mathematicians, and a higher average amount of acquired. knowledge. It is very much owing to the zeal and assiduity of the priesthood in diffusing instruction in the useful branches of knowledge, that the revival and spread of Catholicism have been so considerable among the people of the Continent, who were left by the Revolution, and the warfare attending it, in that state that if the Catholic religion had not connected itself with something visibly useful, with material interests, they would have had nothing to do with it. The Catholic clergy adroitly seized on education—not as most of us suppose in Protestant countries, to keep the people in darkness and ignorance, and to inculcate error and superstition— but to be at the head of the great social influence of useful knowledge, and with the conviction that this knowledge (reading, writing, arithmetic, and all such acquirements) is no more thinking, or an education leading to thinking, and to shaking off the trammels of Popish superstition than playing the fiddle, or painting, or any other acquirement to which mind is applied." With reference to the stupid assertion that the Catholic clergy leave the people in ignorance, he writes as follows: "This opinion of Protestants is more orthodox than charitable or correct. The Popish clergy have in reality less to lose by the progress of education than our own Scotch ministers, because their pastoral influence and their Church services being founded on ceremonial ordinances, come into no competition or comparison whatsoever in the public mind with anything similar that literature or education produces; and are not connected with the imperfect mode of conveying instruction which, as education advances, becomes obsolete, and falls into disuse, and almost into contempt, although essential in our Scotch Church. In Catholic Germany, in France, Italy, and even Spain, the education of the common people in reading, writing, arithmetic, music, manners, and morals is at least as generally diffused and as faithfully promoted by the clerical body as in Scotland. It is by their own advance, and not by keeping back the advance of the people, that the Popish priesthood of the present day seek to keep ahead of the intellectual progress of the community in Catholic lands; and they might, perhaps, retort on the Protestant clergy, and ask if they, too, are in their countries at the head of the intellectual movement of the age? Education is in reality not only not repressed, but is encouraged by the Popish Church, and is a mighty instrument in its hands, and ably used. In every street in Rome, for instance, there are, at short distances, public primary schools for the education of the children of the lower and middle classes in the neighbourhood. Rome, with a population of 158,678 souls, has 372 public primary schools, with 482 teachers, and 14,099 children attending them. Has Edinburgh so many public schools for the instruction of those classes? I doubt it. Berlin, with a population about double that of Rome, has only 264 schools. Rome has also her university, with an average attendance of 660 students; and the Papal States, with a population of two and a half millions, contain seven universities. Prussia, with a population of fourteen millions, has but seven. These are amusing statistical facts, and instructive as well as amusing, when we remember the boasting carried on about the Prussian educational system for the people, and the establishment of governmental schools, and enforcing by police regulations the school attendance of the children of the lower classes. The statistical fact that Rome has above a hundred schools more than Berlin, for a population little more than half of that of Berlin, puts to flight a world of humbug about systems of national education carried on by governments, and their moral effects on society. Is it asked what is taught to the people of Rome by all these schools? Precisely what is taught at Berlin-reading, writing, arithmetic, geography, history, languages, religious doctrine of some sort, and, above all, the habit of passive submission in the one city to the clerical, in the other to the government authorities. The Continental people had a religion to choose at the beginning of this century. How have the two Churches of Europe availed themselves of this peculiar state of the European mind? The Protestant Church is shaken to the foundation in her ancient seats in Germany and Switzerland; and as a body politic has lost, instead of gaining influence. The Roman Catholic Church has held the bridle, has entered more fully into the spirit of the age, and has exerted its elasticity to cover with the mantle of Catholicism, opinions wide enough to have formed irreconcilable schisms and sects in former ages. The Catholic religion adapts itself to every degree of intelligence, and to every class of intellect. I strolled one Sunday evening in Prussia into the Roman Catholic church at Bonn. The priest was catechizing, examining, and instructing the children of the parish, in the same way, and upon the same plan, and with the same care to awaken the intellectual powers of each child by appropriate questions and explanations, as in our well-conducted Sunday schools. And what of all subjects was the subject this Catholic priest was explaining and inculcating to Catholic children, and by his familiar questions, and their answers, bringing most admirably home to their intelligence ?--the total uselessness and inefficacy of mere forms of prayer, if not understood and accompanied by mental occupation with the subject, and the preference of silent mental prayer to all forms; and this most beautifully brought out to suit the intelligence of the children." The assertion that progress and Protestantism go hand in hand is as false as the assumption that doctrinal purity was begotten by the apostacy of Luther. Evidence of the kind we have quoted, given by our. opponents, ought to open the eyes of those most blinded by prejudice to the fact that the Catholic Church not only loves but encourages art and science. The following are the words of the present Pontiff, Leo XIII., on this subject : .... .... "How grand and full of majesty does man appear when he arrests the thunderbolt, . . . . summons the electric flash, . . . . how powerful when he takes possession of the force of steam. .... Is there not in man when he does these things some spark of creative power? .... The Church views these things with joy."1 The Catholic Church respects science because it comes from God. "Catholicism is the greatest and the holiest school of respect that the world has ever possessed." Such are the words of M. Guizot,2 and they are 1 See Lenten Pastoral for 1877, by Cardinai Pecci, now Pope Leo XIII., entitled "The Church and Civilization." Published in English by McGlashan and Gill, 50, Upper Sackville Street, Dublin. 2 See "Méditations et Études morales,” by M. Guizot. |
