/ 
 
 A VlflDlCATIOfl 
 
 OF 
 
 French Evangelization 
 
 RHV. THHODOIIE UflFUBUf^. 
 
 '» I ;. 
 
 
 1 1-.. . I . 
 
 montireal : 
 Published by the monfffeaP minis tenial Rssoeiation. 
 
 1896. 
 
"y 
 
 i?3J5S« 
 
 V, . . * ' • • • 
 
 ?f^' 
 
A VINDICATION 
 
 OF 
 
 FRENCH EVANGELIZATION 
 
 How may we justify our special work of Evangelization 
 among Roman Catholics in this country ? Is it on the ground 
 of a belief that there is not or cannot be any real, true Chris- 
 tians and saints among the millions of adherents to that form 
 of Christianity ? In the minds of all fairly educated men, this 
 is not an admissible question. Moreover, that cannot be tlie 
 motive for the strong persevering efforts put forth, for the work 
 and expense incurred in this Christian endeavour. That can- 
 not be the ground to rest upon, because it is too narrow and 
 too shifting. The man who believes, or says without having 
 sifted his belief, that there are no true, devout, exemplary 
 Christians in the Roman Catliolic Cliurch, has too narrow 
 a mind, or too large a margin of ignorance to enable us lo 
 discuss this question with him. We will take it for granted 
 that there are true, spiritual Christians in Roman Catholic 
 Christendom. 
 
 Is that result due to the simple, direct teaching of Evange- 
 lical doctrines in that church at large? In other words: does 
 the Church of Rome teach the Gospel of Jesus Christ purely 
 and simply as the Apostles preached it after the death and 
 the resurre':tion of tlieir Master, and after Pentecost? 
 
 We all know she does not. She has the Gospel in her pos- 
 session, she has even caused a number of versions to be made 
 of it. It is embodied or implied in her theological curriculum, 
 in the works recommended by the authorities of the church, 
 
raid the Popes, such as the Articles of the Council of Trent, 
 in its catechisms large and small, of Thomas Aquinas and 
 others. 
 
 But with her doctrine of development so ably presented by 
 Mtihler which, with her, means accretion from the outside, 
 -either Jewish or Pagan, or purely modem and imaginary, she 
 lias incurred, and that most deservedly, the terrible rebuke of 
 Jesus to the Jews cf old : " Ye make the Word of God of none 
 •effect by your traditions." The Word of God, the Gospel of 
 Jesus Christ, has been drowned in the flood of her innumer- 
 able traditions and additions, and it is now for the minds of 
 most of her adherents imbedded in the subsoil of her ever in- 
 -creasing* dogmas. The few spiritual souls the church contains 
 Avho are eager for evangelical truth, have to dig for it so as to 
 find it there ; men like Pascal, Feneloii, and Massillon of 
 ■other days, like Gratry, Madame Swetchine, Lacordaire, later 
 on, and rare individuals in our day, succeed in finding it buried 
 in a mass of superstitious rubbish; while the masses resort to 
 empty forms of worship or crowd around healing shrines or 
 relics, and the every day more invading devotion to the Virgin 
 Mary. The educated portion of that Christianity attempt, 
 by real intellecual "tours de force" to reconcile some of the 
 irrational teachings and some of the superstitious practices of 
 that Church with the ideas of our modern general culture. 
 They say: Only the poor, ignorant people believe such things. 
 But those things are taught by the priests who are not reckon- 
 ■ed among ignorant men. If you will take the trouble to look 
 over the catalogue of books issued by our French Catholic 
 bookstores, you will see there an almost incredible mass of 
 incredibly sill}', superstitious writings, in perfectly pure, and 
 sometimes beautiful language. That implies some intellectual 
 culture. Educated minds in the Roman Catholic Church strive 
 very hard, and have always done so from Bossuet down to 
 Newman, to entrap you in what they call the only logical 
 issue, viz. : the dogma of the authority of the Church, If you 
 can swallow that, it is a pretty large lump, then the whole will 
 go very easily. You will then accept the confessional,, which 
 
implies that you do not reajly believe in the prayer that Jesus 
 taught his disciples to say directly to the Heavenly Father: 
 " Pardon us our sins." The auricular, obligatory, secret con- 
 fession which is a snare to tiic confessor and a moral degra- 
 dation to the confessed, especially the young women, has no 
 footing on Gospel ground. You must accept that enormous 
 and most incredible thing, that by a few magical Latin words 
 pronounced by a man, a very ordinary man sometimes, Jesus 
 Christ, your ascended Lord, comes down to be imprisoned, 
 body, soul, and divinity, in a little wafer, that millions of 
 people adore. 
 
