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

Christ 1t was not kings, nor princes. nor
legislation that crested the- ChEistian world
IL was the Vicar of Jesus Christ, and the mys-
tical body of the Son 81 God. twas Christian
faith and, the laws Of God which created
Christianity and as they only could sustain
that W hich they had made, and as none could
sustain that which was not his own work, the
kings and the princes of this world could not
maintain the health and the yigor, the light OF
the Christian world which they did not make
And having departed from obedience to it--
and all over Europe there was an endeayor TO
emapcipatc themselves from the sweet yoke of
the Church of Jesus Christ, from its unity and
anthority--that was the source of all civil dis
order, the fountain of all revolution And as
it was in the public and civil order of the
world, so much mare was II IN the religious,
and those who had separated themselves from
the unity and the authority of the Church of
God were at this day finding an inheritance OF
their chastisement. They had changed from
age to age; there were innumerable coRtradIc-
tions and they were in contradiction with the
past and contradicted themselves from day to
day. In these changes of doctrine, OF dlscip-
line, of ritual, the minds of men were wearled
ont and there came as the penalty of these
things, loss of certainty, of authority, OF unlon
of the confidence of mems hearts, the scatter
ing of their own flock, the desolafion of that
very system which they would fain uphold
Not only in religion, but in thai hlch was ut
the foundation of all religion, there was uni
versal confusion, uncertainty, and instability
Three hundred years ago the private Judgment
of the human reason attacked the authority OF
faith; and that had been avenged, not so much
by faith itself, whose only retribution was the
charitable and patient preaching of the truth,
but by unbelief, and those great truths on
which everything rested-truths which be-
longed to the natural order, which were before
the revelation of Chrstianity-the existence
of God His moral Projections, the Immortality
of the soul, dgment To como, and distinctions
of right and wrong--all these, the foundations
of what we called natural religion, which even
the unenlightened heather knew and believed,
were assailed by the philosophers anG sceptics
of this day; and men were turning back in
order to be assured of the solemn reality of
those truths of the Church of God, and they
were compelled to take up and defend those
truths of the natural order, which the insu-
coordinate reason of man, three hundred years
ago, had, In its contest with the Catholic
faith, undermined by its efforts. He had heard
the other day, in the columns of newspaper,
that If only the Catholic Church would for
once give way at least portion of Its
teachings, then it could be dealt with but
there was dealing with Church which
never doubted upon anything which it affirmed
if the Pope would only for one moment act
on something like an equai footing, then there
would be hope of unity TO this he lArchbish-
unity would be forever lost. If that-divine
circle Of truth were cut through in one point
all the articles of the Christian faith would
alike perish together 1t that infallible
authority of the Church of God, in virtue of
the perpetual presence of the Holy Ghost
which held together the Kingdom of God, on
earth immutable and imperishable; and in the
midst of the COMMISSIONS of men-confusions in
every order, civil, religious and intellectual
the Church of God stood immovable to this
hour; indefectible in its light, for its light
was from above; indissoluble in its unity, for
that unity the unity of God himself; i'm
mutable in its doctrines, for those doctrines
came from the spirit of God in person /;
immovable on the base where it rested, for it
was the hand of God that placed 1t there, and
the gates of hell could not prevail against it..