The Irish standard. [volume] (Minneapolis, Minn. ;) 1886-1920, 1906-04-14

natural elevation, to the sublime teach
ings and sacramento graces of their
Holy Catholic religion.
The Church preferred, nearly four
centuries ago, to lose the wealth, the
greatness and the power of that mighty
empire on whose wide dominions the
sun was said never to set rather than
to concede to the guilty passions of a
licentious King, Henry VIII, for the
dissolution Of the marriage bond and
the rights of his lawful wife, the good
Queen Katherine of Aragon.
The elevation of woman, then, from
q position Of lowliness, of degradation,
Of contempt, to the high and proper
place which she now occupied of being
the equal, the companion and the con-
soler of man, was, too, {, work of So
cial regeneration. the memory of which
should not be allowed 10 die.
But then, some say I'VE willingly
admit all you claim for the old re-
ligion. She exercises q mighty in
fluence for good in the past She kept
the torch of learning ablaze during
the darkness of the Middle Ages. She
formed Christian society almost as we
have it today, its laws, it's customs,
its institutions, it's liberties, it's civil
fzation. But her time is past. Her
period Of usefulness is gone. She is
fallen, never to rise again, that gave
laws to the nations. Her lot now is
to be consigned as beautiful relic of
glorious past, to some museum of
antiquities"
All! they had not read her past his
tory, Or the history of the world COR
rectly; they do not gauge her future
destiny Alright, who argue thus. She
was still producing saints in plenty,
whose aureola of glory was as bright
in heaven as that which surrounds the
brow Of Agnes, or Ambrose, or Angus
tine: still refuting the theories of a
false philosophy. with a logic as con-
vincing and a diction as winning as
that which refuted the sophisms of
Julian the Apostate; still battling for
the rights Of the Church and spiritual
freedom with the same heroic courage
with which st. Thomas a Beckett met
Henry ii of England: still confronting
hostile kings with the same zeal with
which Henry " Of Germany was met
by Hildebrand; still tending the gar
den of knowledge With the same as
sldous care, pruning down the prurient
sprouts, cutting off the rotten branches
and nursing the tender buds of promise
with the same unceasing watchfulness
with which she gathered up and pre-
served it's scattered seeds during the
long and weary years that succeeded
the northern invasion.
She was still sending forth TO the
limits of the world, with the glad til
dings of salvation to those who sat in
darkness and in the shadow of death,
missionaries with heads as clear and
hearts as warm, and souls as enthu-
siastic in her cause as were those who
with Augustine first proclaimed the
truths Of truths of Christianity to the
fair Saxon youth on Kentish strand,
OF with st. Patrick when he first
lighted the Paschal fire in the hall of
Tara.
a tn In.
China, and they would find them there
the motions OF the heavenly bodies,
and explaining to that mysterious peo-
pie the nature and the attributes of
the great Being who made these bodies
out Of nothing. who appointed the
courses in which they should revolve.
Go to the mines of Siberia, and they
would find the Polish confessors and
martyrs exhorting suffering for the
faith. Sail to the islands of the ocean
and they would find the countless wor-
shippers in spirit and in truth, whom
their labor and their zeal We're form
ing for the Eternal Father there
Or, take wings and fly to the very
limits of the world to the Far West
land, where the Sioux, the Shawnee,
or the Blackfeet dwell-or where the
Mckenzie pours it's majestic waters
towards the frozen ocean, and there,
ION the western slope of the noun
tains
Dwells in his little village the black
ROBBED chief OF the mission,
Much he teaches the people, and tells
them of Mary and Jesus,
High on the trunk of a tree that stands
in the midst Of the village,
And o'ershadowed with grapevines. a
crucfix fastened,
Looks with it's agonized face on the
lnultitudes kneeling beneath it;
This is their rural chapel"
That which 1.-The black robed chief
Of the mission" was doing for his
children beyond the western slope of
the mountains" in America and in ey--
cry land, that same thing they were
striving to do for the people in Aus
tralia, and it was to take the Crucifix
from high on the trunk of a tree"
and place it in a church that they were
gathered there that day.