The Montgomery advertiser., 1904-11-26
sT. PETRR,s CHURCH.
DevOtioRs Yesterday Were Attended by
 Large Crowds.

DevOtio1s Yesterday Were Attended by
 Large Crowds.
 The, mission conducted by Father slevin at St. Peter's Catholic Church is still attracting crowds The vari- ous services yesterday were largely ate tended. and last nights congregation was the largest yet recorded.
 The devotions last night consisted of the usual Rosary and Benediction ser vice at which Rev. Father Eaton of- ficiated. Father slevin preached. His text was taken from Lauds of the Bles- sed Virgins oflice. and his subject was Motives of the Immaculate Concep- tion." He said in part:
 "No subject has ever harassed the human mind more than that of the origin of evils which beset humanity from cradle to grave accompanying it all through life and abandoning it only at the moment which is itself the most terrible of all. This study has tortur- ed the intellect of man and created a multiplicity of errors. The Pelagians whom Augustine vanquished, held that the woful ignorance in which we are born and the furious passions which gradually develop in us and the maladies and infirmities which befall us, and even death itself which closes the whole dismal tragedy, were the heritage of our nature. its cause and source. From this false notion they argued that neither ignorance. passion, sickness nor death were evils at all taken rightly from the hand of God, who from the beginning made man just as he Is today without sin having had anything to do with his present chang ed condition. The Manicheans took the opposite extreme and by an equally Cal nRfp1lnIo of all evils in order to leave the blame on God.
 "Tertullian in his time taught heretics that our bodies were not form ed of evil matter and that matter was not the cause of evil, since 1t is not nature, ut sic. that gives us corrupt in- clinations. but sin. or If you will, nature as corrupted by sin.
 ''St. Augustine speaks of certain philosophers, who not being able to understand so delicate a matter persua- ded themselves that our souls were committed to our bodies as to prisons there to make satisfaction for the crimes committed during a happy term of their previous existence.
 Such are but a few of the many false notions that clouded mems minds. The motives which God had in preserv- ing His Mother from the awful evil of original sin should be plain and evident to any truth seeker.
 Cardinal De Berulle delicately and beautifully says, Christ's violent death was honored with the tortures of the martyrs who gave Him blood for blood: His public life was honored by the preaching and miracles of the apostles; His retreat on the Mount by the soli- tude of monk and hermit; His infancy by the slaughter of Bethlehem's little ones; His nativity by the holy birth | of John the Baptist, but for the purity i of His own incarnation what concep- | tion on earth could parallel and sym bolise it?' And thus it was necessary that He should form a pure and im- maculate conception, which by its holi- ness and sanctity would adorn Him | from the first moment of Ills existence l in the chaste womb of His Mother. He created the angels in purity and inno- eence, He did the same for Adam and Eve, He pronounced John sanctifed in his mothers womb, and If He did this | for His servants why would He not do it for His motherT
 Such was the general trend of Father Slevin's remarks. The entire discourse was enlivened by a fund of anecdote and rendered Intellectually attractive by a keen logic, and a literary beauty well inspired by his subject.
 Services today will consist of masses at 6, 6:30 and o'clock this morning with instructions by Father Slevin at the and o'clock masses. After wards confessions will be heard at any hour as there will be no other devo- !, tions until the evening.
 Benediction will be said at 7:SO o'clock this evening, when Father l sIevin will deliver one of the principal sermons of the mission on the "Particu- lar Judgment"