Зображення сторінки
PDF
ePub

in developing congregational singing, he employs also a quartet and a chorus choir, — it may be stated that the present result was gained by the preparation by the pastor and organist of a hymn-book for the use of the congregation. This may not be necessary in other churches, but the principle remains that if a church is to develop the function of worship through music, it must educate itself in some way to act intelligently and with enthusiasm.

We have written these words in our zeal for the local church. If the local church is the source and unit of power, it can grow and do its work only as it enlarges and multiplies its functions. It cannot afford, in justice to the system which it represents, to evade its responsibilities, or to take refuge from them in criticism or complaint. We advocate no mere individualism, but we do plead for as much courage and originality in the administration of the local church as may enable it to take advantage of its opportunity, and to make use of its latent or undeveloped

powers.

THE POPE'S ENCYCLICAL.

JUST the number of years requisite, under our laws, for an infant boy to become a voter have passed since Pope Pius IX. undertook to define the relations of the Roman Church to civil governments and modern civilization. Many things have happened since the publication of the Syllabus, for instance, the Vatican Council, the extinction of the Pope's temporal sovereignty, the defeat and humiliation of a great Roman Catholic Power, the establishment of the German Empire, and of the unity of Italy. Pius the Ninth, too, has gone, and another reigns in his stead. After patient waiting for a fitting opportunity Pope Leo XIII. speaks to some of the same questions reviewed by his predecessor. The document is too long for us to print in full, but we give a careful abstract, with a few comments:

Notwithstanding the fact that the Church, in addition to caring for the souls of men, is able to secure greater temporal advantages for them than could be obtained without her aid, many, both in earlier and later days, have claimed that it is wise to divorce civil government from the Church. But it is clear that no better way of ruling a state has yet been found than that taught by the gospel. Man exists in society, for whose preservation authority is indispensable, and both these are derived from God. He is our Father, and those who rule should reflect his fatherly goodness and justice. His name should be adored, and religion, by which man is united to God, should be sacredly preserved. The true religion is that which Christ has instituted and intrusted to his Church. Its ends are higher than those of civil society, and it is itself "a society perfect in its kind and in its rights." It ought to be man's guide to heaven, and in its own sphere should be supreme. The apostles themselves said, "We ought to obey God rather than men."

God then has given the race in charge to two powers, the ecclesiastical and the civil. Each has its own limits, and within these is superior to the other. Of necessity there must be an orderly connection between the two, and its

nature must be determined by the nature of the powers and their relative ends. To the Church belongs the care of man's spiritual welfare, to the state jurisdiction over political affairs. When civil governors and the Roman Pontiff agree to act in harmony the results are most happy. The dignity of rulers is enhanced, private virtues are fostered, and the community flourishes.

There was once a time when the state gladly recognized the authority of the gospel, and flourished under its sway. The spread of a Christian civilization over Europe, with its rich train of blessings, is largely due to religion. But "from that dreadful and deplorable zeal for revolution, which was aroused in the sixteenth century," sprang a false philosophy which spread among all classes, and has been fruitful of evils. Chief among its disturbing principles is that which asserts that all men are equal in their actions as in their birth, and independent of each other's authority; that every one is free to act and think as he pleases; that the people are the source of all power, and the state is under no responsibility to God. Hence it is claimed that all religions have equal rights so long as the social order suffers no harm, and the Catholic religion, which Christ commands to teach all nations, is debarred from its rightful work.

Where these principles prevail the civil rulers set aside the most sacred laws of the Church, claiming authority over marriage and the property of the clergy. Even where her claims are respected, it is only as a concession by the civil rulers, and in those countries where the Church retains her own rights it is claimed that the two powers must be kept separate in order that the Church may be overruled, and when she protests, and contests arise, the weaker power must commonly yield. The present conduct of public affairs aims greatly to restrict the Catholic Church. This nature teaches to be wrong. The theory which, forgetting God, places all rule in the people tends to produce sedition and constant unrest. All forms of religion are not equal before God, and a free speech and free press which disseminate thoughts contrary to virtue and truth are evil and wrong. It is a great and pernicious error to exclude the Church from education, from the laws, and from society.

