elevation, there can be but one king of kings, and as to who shall sit on his right hand and on his left, is known to the Father of Heaven alone—"but one is your master, even Christ, and all ye are brethren."

I did not intend to pronounce this final word till I had reached the end of this article. I conceived of writing the article and commenced to write it after reading once more Mignet's History of the French Revolution, especially for a new study of French history as related to the Church.

I have now and again, during the past year, intimated my hatred of the mean and contemptible action of the French government toward the religious orders and sisterhoods of the Church. I have read every intelligent thing I could find with a view of getting at the real heart and soul of this blighting, and as has seemed to me, senseless persecution and ostracism of the best and noblest souls in the nation of France to-day. Among these readings, is the one mentioned, which I annotated with the view of writing on the basis of said book. Up to this point of my article I have not, however, looked into Mignet and I do not know that I need to quote it even now. Throughout every phase of the revolution in France, the clerical or ecclesiastical representatives of the Church played an important part. Before the days of Richelieu, even from of old, Catholic Cardinals had held the highest civil positions under the French monarchs; and though it has ever been the glory of the Catholic Church that she ministered alike to rich and poor, and still so ministers, there can be no doubt that from beginning to end of the terrible efforts to make a Republic out of France, the leading representatives of the Church showed little or no sympathy with the masses of the people under whatsoever name they organized themselves, but adhered steadily to the interests of the monarchy and the aristocracy. Let no one think me insensible enough regarding the fitness of things to wonder at this or to disapprove of such action.

On matters of taste, of aesthetics as well as from reason, the Churchman, being an educated man, and by profession a man of peace, could never be expected to sympathize with or help the fearful brutalities of the people as manifested in the French Revolution, but when matters had reached fairly settled conditions, and it became apparent that the French were capable of, and were determined to have a Republic, still, the ecclesiastical elements showed no accommodation to the changed aspect of things, but held on to the wrecks of monarchy, and apparently could not or would not accept the new order of things. Here again, one can hardly blame them, for being educated gentlemen they must have seen intuitively from the first that the elements of men and ideas of the French Republic, were opposed to Roman Catholic notions, especially to such notions as held to the perpetuity of the temporal power and they could not be expected, as loyal children of the Church that so built upon her temporal power, they could not be expected to favor their own assassination. I do not blame the ecclesiastics of France for favoring the monarchy and aristocracy of France even after there ceased to be a monarchy or an aristocracy worth naming. My own tastes would have prompted me to act with them, had I been living in France in those days; but the Revolution having succeeded, and the Republic having become an established fact, to hold to their own old notions of monarchy and aristocracy was practical suicide anyway. It was too much to dream or expect that the masses of dissatisfied and ambitious Frenchmen who had at last made the Republic, and being, large masses of them infected with the anti-Church principles of Freemasonry, un-Christian and unforgiving in all their methods of life, could, or would forgive the hundred-year-old opposition of French ecclesiastics, and allow them anything like the same sort of influence and position in the Republic, that they had held of old, under the French monarchies. This was expecting far more of unredeemed human nature than redeemed human nature usually shows.