 In the summer of 1893, on Corpus Christi Day, the weather 
 was so unpropitious that the usual procession of parading the 
 host could not take place. The parish priest of Notre Dame, 
 I'Abbe M. said to his thousands of henrers on that day, that 
 the " bon Dieu'' could not go out —and that it was due to the 
 impious "Presse" newspapers who had maligned the clergy — 
 that was on the occasion of the most scandalous conduct of 
 one of the priests. We then humorously, but sadly, remarked 
 in the "Aurore," that the God that could not go out on that 
 day, was the little, dead God fabricated by the priest, and car- 
 ried out by him in good weather, very different from the great 
 God by whom we live and whom we adore as the Creator of 
 the Universe, the living, almighty, eternal God. 
 
 You must believe among hundreds of other such things 
 what appears as announced in the newspapers the other day 
 in this city: "Next Sunday, being the anniversary of the fete 
 of the immaculate conception, there will be on exhibition' for 
 public veneration, in the Church of Notre Dame de Bon 
 Secours, the very precious relic of a portion of the hair of the 
 Holy Virgin, it is exhibited at 3.30 p.m. There is a superna- 
 tural virtue attached to this holy relic." 
 
 Think of a Gibbons, a Newman, or a Bossuet believing this! 
 They do not believe it; never did and never can; they admit it 
 as a part of the whole, with the feigned humble attitude that 
 there are a great many things above our reason. That we 
 admit with Pascal, but also with him we say : " Super non 
 
contra." Above, yes, as high as the heavens, but never con- 
 trary to reason, and especial 1\' never below it as this is. 
 
 With the Gospel documents in our hands we proclaim our 
 beliefs in a revelation from above, but we still continue to claim 
 the exercise of all the reasoning power that the Almighty has 
 endowed us with. Those very documents 'mply tliat we 
 should. Christ and his apostles have appealed constantly to 
 human understanding, while proclaiming truths that transcend 
 reason. At the same time Jesus has rebuked foolish beliefs 
 and superstitious practices. Did he not say : " He that has 
 ears, let him hear ?" " Can you not understand this parable ?" 
 When found fault with because he had not washed his hands 
 before taking a meal, he rebuked the Pharisees by saying: 
 " Hear and understand, that it is not what you eat that defileth 
 you," but what you are in your hearts and minds. And to his 
 disc'ples : " Are ye still \\rithout understanding ?" That 
 praying is not repeating w^ords like the heathens. That 
 it was not because a certain tnan's parents had sinned that he 
 was born blind. Thus touching one of the deepest prol)lems 
 of our day. Did he not say : " Go ye and learn what that 
 meaneth : I desire mercy and not sacrifice." Matt, ix., 13. In 
 such words as these : " Take heed what ye hear. He that • 
 hath ears let him hear." Is there not in these words an appeal 
 to the deepest powers of human- understanding. Did not the 
 apostle Paul say to the Christians of Colosse: "Let no one de- 
 fraud you of your prize, in profession of humility and the v^'or- 
 ship of angels : intruding into things which he hath not seen, 
 things that have a show of wisdom in humility." We have 
 in these words a far seeing prophetic oracle. St. Paul in his 
 pastoral letters has a good deal to say against superstitious 
 teachings, and "old wives' fables" as unprofitable to piety. Who 
 ate they then who in the name of the religion of Jesus Christ 
 and of his apostles, claim authority to lord it over others in 
 holy things ? Are they angels from some superior spheres ? 
 If only men like ourselves how come they to be so arrogant 
 as to assume the monopoly of theological knowledge, science 
 and the Holy Spirit of God ? And, moreover, to force their 
 
fellovvmen to believe things absurd ? Xo old woman has ever 
 invented so many fables, has ever taught so many superstitious 
 practices as the old Roman Catholic Church of this day and 
 in this country. He boldly said, " Prove all things, hold fast 
 that which is good." I. Thess. v., 19. 
 
 We feel perfectly justified in our attempts at destroying th'S 
 overgrowth of weeds which prevents the good seed from hav- 
 ing a fair chance of bringing a good crop. But, they say, 
 this field is not yours, it is your neighbor's. I shall try to con- 
 vince my neighbor that he will have a better harvest if he 
 gets rid of his weed. And I don't think any reasonable per- 
 son should find fault with this. 
 
