INTRODUCTION.

"The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom;" the fear of Rome is the beginning of folly. The most inexplicable fact connected with our American life is the indescribable fear which permeates the community concerning Romanism. It infects the air. It pervades society. It creeps into churches and shuts the doors against the uncovering of the errors of Romanism and delivering the bondmen from the chains of its galling despotism. It holds the ruler or millions in its thrall, and awes the humblest citizen. It lays its embargo on free thought. It dominates the press. It makes many of our noble ministers dumb in the pulpit. It excludes from the platforms of political parties all utterances that would warn the people of their peril or outline the path of safety, and fills the minds of the million with apprehension and alarm. East of the Mississippi, there are here and there newspapers not afraid of Rome, but west of it there is hardly one that dares publish a report prejudicial to Rome.

The causes of this fear are apparent, and deserve to be enumerated and explained.

I. Men fear Romanism because, it being the incarnation or error, its votaries are without a conscience and without honor. Kindness wins no recognition. Relationship proves no defense against the devilish hate.

2. Romanists are ruled by a power utterly indifferent to public opinion.

Rome tramples on decency and virtue. Her priests can drink to drunkenness, in conversation they can be foul-mouthed, in private they can be abusers of themselves, they can outrage virtue and bring scandal on homes, separate husbands from wives, and use language with young and inexperienced girls which would not be tolerated in the professedly good and which could only characterize the infamously abandoned and the utterly vile; and yet society

tolerates all this, and when the priests are berated and denounced for it they simply laugh at the indignation of the community, and push on as if they were masters of the situation. They pass from the brothel to the altar and celebrate the mass, and from a state of utter inebriety to perform the most solemn sacraments; and all this is borne with because they are Romanists. Have the people forgotten that the standard of morality in every community finds its rule of measurement in what it tolerates? In this fight with Rome, the greatest possible victory will be achieved when the American people shall demand that the priest who ministers to a Romish parish shall in conduct be as clean as the minister who occupies a pulpit in the evangelical world. It is not an answer to say that there are bad ministers as there are bad priests. True, but where

is there a bad minister upheld by a church or a denomination? He cannot be pointed out; and yet unnumbered priests bring disgrace upon the community, and are sustained by the church and kept in their places by the powers above them. To all this priests assent, and jeer at those who demand that in life and practice they conform to the teachings of the New Testament. It is yet to be ascertained whether auricular confession, the sea of infamy and pollution in which priests swim and revel, shall not be broken up by legislation, and whether the children now taken out of the public school and shut up in the parochial school shall not be compelled by law to attend the public school, that the state may live even if Romanism shall die.

3. Romanists are a unit in action, no matter about conviction or individual choice.

Seven millions of people are compelled to vote as the cardinal, archbishops, bishops and priests may command. Parents are compelled to take their children out of the public school or have the sacraments withheld. Shall this be tolerated, or shall a law be passed and be enforced making it a criminal offense for any one to tamper with the right of the people to have their children educated in the schools provided for them by the state? These questions enter into the fight with Rome. Roman Catholics must see that they cannot afford to have their children fall behind in the race, as they surely will if educated in a way that shall make them inferior in ability to others. In time there must be a revolt, and then the people must

stand by them. Let Protestant children befriend Roman Catholic children, shut out from the enjoyments and advantages afforded to them. Let Protestant men and women talk freely with Roman Catholics in regard to the peril that threatens their youth. Let the pulpit speak, and the press illustrate the tendency and trend, and all will be well. Rome cannot successfully resist the concentrated force of public opinion, but must yield or depart. The time is coming when the people will demand that the clerical orders of the Roman Catholic church march with Protestants, beneath the stars and stripes, in support of American institutions, or be treated as traitors and as enemies.

As Abraham Lincoln said:

"Sooner or later, the light of common sense will make it clear to every one that no liberty of conscience can be granted to men who are sworn to obey a pope who pretends to have the right to put to death those who differ from him in religion." "Sooner or later, the people will be forced to put a restriction to that clause of unlimited toleration toward a papist

I am for liberty of conscience in its truest, noblest, broadest and highest sense. But I cannot give liberty of conscience to the pope and his followers, the papists, so long as they tell me, through their councils, theologians and canon laws, that their conscience orders them to burn my wife and strangle my children and cut my throat when they find an opportunity." (Washington in the Lap of Rome, p. 127.) Nor can the American people afford to have the youth of the Roman Catholic church educated to believe that either the priest or the church can give them a warrant to trample on the ordinances of the land, or set at defiance the commandments written by God's finger on the tables of stone amid the thunderings and lightnings of quaking Sinai. The American people must care for God's cause, uphold his honor and obey the teachings of his word, and then may be assured that they will share his protection and care. A free and fearless pulpit is the hope of the nation. John Knox made Scotland the terror of Rome. Germany was emancipated by the preaching of Luther. Switzerland, through Zwingli's influence, became the fortress of liberty, against which the waves of despotism beat in vain. England is indebted to John Wycliffe, who opened the way for Tyndale, for Cromwell, and for William, prince of Orange, who helped emancipate a people that has thrown off the

fetters of Rome; that, under the banner of Judah's Lion, stands as the defender of an open Bible; and, with the people of Germany and of the United States, makes freedom to worship God a possibility in all the world.

The outcome is victory. Rome is broken when everybody dares tell the truth and will do it. Romanism is like a thistle. Grasp it boldly and its sting is slain; toy with it and it becomes the nettle of danger. Is Rome master? Today, judged by the cowardice of men in church and state, the looker-on would be compelled to say It is. Tomorrow the answer will be No, because fifty millions are waking up. Eyes are opened. Ears are unstopped. The call to action is heard. The shackles of fear are being broken. Thought is free, expression is in order and liberty for all is at the door; for the fight with Rome is the fight for truth, for education and for home, and the people enjoying liberty and creeping up out of the bondage of a blinding superstition into the noonday radiance of an accomplished liberty will bear a hand in the conflict and share in the triumph of right over wrong, of Christianity over Romanism.

IMPERILLED ROMANISTS; OR ARE ROMAN

ISTS WORTH SAVING?

"Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord." Isaiah I :18.

The question "Are Romanists worth saving?" is asked in the imperial city of New York, the gateway of the western continent and the largest city in the world ruled by Roman Catholics. Here Protestants, for reasons which I need not give, have betrayed the man who, of all others and above all others, stood by the stars and stripes, declaring that it should not be lowered to give way to the flag of the Green Isle or any other, and that so long as he retained the head of the government the flag of the union should hold the place of honor.

When the

We honor Gen. Dix for what made him immortal. stars of hope were fading out of our sky, when treason was in the air and our beautiful banner was being trampled in the mire of secession, he telegraphed, perhaps inspired by the brave and fearless Stanton: "If any one hauls down the American flag, shoot him on the spot." It is not better to lower it, and give some other flag its rightful place, than it was to haul it down; so, no matter how betrayed and defeated, I begin my work by thanking God for Abram S. Hewitt, assuring him of our heart-love and of our prayers.

"Come, let us reason together." Protestants and Roman Catholics have much in common. We have one God, the Father of lights, before whom in unison we bow.

The Lord Jesus Christ, lifted on the cross, is the Saviour of all men. Let him have his place. Remember that he was careful at the marriage supper at Cana of Galilee to refuse to recognize the mediatorship of his mother, and said when she told him "They have no wine," "Woman, what have I to do with thee?" Thus he placed, at the beginning of his ministry, his heel of condemnation on the doctrine of Mariolatry. Let it stay there. Let us worship