Churchmen in France, henceforth, must expect to pay the penalties of their predecessors' adherence to kings. The present belongs to the people. Kings are a useless appendage. The very memory of the ages of humbuggery produced and enacted by kings and prelates in the name of government is a sickening inspiration in the minds of the people, to lead them to retaliate as far as possible. Yet as nearly as I can gather, the average instincts of Republican Frenchmen were not, and are not now, bitterly opposed to the Church as a spiritual or a religious body, but the clerics they oppose, would not keep their hands from meddling with the government of France. Here again, if well looked into, it was not and is not so much that they would not keep from meddling, as that they could not do so. From the days of Charlemagne till now, and especially from the fifteenth to the end of the eighteenth century, ecclesiastics were the companions and directors of the kings of France. The very aristocracy of the aristocracy of the land. They were the teachers and guides of princes and princesses: the instructors of the aristocracy, par excellence. They were, in fact, the masters of princes, aristocracy and people. How could they learn in a day or in a hundred years that that order of things had passed away. Hence the Republican governors of France saw that there was but one way out of the mixup, and that was to deprive the ecclesiastics of mastery in the lines of education in France, simply because it was impossible for French Churchmen to teach the youth of the land in accordance with the new order of things. I do not approve of the new order of things in France or in this country. In truth, I abominate and despise it under Roosevelt and Company, as well as under Loubet, Coombs and Co., but I do not occupy any position under a government that 1 despise. I do not ask the government to support me in preaclhing my notions, and I always obey the laws. Roman Catholic Churchmen in France could not, dared not pretend to take any such position, but they expected to teach monarchism in a Republic, and expected the Republic to pay their salaries. This, to my mind, is absurd. The President of the French Republic is a Roman Catholic; vast numbers of the French people are Roman Catholic, but the government is not now monarchical or Roman Catholic, and there is a government that in all civil matters, is above the Hierarchy of France, or the Pope of Rome. The trouble is, that the ecclesiastics in France do not and cannot understand the new order of things, but the lack of understanding it does not in one iota lessen the palpable fact that the new order exists, and that a large majority of the clerics of France are opposed to it alike by what I believe to be on account of a defective education regarding their own true position and the true position of the French government. A Churchman, Archbishop or what not in France to-day, as in the United States, is simply a citizen of the Republic. If he is law-abiding, no power of the government can touch a hair of his head. As an archbishop of human souls, dedicated to God and the service of teaching as many as will hear him the gospel of Jesus Christ, he must not be molested; he must be protected, and he will be honored in the exact proportion of his piety and intellectual power. But in France, the other element of clerics as statesmen, and of clerics claiming a temporal power, and the honors of princes as well as teachers and preachers of Christ, all came in. The French ecclesiastic not only wanted to preach Christ, he wanted to teach anti-Republicanism; to pose as a prince in a nation of democrats hating the name and title of prince, and with good reason; and above all, he wanted, and still wants the Republic to pay him for his oppositions. As well might any government hire assassins to stop its own heart and pay them well, and crown them at the same time. It is not, therefore, that French Republicans, in these days, hate Christ, or His true Church or His true religion, but that they hate the temporal pretensions of Roman ecclesiasticism, and because the Roman pretensions militate against the very existence of the government they are sworn to defend. I am giving my readers the view taken of this matter by honest and well-informed persons other than Catholics, but who certainly have no hatred toward the Catholic or any religion.

It is always well to hear bodi sides of any story. I believe that in France to-day, only another phase of the English and the German Reformation is being fought out, and that the temporal pretensions of the Church are quite as much to blame for it all as is total depravity or Freemasonry and infidelity, so much abused in our Catholic pulpits and newspapers. I am a Catholic. I have never believed in any secret society. I abominate Freemasonry, because in my judgment it militates against God, sound morals and human freedom, but that it has its phases of benevolence and attractiveness for most men, goes without saying. It would not be as powerful as it is, if it were only and altogether Godless, Christless, immoral and enslaving to the human mind. I abominate French and American Democracy alike, because, in the first place, their annunciated primal bases or principles are absolutely false to nature; simply false and a lie, and because here and elsewhere, wherever such notions of men and government have prevailed they have slowly but surely developed into Oligarchy and a tyranny of ignorance and corruption. I love the Church of Christ as I love my own soul, because I see how it has fed my soul with truth and the love of truth and the joys that such love gives to humanity. But I abominate the so-called temporal power of the Church; its titles of human honor, its pretensions to princedoms, and all worldly authority, because I believe all such claims and pretensions utterly opposed to the spirit and teachings of Christ, and that such claims and pretensions have always worked mischief, pride and humiliation in the lives of Churchmen cursed by srch temporal titles, that such claims and pretensions have been potent factors in wrecking the Church in ages past, and have done incalculable injury to countless millions of souls. I belive that these subtle claims are an evolution of the old imperial government of the Roman Empire, that were born and bred in the inmost heart of old Rome before Christ died to obliterate all such humbuggerv and make the world free and joyful in its reconciliation with God.

I believe that these temporal claims and pretensions of Rome have been at the root of all its past miseries and losses and the wreck of nations, and that they are at the root of all the troubles in France and Italy to-day. With all my heart I acknowledge the utmost spiritual authority of the Roman Catholic Church. I know her precedence and her history; and so true am I in all this that could it be possible for the Pope to command be to believe other than I now believe, I should most prayerfully seek the light that might lead me to believe otherwise. But if a priest or a bishop jumps on me and tells me I shall be damned and go to hell for my present belief, I shall tell him to be damned and go to hell himself.

Believing this and seeing as I see most clearly that the temporal power of the Church has always involved her in trouble with the State; that she has always cared for and sought the titles and the support of the powers of kings and princes, and seeing clearly how the principles of the connection of Church and State have always worked in the past, have recently worked in the action of Austria and her veto in the recent conclave, and are working with wrecking and madness in France and Italy to-day, I believe in cutting clean and clear with the finest damascus blade Church and State asunder, letting the one stand in its adherence to Christ alone, and being wholly satisfied with the honor that Christ can give, and letting the other stand on the Declaration of Independence or any other old lie that the voice of the people may proclaim as die word of God for the time being.

There are many phases of religion and education involved in this change, but there can be nothing quite so bad, so humiliating and despicable as a priest of the Church subject to the temporal