Now the Romish Church clearly teaches that the source of power is from God, that sedition is irrational, that it is a crime for states to treat in the same way different religions, and that free thought and free speech are not natural rights. She likewise maintains her own right to independence as a perfect society, unamenable to the state. But, in matters of common concern, it is most desirable and proper that harmony should be preserved between the two powers. Therefore, the Church judges that no form of government is condemned so long as it conserves the state and is not repugnant to Catholic doctrine. It is also thought wise that, in certain circumstances, the people should have a share in the government. And while it is not lawful that other kinds of worship should have the same rights as the true religion, the Church will not condemn those rulers who, for wise reasons, tolerate other forms. "Indeed, the Church is wont diligently to take heed that no one be compelled against his will to embrace the Catholic faith."

On the other hand, the Church condemns that license which lifts itself against lawful government, and encourages true liberty, which guards the best interests of the people.

Therefore, men speak calumniously when they say that the Church is opposed to modern political systems, and rejects the best thoughts of the age. What is wrong she reproves, but fresh discoveries of truth are acknowledged as gifts from God; and since the doctrines divinely intrusted to her can never

be impaired, and all fresh truth can but add to the glory of God, investigation of nature, as well as of all other departments of knowledge, is gladly encouraged. The cultivation of talent, the prosecution of the arts, the enrichment of life, are fostered, and all are directed toward the increase of virtue and the promotion of man's highest good.

Notwithstanding some states, in these days, appear to wish to depart from Christian knowledge, the Holy Church, believing "that the truth shall make you free," gives freely to the nations those things which are true. Catholic men, at "so critical a juncture of .events," will easily see what are their duties in matters of opinion as well as action, and whatsoever the Roman pontiffs have handed down should be firmly held, and, when necessary, openly declared.

The

Now, especially concerning these things which are called "recently acquired liberties," each one must hold what the Apostolic See holds. In private affairs the demands of Christian virtue must be obeyed, even if difficult. Church should be loved, obeyed, and honored, and her dominion extended, and the public welfare demands that Christian men should give heed to their duties as citizens, particularly so far as regards the instruction of youth in religion and true morality. In general, Catholics ought to interest themselves in every branch of public administration, although in particular cases circumstances may oblige them to hold themselves aloof. Where it is proper for them to act it is wrong to be idle, lest those who are badly disposed toward the Church should become the most powerful, and Christians should aim to infuse into all the veins of the commonwealth the virtue of the Catholic religion. It is not possible to lay down uniform rules for the furtherance of this end, but a "concord of wills should be preserved" and the bishops obeyed.

In the investigation of matters of opinion suspicion and faultfinding must be shunned, and all must understand that the Catholic profession is inconsistent with naturalism or rationalism. But there may be liberty of difference as to political matters if the Catholic faith be not wronged. Let all who write for the press keep these precepts in mind, avoiding conflicts, and seeking to preserve religion and the state, which are seriously endangered by false doctrines and evil passions.

This letter shows that the present Pope realizes that civil society is not likely to be stayed in its present gigantic development of good and evil by the voice from the Tiber. The note of power has clearly departed from the utterances of Rome. The desperate determinateness with which the theory of her indispensableness to the world is maintained, like the desperate determinateness with which certain parallel theories on the Protestant side are maintained, only shows that the time has gone by when these theories were held without straining, because the truth in them was as yet satisfied with its embodiment. The petulant scoldings of Pius and the temperate expostulations of Leo equally testify to a sense of impotency in the application of that great mediaeval engine which has been under their chief charge. It cannot be otherwise in a world in which a maxim or a dogma is no longer believed merely because it has been believed, but is credited only because it can approve itself as true; the direct antithesis to the principle of Rome.

But though the time of Rome's easy strength has departed, no one can

be quite sure what treasures of convulsive strength may yet lurk within this gigantic and firm-knit organism. While mere bigotry raves incoherently about the papacy, the easy good nature of semi-rationalism, not knowing how to gauge real spiritual energies, neither respects it nor fears it sufficiently. But that is a profoundly wise warning: "The dying struggles of Rome may be terrible." And if we wait for the embodied papacy, in some great Pope, to pronounce upon itself as an outworn thing the sentence “ Judico me cremari," we shall probably wait to the end. Providence may have even this miracle in store for the world, but we are hardly to ask for it. Yet it is of vast moment to us all whether the still mighty system is guided by zealot recklessness or by moral sanity. And it is the spirit of moral sanity which breathes in every line of this Encyclical. It is distinctively and firmly Roman Catholic. It appears to imply, though the moderate temper of Leo XIII. does not permit it to express, the theory of Boniface VIII. as to the two swords. The Christian citizen, over against the civil power, is in all matters of conscience to be guided by the voice of the Church, that is, of the priesthood, and it is the priesthood, which, like the federal judiciary over against the states, can alone determine in the last instance how far its supreme rights extend. This would seem to bring even important questions of civil policy under the control of the dogmatic conscience, and to convert the precept nè elettori, nè eletti, while the Pope wills, into what might be called a temporary article of faith.