 We all know that at one time Catholic Christendom had be- 
 come so corrupt in its authority, in its teaching, in its prac- 
 tices, " In its head and members," that a reformation was ab- 
 solutely necessary in order to save Christendom from a com- 
 plete destruction. It came and at least a third of Christendom 
 became reformed Christians, in the course of a few years 
 amouniing to sixty millions. This branching ofT became so 
 vigorous and fruitful, that to-day it surpasses in numbers the 
 old Roman Catholicity, the latter being a little less than two 
 hundred millions, and Protestantism a little more than that 
 figure. 
 
 Protestantism has, moreover, taken the lead in education and 
 in the great movements of the world. At the outset it was 
 the principal means of some reforms in the Roman Catholi- 
 city, which insured its continuance, in the midst of many 
 changes, though professing to remain the same. In the days 
 of its power both before and after the Reformation, she was 
 a persecuting church for religious purposes. No writer of 
 note denies that, only they say : Everybody persecuted then. 
 That is true in a measure, but while Protestantism had in it- 
 self so imbibed the spirit of the Gospel from reading it habi- 
 tually that it became less and less persecuting and finally pro- 
 claimed not only tolerance but complete religious liberty — the 
 Roman Catholic Church, and I mean by that especially the 
 hierarchy, has never yet done so, by any of its authorized 
 

 
 organs. It is true that Lord Leonard Calvert proclaimed re- 
 legious liberty in founding Maryland, but surrounded as he 
 was, he could not very well do otherwise. 
 
 The church cannot repent of it because it would destroy her 
 infallibility, she has become a prisoner in the clasp of her own 
 logic. She cannot profess to change, and in many respects 
 she does not change ; the world, other religious bodies alter her 
 surroundings, change the mind and manner of life of many of 
 her adherents, she still professes to remain the same, and cer- 
 tainly keeps up her old pretensions. Religious liberty she has 
 never proclaimed, opr.dy, clearly, to the whole world. More 
 than this she never disowned or reprimanded her bold free 
 lancers who from time to time have proclaimed in her name 
 that she does not persecute now because she has not the power 
 to do it, but that whenever she regains the ascendency, inas- 
 much as she is alone in possession of absolute truth, she will 
 feel bound to enforce that truth by all means at her command. 
 Scores of writers, especially among Jesuits, have boldly taken 
 that ground. The most prominent, perhaps, among the laity 
 have been Joseph de Maistre, Louis Veuillot and Bronson. 
 Those audacious or flippant champions have never been, that 
 we know of, repudiated by the mother church who is always so 
 merciful and tender to her wayward children who in some way 
 or somewhere fight on her behalf. She always has a gracious 
 absolution in reserve tor the worst of the fighting pontifical 
 Zouaves. 
 
 She, to this day, assumes this positon in regard to her former 
 territorial, secular, temporal power. We all know how but 
 lately she was piece by piece bereft of that power, until Rome 
 itself was entered by the armies of Victor Emmanuel, and 
 he, not a Protestant prince but an adherent, a son of the Ro- 
 man Catholic Church. 
 
 The Pope remained a self-constituted prisoner in the Vati- 
 can. But the old animal instinct of the mighty bird of prey, 
 inherited from Gregory VIL, Innocent III., and Julius II. 
 remains with him; the old habit of political and ecclesiastical 
 dominion clings to him, and makes him truly a prisoner. Old 
 
as he is in years, and in supposed deep studies of religious 
 subjects, he has not yet learned the nature of the Kingdom 
 of Jesus Christ ; knows less of it than the poor pastor of any 
 one of our evangelical churches. But quite lately he received 
 a scathing rebuke and lesson on this very point from Signor 
 Crispi, the Prime Minister of the Italian Government. I 
 only quote a few words of his admirable discourse : — " They 
 forget that a temporal prince cannot be a saint, a sinless mor- 
 tal. Material weapons, violent legal measures may become 
 legitimate as a state exigency, but they trouble the soul of a 
 demi-god, take away all his prestige, stifle all sentiments of vene- 
 ration for the Vicar of Christ on earth, placed here to preach 
 the Gospel of peace and absolve the sons of Adam by prayer 
 and pardon. Religion must not be a function of state ; as a 
 temporal prince the Pope is diminished in his authority. Those 
 who ignore this eternal divine law, are audaciously opposed to 
 God — even when professing to be his ministers." 
 
