecrated; the cross is torn

down and trampled under foot, and, in the midst of these scenes of blood

and sacrilege, Nicholas flies to the Church of St. Peter; there he is

besieged by the army of the Emperor for two days and two nights; left

without food or drink, he is willing to die of starvation on the tomb of

St. Peter, rather than yield to a brutal tyrant, and sacrifice the

sanctity of Christian marriage, the law of life of Christian society.

And the perseverance of Nicholas I. was crowned with victory. He had to

contend against a licentious king, who was tired of restraint; against

an emperor, who, with an army at his heels, came to enforce his

brother's unjust demands; against two councils of venal bishops, the one

at Metz, the other at Aix-la-Chapelle, who had sanctioned the scandals

of the adulterous monarch. Yet, with all this opposition, and the

suffering it cost him, the Pope succeeded in procuring the

acknowledgment of the rights of an injured woman. And during succeeding

ages we find Gregory V. carrying on a similar combat against King

Robert, and Urban II. against King Philip of France. In the thirteenth

century, Philip Augustus, mightier than his predecessors, set to work

all the levers of power, in order to move the Pope to divorce him from

his wife Ingelburgis. Hear the noble answer of the great Innocent III.:

"Since, by the grace of God, we have the firm and unshaken will never to

separate ourselves from Justice and Truth, neither moved by petitions,

nor bribed by presents, neither induced by love, nor intimidated by

hate, we will continue to go on in the royal path, turning neither to

the right nor to the left; and we judge without any respect to persons,

since God Himself does not respect persons."

After the death of his first wife, Isabella, Philip Augustus wished to

gain the favor of Denmark by marrying Ingelburgis. The union had hardly

been solemnized, when he wished to be divorced from her. A council of

venal bishops assembled at Compiegne, and annulled his lawful marriage.

The queen, poor woman, was summoned before her Judges, and the sentence

was read and translated to her. She could not speak the language of

France, so her only cry was "Rome!" And Rome heard her cry of distress,

and came to her rescue. Innocent III. needed the alliance of France in

the troubles in which he was engaged with Germany; Innocent III. needed

the assistance of France for the Crusade; yet Innocent III. sent Peter

of Capua as Legate to France; a Council is convoked by the Legate of the

Pope; Philip refuses to appear, in spite of the summons, and the whole

of the kingdom of Philip is placed under interdict. Philip's rage knows

no bounds: bishops are banished, his lawful wife is imprisoned, and the

king vents his rage on the clergy of France. The barons, at last, appeal

against Philip to the sword. The king complains to the Pope of the

harshness of the Legate, and when Innocent only confirms the sentence of

the Legate, the king exclaims, "Happy Saladin; he had no Pope!" Yet the

king was forced to obey. When he asked the barons assembled in council,

"What must I do?" their answer was: "Obey the Pope; put away Agnes and

restore Ingelburgis." And, thanks to the severity of Innocent III.,

Philip repudiated the concubine, and restored Ingelburgis to her rights,

as wife and queen. Hear what the Protestant Hurter says, in his life of

Innocent: "If Christianity has not been thrown aside, as a worthless

creed, into some isolated corner of the world; if it has not, like the

sects of India, been reduced to a mere theory; if its European vitality

has outlived the voluptuous effeminacy of the East, it is due to the

watchful severity of the Roman Pontiffs--to their increasing care to

maintain the principles of authority in the Church."

As often as we look to England, that land of perfidy and deceit, we are

reminded of the words of Innocent III. to Philip Augustus. We see

Clement using them as his principles in his conduct towards the royal

brute Henry VIII. Catherine of Aragon, the lawful wife of Henry, had

been repudiated by her disgraceful husband, and it was again to Rome she

appealed for protection. Clement remonstrates with Henry. The monarch

calls the Pope hard names. Clement repeats, "Thou shalt not commit

adultery!" Henry threatens to tear England from the Church; he does it;

still Clement insists, "Thou shalt not commit adultery!" Fisher and More

go to bleed out their life at Tyburn; still the Pope repeats, "Thou

shalt not commit adultery!" Henry had two wives at the same time, and,

after _them_, took a new wife, and killed off his old wife, whenever his

beastly passion prompted. The enslavement of the people followed. Henry

made himself head of the Church, and bade the English nation recognize

him as such. The penalty of disobeying the tyrant was death. The mass of

the English yielded. This adulterous beast--this ferocious monster--they

accepted as their pope; and their children, following in their steps,

accepted his bastard brood--of either sex--as their popes; while the

only and true Pope, the successor of St. Peter, the Vicar of Jesus

Christ, was rejected by them. To such depths of servility and

degradation do apostate nations fall. The firmness of the Pope cost

England's loss to the Church. It cost the Pope bitter tears, and he

prayed to Heaven not to visit on the people of England the crimes of the

despot; he prayed for the conversion of the nation; but sacrifice the

sanctity, the indissolubility of matrimony, that he could never

do--abandon helpless women to the brutality of men who were tired of the

restraints of morality--no, that the Pope could never permit. If the

Court, if the palace of the domestic hearth refused a shelter, Rome was

always open, a refuge to injured and downtrodden innocence.

"One must obey God more than man." This has ever been the language of

the Popes, whenever there was question of defending the laws of God

against the powers of the earth; and in thus defending the laws of God,

they protected against outrage the personal dignity, the moral liberty

and the intellectual freedom of man. "Because there was a Pope," says a

Protestant historian, "there could not any longer be a Tiberius in

Europe, and the direction of the religious and spiritual welfare of man

was withdrawn from the hands of royalty." Because there were Popes, the

will of Caesar could not any longer be substituted for law; for the Popes

made the Gospel the law-book of the nations. Now the Gospel teaches that

all power comes from God; that from God the sovereign derives his power,

to rule in justice and equity for the welfare of his subjects, and that

the subjects are bound to obey their rules, for conscience sake. Hence,

adopting the great principal of action, the Popes have at all times

condemned the spirit of rebellion, and have anathematized those

principles, those factions, those organizations whose aim is, and has

always been, to overturn lawful authority and to substitute anarchy in

the place of the harmony of legitimate government. In conformity with

this rule of action the Popes Clement XII., Benedict XIV., Pius VII.,

Leo XII., Gregory XVI., and Pius IX. have condemned secret societies,

whose object is the overthrow of civil and religious government. But at

the same time that the Popes required from subjects obedience to their

lawful governments, they have ever defended subjects against the abuse

of power, or against the tyranny of unjust rulers. In Pagan times it had

the appearance as if the people existed for the sovereign, and not the

sovereign for the people; but in the days and in the countries where the

spiritual supremacy of the Pope was acknowledged by rulers, the Pagan

idea had necessarily to disappear, for the Popes gave the princes to

understand that they existed for the people, and not the people for

them.