The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-11-07
sPxRIr OK TEa PR1gs.
Editorial Opinions OF the Leading Journals
upon Current Topics s-CompiIed Every
Day for the Evening Telegraph.
THE NEW LIFE AND FUTURE or THE
ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH.

At this moment--the turning point of an
age eventful beyond all comparison in bygone
listory-the gaze of civilized mankind is
fixed on Rome with peculiar interest. The
call for an Gcumenical Council of the Church
reputed Apostolic and universal was of itself
a great awakening to the world. 10 the
faithful and earnest adherents of Cdtholtoity
it was a summons that seemed inspired in
the midst of accumuating disorders the
breaking down of all restraints; the abroga-
ton of old tenets; the setting up of self and
the higher law, so called, in the place Of the
one Supreme Father, whose precepts had be-
come the basis and the rallying point of
order in barbaric times and the bulwark
against destructive license and vice
in the days of corrupt and unbolieving
civilization. To the opponents OF Roman
ism, per Sc, on the other hand, this call was
deemed fragrant challenge thrown down to
''the spirit of our time and defiance of the
work achieved by religious and politi cal pro-
gress. These two opinions divided Cdristen-
dom while the Council was sitting, and they
divide it still. Bu5 in the meanwhile through
all the iarring and cavilling of authorities,
the Church itself is evidently underg oiug
wonderful and salutaTy transformation, or,
rather, is sloughlng off the excrescences
which the ambition of prelates aud princes
and the exigencies of peculiar times and re-
gions had fastened it. This process is
SO picturesque and SO majestic as that of the
Roman Church.
In order to appreciate the change let us
cast our thought backward for an instant to
the period when Christianity began to take
shape and emerge from the alluring but de-
ceptlve mirage of pagan mythology and the
imposing but unsatisfactory rites of ancient
Judaism. ''Voce of the East, voice of the
West, voice of the four winds, woe to the
Temple woe to Jerusalem!" was the terrible
warriDgscry of him who was known as Jesus,
son of Ananius,' who, as Josephus tells US,
suddenly uplifted his voice amid the city in
the hour Of profoundest peace aud ceased
not bynight or by day until the whole Jewish
people had heard of his coming, and his pro-
phecy But as Jesus, the Christian Messiah,
had been rejected, SO was this Jesus, the pro-
phet of ruin. despised by a headstrong
people. Yet the sack of the ancient city by
the Roman Titus came and the ideas of the
Christian faith caught up amid the
fire and carnage of the Jewish capi-
tai clung to the skirts of the con-
querers and were transferred with them to
Rome. But in the mean while, as we learn
from sacred tradition, st. Thomas bore the
Gospel of Jesus to the farthest Ind; st. John
preached it and eXemplifed it in Asia Minor;
St. Andrew made it a revelation of a higher
life to the rude Scythiau hordes; st. Philip
spread it abroad over the Asiatlc Continent;
st. Bartholomew established it in Armenia;
st. Matthew disclosed it to benighted Persia;
st. Simon made it the new and saving light
Of Mesopotamia, and st. Luke with it refuted
the legends and the imaginative heogony of
Arabia. Thus was grand, glorious mes
sage made known by inspired and devoted
men to a suffering world. The heart of
humanity leaped up to hail dawn 80 benig-
nant, and in spite of all trials and perse-
cutions, the faith hourished and grew on all
sides. The terrible prosecutions which, be-
ginning with Nero at Rome, were continued
under Domitian and his ferocious successors,
but seemed to give strength, vitality, and
fixed stability to nascent belief so full of ma
tive strength, as the storm wind but imparts
yigor to the oak whose roots are deep in the
soil, even while it sweeps away the feebler
children of the forest and scatters them dying
in its path And why was this? Because,
to continue our simile, the roots Of the Chris
tian creed descended deeply into the hearts
of men. The simple virtues of its early fol-
lowers, the purity and lofty life of its apos-
ties and it's advocates; their divine eloquence;
their inspired erudition; their indefatigable
toll; their fearlessness in the presence of
chains and death, and the sublime promises
they uttered from the gibbet and the stake
to the humblest and weakest who believed,
were a power which overawed the purple
tyrants of the world and announced Christ
and Him crucifed as indeed the Every pre-
sent help and Saviour OF the stricken
people. Vivifed by the warmth of a
zeal that had been kindled by the lamps
of the sepulchre, and vivifed by the blood
shed in so many massacres, at last, in A.
ID. 1868, the new Church, so sorely beset
by Julian the Apostate, found a Roman
emperor to thoroughly protect it. Jovian,
who had brayed the wrath of Julian, heard
his own troops exclaim, 'Fear not, Emperor;
you command q Christian army. The most
aged among us were instructed by the great
Constantine, and the rest by his son." The
cross which had appeared but as a vision of
victorious omen in the sky became fixed
emblem in the most powerful and civilized of
cities, and hurried on from conquest to con-
quest until it rose resplendept upon church
spires in half the world. At last the Goume-
nical Council, held at Constantinople A. ID.
3S1, in the reign of Theodosius and accepted
by the West, proclaimed and fixed the main
dogmas of the Church, and it became posi-
tive power on earth. But even with this
access of spiritual dominion began the usual
corruptions aud troubles that beset things
human even while they strivingly aspire to
God The Arian, Macedonian, Pelagian,
HISTORIAN, and Eutychian heresies aud the
schism of the Donatists rapidly sue
Ceeded each other There were
divided counsels; Popes and and-Popes;
prelates who lost themselves in the
ambition of the prince, and princes who
claimed to be prelates without the JUNCTION
and the call. Formulas and ceremonies be-
gan to overcrust and eclipse the simple, pure,
sweet teachings of the Sermon on the Mount,
and gorgeous fanes and royal pomp super
seded the plain remembrance of the Last
Supper and the homely words of the morning
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