 The old man of the Vatican has not abandoned this worldly 
 claim. He mourns the lossi of that power, and calls upon all 
 his adherents, all over the world to maintain and advocate that 
 claim; instils that unchristian worldly spirit to all the members 
 of the hierarchy, to the remotest priest of that organization. 
 
 Seeing this everywhere, and in this Province of Quebec, 
 more glariiij^ly than elsewhere, we feel perfectly justified in 
 breaking that power as far as we can in the minds of our 
 people by all lawful means, by the spread of sound and liberal 
 education, by publications to counteract such publications as 
 the last " Pour la Patrie," which is an absurd, coarse, vulgar, 
 ill-written book, prophesying in most glowing terms the fu- 
 true glory and power of the French-Canadian Catholics of the 
 Province of Quebec, and those of the New England States. It is 
 on the line of Father Hamon's book, but very inferior in every 
 way to the latter. It has been severely criticised by the French 
 Liberal press of the country both as to matter and form, but 
 the clergy are silent about it, because whatever influence it 
 may have it is in their favor. Other books of this nature 
 have been published in the interest of the hierarchy ad its in- 
 
8 
 
 stitutions, some of them by priests, and have also been demol- 
 ished piecemeal by the same liberal press ; so that it is evident, 
 as the case of the "Canada Revue" shows it, that there is no 
 unity of opinion, of ecclesiastical and educational matters 
 amonj:^^ the Roman Catholics of this country. 
 
 13ut there are much worse books than those published both 
 in Montreal and elsewhere a<,fainst Protestants, which Eng- 
 lish Protestants know nothing about, or if they do have some 
 vague knowledge of them, they think it is of no consequence, 
 and on this point they are greatly mistaken ; those represent 
 Protestants as direct and unmitigated instruments and servants 
 of the evil one. From the popular belief of a few years ago, 
 cultivated among the ignorant, and never counteracted by the 
 priests, that our colporteurs had cloven feet, which they had 
 sometimes to make bare to prove the idiotic calumny, to the 
 general accusations from the pulpits against Luther, Calvin 
 and the other Reformers, we have the teaching of such little 
 books as I hold here in my hand, " Mes Tentat'.ons," published 
 and sold in Montreal and scattered far and near. This is so 
 mendacious, so coarse and so vile, that I could not possibly, 
 and decently translate numerous pages of its contents concern- 
 ing the life and the practices of our great Reformers. 
 
 Who can reasonably find fault with our attempts at enlight- 
 ening our people on such grave questions, or with our endeavors 
 to dispel their prejudices, their wrong notions, to impart some 
 of the knowledge we possess ? At the sight of these a mere 
 patriot without any regard to results transcending this world 
 W'Ould feel bound to impart some of his better knowledge to 
 his neighbors. We have sometimes been told of having gone 
 about to destroy the religion of the people and of putting 
 nothing in its stead. In most cases there is nothing of that 
 sort of thing to destroy, there is no real, vital religion, but only 
 external forms, covering a completely empty sanctuary. If 
 you do not succeed in placing the Gospel there, you have built 
 nothing truly, nor have you destroyed anything worth keeping; 
 you have shown a fallacy. Could you possibly be wrong in de- 
 stroying that illusion ? If the Gospel has been accepted you 
 
9 
 
 have (lone what your ^Master did, and what his disciples did 
 after him. They began their work among a people who pro- 
 fessed to have the true religion from God himself. And they 
 were religious in a certain way, but chiefly externally, putting 
 the accent on the letter and the form, while Christ wanted them 
 to cultivate the spirit of religion. And Jesus and his dis- 
 ciples evangelized them. But in doing so they disturbed 
 them, and Christ acknowledges it : "I have come to send not 
 peace, but the sword, to set a man at variance in his family." 
 The apostles were qualified in Phillippi as "men who troubled 
 the city exceedingly." Acts xvi. We could not possibly be 
 found guilty of following such worthy exemplars. If after 
 troubling you bring peace, heavenly peace in the soul, you 
 have done like your Master. It may not be considered good 
 form by many worldly people who go to church, and whose 
 whole religion ends there. 
 
