The morning star and Catholic messenger. [volume] (New Orleans [La.]) 1868-1881, 1869-10-24
Snanish Protestants.

All 6.rOtestantlSm mas Deen awe tor
some months with the hope that the revO-
luton il Spain would rebound to the in
jury of the Church and its own gain. The
first of these anticipations has been amply
realized Converts and monasteries have
been emptied churches have been dese-
crated, and the goods of the Church have
been diverted from purposes of piety and
charity to the empty Golfers of military ad-
Henturers. The whole Spanish Church has
been made desolate with outrage and in
suit, with the detection of its children and
the triumph of impiety.
But what has Professionalism gained
Bibles aud tracts have been spread broad
cast over the land, but the people already
believed every word in the Bible far more
implicitly than the ardent missionaries
themselves. A few nominal converts we're
perhaps drummed up here and there to
afford some visible evidence of progress,
but doub tless they are about as expensive
to keep converted. as the specimens of the
same sort among the London Jews, who
are said to cost several thousand dollars
apiece per annum. 1t don't pay. Even
the London Times has given over the Span
ish mission in despair.
Many Bishops were triumphantly an
nounced as adheriDg to certain audacious
impieties of the Cortes. That darling illu-
sion is rapidly vanishing as they come out
publicly one after another in hearty denun-
citation of the very acts which it was boast
ed they had approved. 1t is true that GER
tain deputies or members of their national
parliament expressed views of very AFRO
CANT hostility to the Church, but those
views, so far from being in the interest of
Professionalism, were inspired by deism or
atheism. A few complimentary phrases
were framed to propitiate English pref u
dice, but there it stopped, and no Spaniard
who valued his own or his neighbors' re-
spect could be found to affiliate with the
despised German heresy, no matter how
undutiful or unfaithful to the true faith
himself.
This was of course to be expected by.
every observer of human nature. Protes-
tautism is great heresy it is true; still is
only heresy and can never be Catholic in
any particular. 1t can never commend its
peculiarities to more than fraction of the
race. Certain nations, if they choose to
sin, may prefer to go astray after its fash
ion, ut others will always have an invinci-
bic repuGnancc to it, no matter how far
from truth they may lie willing to wander.
The phlegmatic German and Saxon races
see nothing particularly odious in its cold
ness and its rejection of emotion. The
Church without an altar the priest with
out Il sacrament, the hymn without music,
the bare cold walls without emblems, the
prescription of all beauty, grace and har-
mony, the contempt of nature and the hos
tility to art, have for them no special ele-
ment of discomfort or horror. But the
warm-hearted Celt, the impulsive Gaul,
the italian with lofty imagination, and the
impassioned Spaniard, shudder at such cold
ness, and turn in disgust from this ifeless
rigidity. Each of them may revolt against
the Church, but not against nature he
may be very wicked but not as a Puritan
he may be hereto but not Protestant
one. .~>>.s
| So far then as good Protestants are fight
ing for the overthrow of Christianity with
out knowing it, they are in accord with the
Spanish revolution in its religious aspect
but so far as they hope gain for the cause
which they think they have espOused, there
is not the slightest cause of self-gratula-
! ti0n. 1t is only in countries where the Evil
| Spirit can blind people by spccious false
hood that he takes the form of heresy
where that does not suit the field of opera
lions, he comes more directly to the point
in open infdelity.
-Ge#eH8FFsN- u FiSTssfF
/ ABBEY.-Ths stone is under the Coronation
| Chair in the Abbey. It's history is mysterious,
and, far as the history of a stone can be SO