But plainly the Pope does not so will. It would be hard to say which party Leo rebukes more decidedly, the Atheists or the Old Zealots. It is plain that he regards the latter as dangerous helpers of the former. He does not rise to the height of regarding the invincible consent of individual Christian conviction, Christ in each of his people, and therefore Christ in the whole of his people, as better than all formal decisions of a dictator imposed upon a passive multitude; not greatly differing in this from the lovers of ecclesiastical machinery generally. Some natural tears he sheds, but wipes them soon, over the loss of the Ecclesiastical States. But the main current of thought in the Encyclical sets strongly towards the reinforcement of universal Christianity against the imminent danger of a nerveless surrender to the rising atheistic Antichrist, who, even in our country, and much more in Europe, is beginning to signify that he holds all rights of the individual conscience, of individual life, of family life, of free religious activity, the rights of parents in the training of their children, of husbands for the protection of their wives, as mere concessions of his arbitrary pleasure, subject at any time to the rude intrusions of his public policy. Things are said and done, and that often with the loud applause of Christian men and teachers, the remote, but wholly conceivable, goal of which might well be the dedication of our sons to Moloch, and of our daughters to Mylitta. Against this abomination that maketh desolate, striving to set itself up in the holiest places of Christian society, our Roman Catholic brethren, with their Chief Pontiff at their

head, are manfully lifting up their voice, and for this we thank God and them, and take courage. And for them, we can wish nothing better than to learn, in the energy of their contest with Atheism, that it is far worse to do these things for Christ than to suffer them from Antichrist.

Leo XIII. may not be a Clement XIV. He did not, in the Conclave, like Clement, meet his election with the words, "Let the peoples go free." But we do not know that since Clement XIV. anything so well worthy of him has proceeded from the Roman chair. And remembering Clement's mysterious end, we hope that the report which was once spread in Rome, that the present Pope had been poisoned, may remain, as Leo himself has severely said, only a pio desiderio. There is an acme of Ultramontanism which is more hideous than anything else on the universal earth. But of this it is plain that the author of this Encyclical chooses rather to be the victim than the organ. There is little evidence in his pontificate of his being possessed by the pure energy of exalted faith. But we are thankful, even, for the poise of statesmanlike Italian sagacity, acting on and through great talents and an eminently enlightened mind. May God grant that the worst he may have to fear from the idolaters of his hysterical predecessor may be the demented ravings of the late Bishop of Tournay. It is no wonder, however, that the fear of Gioacchino Pecci's succession, in spite of all his care to immure him for thirty years in his mountain diocese, was the bête noire of Pius IX.

At the beginning of Leo's reign the "Congregationalist," with true Christian boldness, exhorted all Protestants to pray for him. If this admirable exhortation on behalf of this great bishop has been neglected hitherto, it may well be renewed. And we could wish that hereafter he would see to it that his Encyclicals should reach such points within the Protestant world as will insure them all due respect, in their own magnificent Latin, of which it is hardly an extravagance to say that it would not have done discredit to Cicero himself.

CRITICISM AND COMMENT.

NEW HAVEN, CONN., December 11, 1885.

To the Editors of THE ANDOVER REVIEW.

[ocr errors]

GENTLEMEN, Your last article on "Progressive Orthodoxy" closes with a sentence which seems to invite replies. Permit me, therefore, to offer one or two criticisms of your views.

Can the three postulates, "universal sinfulness, universal atonement, and the indispensableness of faith in Christ," be successfully maintained? How about those who have died in infancy, idiocy, congenital insanity, etc., have these sinned? That is pretty old-school theology. Is not knowledge of law and duty and consciousness of willful transgression essential to sin, at least to any such sin as involves guilt and needs atonement? If there has been no voluntary choice of evil, wherein lies

« НазадПродовжити »