 But of what is really composed the unity of the Roman Ca- 
 tholic Church we are so accused of disturbing ? Is it a great 
 reunion of souls in the love and service of the Lord ? Are 
 those millions of adherents in peace between themselves ? We 
 all know they are not. They are all divided in political par- 
 ties, on questions of education; some are more than ever bent 
 upon keeping the people superstitious, of stultifying the masses 
 with pilgrimages to shrines and relics, on cultivating monastic 
 piety, while others among the laity work hard to emancipate 
 them from that mediaeval religion, and get rid of the system 
 of education which is a barrier to real culture. 
 
 On our part we are laboring to force more light and more 
 air into that mass. You find fault for our ventilating it ! 
 You say it is disintegrating That is precisely what we mean 
 to do. We want to spiritualize that mass with the knowledge 
 of the Gospel, we mean to break the spell which binds together 
 what ought to be separated ; to malce it for a time, if need be, 
 as fragmentary as our Protestantism, as I am not afraid of the 
 fragments being lost in space as long as we keep them in sight 
 of our eternal centre, our Sun of Righteousness, Jesus Christ. 
 Our Protestantism is infinitely more united in its glorious liv- 
 
10 
 
 ing variety than that strange medley called Catholicism. It 
 has given a remarkable proof of this in the great sittings of the 
 Evangelical Alliance a few years ago and it is at least a dim 
 prophecy of the invent future union of kiudiecl souls. For one, 
 I am in no hurry to foster that untruthful, fictitious, childish 
 unity of elements that can never assimilate, and can never form 
 the union for which Christ prayed He prayed that his dis- 
 ciples should be united. But he did not pray that worldly 
 men and women, who happen to go to church, between their 
 festivities and sinful lives should become a part of his church, 
 before they are really of the family of God. One day as he 
 was speaking to the people, he was disturbed by someone say- 
 ing to him, " Thy mother and thy brethren are standing with- 
 out desiring to speak to thee." " Who is my mother and who 
 are my brethren ? Whosoever shall do the will of my father 
 who is in heaven, the same is my brother, sister and mother." 
 I-et us not forget the portentous saying. Because it means 
 that wherever a human being is in communion with God, is 
 doing his will, whether in church membership or not, out or in 
 the synagogue, temple or church, he belongs to God's immor- 
 tal family, and will be owned as such by the elder Brother. 
 
 Much as I desire a closer union of all real Christians, in view 
 of manifesting the love of God in the world, and Christ's de- 
 votedness to the human family, the enlightenment and comfort 
 of his holy spirit to afflicted souls, I have no sympathy for the 
 weakly, superficial hankering after an external unity which 
 would offset itself as a faint resemblance of the Roman Catho- 
 lic conglomeration of ignorant, superstitious, infidel, immoral 
 adherents with a few devout members among them. Nothing 
 could be gained by such a reunion but the confirmation of an 
 unchristian fallacy. It is all proper to pray " From all heresy 
 and schism. Good Lord, deliver us," but if that prayer means 
 " Lord forbid that our church organization should ever be dis- 
 turbed, and broken up by higher and more spiritual truth and 
 life than that we have," this prayer will not be answered on 
 high, such dead prison moulds have often been broken up by 
 the Spirit of God. There is something better than the uniformity 
 
11 
 
 of doctrine, of form of worship and of church organization^ 
 there is h'fe, spiritual h"fe, everj'thing should be s.icrificed to se- 
 cure it. There is something to be feared more than division, 
 trouble and separation, and that is hypocrisy and sham in re- 
 ligion, against which Christ spoke so severely. Anything in 
 religion is better than a mask, than saying Lord, Lord and all 
 the time building for the soul's great future on unsafe founda- 
 tions. Pascal and Fenclon may liave remained in tiie so- 
 called Catholic Church, by the side of Escobar the Jesuit casu- 
 ist, and the atrocious persecutor of the Huguenots, Letellier, 
 but the author of the Provincial Letters and the friend of the 
 Portroyalists as well as the author of the Spiritual Letters and 
 friend of the mystic Mad. Guyon did not belong to the same 
 spiritual church. John Henry Newman may have become a 
 sincere Romanist, and a poor acting Cardinal, but he never 
 was a joyful believer ; harassed with doubts, scarcely honest in 
 his inconsistencies, he took refuge in the arms of the Roman 
 Church, failing to find the impossible church of his imaginings, 
 still he never could be of the same church as the infamous Car- 
 dinal Dubois, of the time of the Regency in France. On the 
 other side of the great shadow they cannot have awaked in 
 the same " Kindly Light," in the same Paradise. 
 
