The Intermountain Catholic. (Salt Lake City [Utah] ;) 1899-1920, 1908-02-22
BACK TO ROME.

How rapidly and surely time is avenging the
pastl The changes in religious views and religious
practices, the gradual return to the Roman Lit
urgy or the established form of worship of the
Catholic Church, among the dissenting religious
bodies and the reaction of the sects from the dry
and cold Journalism of Puritanism, Calvnsm and
Socinianism are indeed noteworthy signs of the
times When Calvinism or Presbyteranism took
possession of the Scottish mind destructive de-
mon entered the nation, and before it all art went
down. Masterpieces of statuary, Illuminated mis-
sails and manuscripts of priceless value affairs of
the finest Italian marble, chseled by the hands Of
masters figured windows of precious glass. repre-
senting scenes in the life of our Blessed Lord and
bis saints, and mellowed with age. were ruthlessy
destroyed. Since then Scotland has had no mas
ter in the arts or, indeed, a school of art. The
genus of art fed the island and her churches and
conventicles became the habitatons of religious
GOODNESS, sterility and dry Journalism. For three
hundred years no note of instrumental music
deemed the raucous singing of congregational ia
natcs SO late as forty years ago the organ the
Exist o whistles" it irreverenty denounced,
was a subject for contention among the Presbyte-
rians.
an invention of the evil one to rob worship of It's
simplicity, and the good people of the Presbyte
rian churches would have nothing to do with the
diabolical machine In many of the eastern
churches the organ and anti-organ factions came
10 blows, and the feeling ran high that bitter
divisions were created which led to the establish
nent of separate churches. Even the screechy and
delicate melodion was viewed with suspicion. and,
in many instances, where it was sneaked in it was
fang out as "Popish" innovation and adjunct to
religious service
Today, in one of those cities where the church
split into factions over the subject, one large
Presbyterian church has three great organs, and
there is not Presbyterian church in America that
has not organ meodeon.
In our own memory, every minister wore a
white cravat or white choker,7 as it was called
by the profane; now fifty per cent of the denomi-
national preachers wear Roman collar or an NJ
B. Mark of the BEAST vest Thirty years since
a clean-shaved minister was a rarity and now a
bearded minister in our large cities is an anomaly
So closely many of them copying the dress and
appearance of the Catholic priest that, at times,
1t is difficult to distinguish them from the real ar
ticle.
Not so very long ago there was not in any Pres
byterian church in America solitary stained glass
or figured window no symbolic or allegorical repre-
senation of a scriptural subject and now some of
the finest ecclesiastical windows in America some
Of the most ultra-Roman decorate the Presbyterian
churches
Forty years ago a Roman cIogs on the spire of
q Presbyterian or any Protestant church was
strangely out of place and curiosity, if not an
abomination. We have in memoir an instance
where conscientious minister Of & Protestant |
Episcopal church, in country town. had, at his
own expense simple and unpretentious little cross
placed on the steeple of the sacred building. The
following day the fragments of the cross were
picked up in the churchyard, where the 'Romish'
idol had been broken into pieces by he wardens of