more she is persecuted the more will she become strengthened. "Sanguis martyrum semen Christianorum"-"The blood of martyrs is the seed of the Church," and this truth has become an acknowledged fact in history.

Many persons are fully persuaded that we are approaching a condition of things in religion very much akin to that of the fourth century, but the greater the trials and difficulties of the Church the more certain are we of her eventual triumph.

Christ's promise cannot fail, "Lo, I am with you always, even unto the consummation of time;" and Catholics are perfectly content to endure whatever sufferings and persecution their Lord thinks it necessary for the Church to undergo, in order that " she may become bright and clean, without spot or blemish or any such thing." The adversaries of the Church imagine, in their ignorance and hatred, that since she does not admit a faith that is purely individual and subjective, she must finally be destroyed; they imagine that, like a human institution, as soon as she is deprived of her political prerogatives and earthly support, and left without temporal means of defence against the attacks of unbelievers, she must succumb.

They are already beginning to see they were mistaken. The Church has shone with a new lustre precisely in those countries of England, America, Germany, and Switzerland where everything that human means could devise had been put in force against her. They are themselves alarmed at the progress she has made.

The Catholics in the beginning of the present century stood as one to every two hundred of the whole population of the American Republic. The ratio of Catholics now is one to six or seven of the inhabitants; and before the end of this century the assertion has frequently been made, that they will outnumber all other believers in Christianity throughout the States. Such an assertion is no fanciful statement, but one based on a careful study of statistics.

The spirit, the tendencies, and the form of political government inherited by the people of the United States are strongly Saxon, yet there are no better citizens and no more intelligent and devoted subjects in the Republic than the seven millions of Catholics. Catholicism is the only persistently progressive religious element in the States.

That the Catholic Church flourishes wherever there is honest freedom, and wherever human nature has its

full share of liberty, is a fact that must be recognized by those who have observed the course of events in England and the United States of America during this century.

The Greek idea that the State was the emanation of whatever exists in the nation of wisdom, light, and virtue, and consequently a civilizing agent, a modern instrument of progress, is the idea which modern liberals declare produced the immortal grandeur of Athens and the extraordinary fortune of Prussia. God's will, according to the Apostle St. Peter,1

is :is:

"Be ye subject therefore to every human creature for God's sake, whether it be to the king as excelling; or to governors as sent by him for the punishment of evil-doers and the praise of them that do well, for so is the will of God that by doing well you may put to silence the ignorance of foolish men: as free and not as making liberty a cloak for malice, but as the servants of God. Honour all men. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honour the king."

Historical Protestantism has shown itself incapable of carrying out the Divine maxims, and has been incapable of maintaining civil liberty. Without the aid of the secular arm it cannot even maintain itself as a general form of worship. Anti-Catholic or non-Catholic

1

Ist Epistle of St. Peter, chap. ii., verses 13 to 17.

civil liberty, such as the modern continental school of liberals are endeavouring to organize in the present day, will be as impotent as that which has gone before to stem the progress of the Universal Church.

M

CONCLUSION.

E read in the old missals of the Paris
Liturgy, in the Introit of the Mass for

Christmas Eve, the following passage:

"Yet a little while and I shall shake the heavens, and the earth, and the sea, and the whole universe; I shall shake all the nations, and the Desired of all nations shall appear. Listen to this, ye peoples! Be attentive, O ye inhabitants of the earth."

The Jewish doctors, the learned and literary people of the time of Herod, were well acquainted with these words of Scripture, but they were indifferent to the great fact which took place in Bethlehem of Judæa.

The great men of the empire, with Cæsar at their head, had been warned by the Sibyl, but in vain. A few herdsmen of Judæa, a few fishermen of Galilee were more clear-sighted.