 All our evangelical labors, all our prejching, all formation 
 of churches, and theological schools are only considered by us 
 as means to prepare individual souls for immortality with 
 Christ in the heavenly mansions where the holy unity will be 
 reached in its perfection. Our primary and most important 
 preoccupation in this life is the salvation of individual souls ; the 
 cradle where they are born spiritually, and the religious home 
 where they are reared and educated, though not quite indif- 
 ferent, is not of paramount importance. Life, spiritual life, is 
 the all important thing, as Christ hath taught. Indeed, one 
 may have gained the whole world in forming a single church 
 and lose his own soul in doing it. 
 
 In spite of all its pretensions we look upon the Roman Ca- 
 tholic hierarchy as one of the worst of all religious organiza- 
 tions for the culture of spiritual life among its members and in 
 
\-2 
 
 the human family at large. It is toC' much mixed up in world- 
 ly affairs, and in political matters, to cultivate a purely spiritual 
 religion. Partly from her long inheritance, and partly from 
 the nature of her principles, she remains a worldly society with 
 worldly ways of thought and actions. She is grasping as to pro- 
 perty and wealth, though under the fallacious cover of pro- 
 fessedly poor conventual and monastic institutions, charitable 
 instit'.itionsi of all kirds. She is casuistic, that is all impreg- 
 nated with the spirit of Jesuitism, and unscrupulous as to the 
 means provided the end in view is reached. 
 
 You are well aware how very lenient and charitable Unita- 
 rians have always been towards Catholicism. Intellectually 
 cultivated as they are generally, it has always been a surprise 
 to me that they seemed to know so little of the real nature of 
 that religion among the masses. It is probably owing to the 
 fact that they got their knowledge of it from books of the best 
 authors who represented their religion under its most reason- 
 able aspects. 
 
 Quite recently a Unitarian minister, the Rev, Brook Here- 
 ford, gave a series of lectures called " Dudlein Lectures," at 
 Harvard College, on "Roman Catholicism in the United 
 States." I wish I had space to make quotations from those 
 remarkable utterances. Where the reality of Catholicism is 
 finally grasped and shown forth. It shows the want of truth- 
 fulness in the system, its Jesuitic casuitics, its falsification of 
 historical facts even in books studied as manuals in the public 
 schools — and the claim of that Church not only as to general 
 advice,, but to absolute direction of the actions of Catholic 
 citizens. The author says that there would be danger for the 
 authority and safety of American institutions if all the laity, of 
 the Catholic Church were swayed by her clerical leaders. It is 
 not so there, nor can it ever be with the education of the 
 masses. 
 
 A quotation from James Freeman Clark : 
 
 "All the evils of the Roman Catholic Church have come 
 from this source (the organization of the church being set 
 above the religion of the church.) It has made conformity to 
 
its ceremonies, submission to its authority, the essential thing. 
 Hence its persecutions, its inquisitions, its resisting truth, its 
 arrogant claims, its desire for wealth, its lust of power, its in- 
 satiate ambition." 
 
 But here in the Province of Quebec where they influence 
 the great majority our position is difficult, our efforts as yet 
 meet with but apparently small results. Not very large to be 
 sure, but nevertheless real, substantial and increasingly full of 
 promise. We do not deny that some good is done by de- 
 voted vSisters in hospitals and when needed heroically in times 
 of war and other calamity, that some relief is given to poor 
 humanity by the Little Sisters of the Poor ; but we deny most 
 emphatically that their system is the best. The best system is 
 that which prevents most cfiectively ignorance, povert\', vice 
 and crime. Those colossal conventual institutions, and it is 
 precisely here that Romanj Catholicism has proved inefficient, 
 increase the poverty they profess to cure, become surreptitious- 
 ly rich themselves in some way. When they educate they in- 
 culcate a superficial education which prevents real culture of 
 the mind; they are an incubus in every country in whicli they 
 thrive. 
 
 If the churches of the Reformation, in Germany, Holland, 
 Switzerland, England and America, with all their general su- 
 perior education, their liberty of thought, an open Bible, intel- 
 lectual and moral culture, their hundreds of theologi- 
 cal schools, the hundred thousands of educated, evan- 
 gelical ministers and doctors of theology, and all sorts 
 of appliances, such as Sunday-schools, religious libraries, 
 they have not as yet succeeded in reaching the masses, 
 more than they have done; if they have as yet been unable to 
 form completely pure memberships, entirely distinct from the 
 world ; how, then, can you expect to find a pure Christianity 
 ni a churcii where in doctrines and practices there are so many 
 compromises with poor weak and imperfect human nature as 
 in this church ? My old distinguished professor, Edmond 
 Scherer, has written on this point these words among many 
 others of a similar import : '' Protestantism is a protestation 
 
14 
 
 against the 'accommodenients' by which the world has Httle by 
 link eluded the exigencies of the Gospel. The Reformer.-; 
 made strenuous efforts to bring Christianity back to the moral 
 heroisir. of the Gospel. Catholicism is more accommodating 
 and yields more easily to inconsistencies, with her Lent comes 
 after Carnival, rites supply failures in conduct, absolution cov- 
 ers weaknesses." 
 
 Such loopholes and means of escape from the exigencies of 
 the moral law and the spiritual standards of the Go [)el have 
 been laid bare by a Catholic saint like Blaise Pascal, and by a 
 free thinker and scientist like Paul Bert. The doctrine of the 
 Indulgences, the ordeal of the confessional, the devotion to the 
 A'irgin Marj^ the rush to shrines and relics to be made whole 
 morally and physically, reveal a mental malady so deeply seat- 
 ed that it will take ages to cure it, because childish minds will 
 have first to be cured of the almost ineradicable belief in magical 
 miraculous effect by the touch of outward venerated objects. 
 
 And there are men, good men too, among us. Christian men 
 perhaps, who find fault with us for attempting to break down 
 tliat system of deterioration. They must allow us to tell them 
 that there are many educated men among us also, still nominal- 
 ly Roman Catholics, men mostly educated in Roman Catholic 
 colleges or seminaries, who by the teaching of the priests and 
 the exliibitions of those absurd and debasing practices have 
 become not only free thinkers, but agnostics of the worst kind, 
 and enemies of all revealed religion. Some with Voltarian 
 hypocrisy learned in so called religious schools, work by word 
 and pen to undermine the religious beliefs of their youth ; they 
 have not the convictions to enable them to do it openly. Others 
 with bold utterances and rough hands are demolishing the 
 whole fabric, the false covering, showing that there is nothing 
 under it, and they have nothing to put in the empty place. 
 In this great crisis, having in our hands the writings of the 
 Apostolic Church, the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the words of 
 eternal life; and in our souls, we say it humbly, the witness 
 of his gracious spirit, we are not going to remain silent, and if 
 the empty sanctuary is not filled with the knowledge, and the 
 
in 
 
 sense of the presence of the Father God " In whom we Uve and 
 move and have our being," we mean that it shall not be our 
 fault. 
 
 If in bearing our testimony we meet with opposition, if we 
 are despised and ostracised, and insulted, if in this warfare 
 swords are unsheathed, it will not be by our hands, we bear 
 only the sword of the spirit, "which is "the word of God,' as 
 St. Paul says. If we suflfer we are sharing the fate of all re- 
 formers. 
 
 We have sometimes been told, "You are preaching in the 
 wilderness." The comparison is not quite to the point. We 
 are working on a moral and religious soil that has been badly 
 tilled for centuries. It has been superficially ploughed, sowed 
 over and overaj^ain with the same seed ; the crop diminishing 
 from year to year, until it is overrun with weeds, and in some 
 places quite bare and sterile. Where we have I >va > allowed to 
 work it, we have ploughed deeper and deeper every season, 
 we have drained and enriched the soil, we have thrown in the 
 good seed of Gospel truth ; and here and there we have patches, 
 acres, fields of sturdy growth and fragrant spots. Little by 
 little we extend the area of our field and we labour to make it 
 as much as we can as the garden of the Lord Would you, for 
 the sake of uniformity, prefer to see this whole land a vast 
 surface of the same stinted growth, and a general moral and 
 spiritual dearth, as Spain and Arabia are ? 
 
 We have also preached, taught and laboured in barren and 
 desolate places, like the desert; but here and there we have 
 found a neglected old well; we have cleaned it and deepened 
 it. Elsewhere we have bored an artesian we;l, and the gush- 
 ing waters from the bosom of the earth have allured the clouds 
 of heaven to hover over them ; we have formed an oasis there, 
 and truly the desert, in the language of the prophet of old, 
 "has rejoiced and blossomed like the rose." 
 
 : ■ - • . • . ' . ' .• . . . 
 
 ' *i. ! :. » •• 
 
 
 • • t