The Irish standard., 1913-01-18

and the few beggars&1tIore 3self-respect-
ing than in his own Whitechapel
slurns; that the 1natipna. flag is not
like his. own, broushtsoutionly on days
of expansive festivit8, but. that it flies
al. the time; that travellers do not
bribc the conductor TO lock the door
Of their compartment. but, instead
hang geniallS onto a swinging strap
in short, that indivitlualistic life in
America does not shut itself up within
locks and bars, but has burst then,
and gone out into the street. He un-
derstands, in a word, that in spite of
the palaces on. Breadway America is
democratic; and that IN spite of MIR.
Lloyd George, and NM. Combcs and
Jaures, Europe is feudal.
After having done those 4hinss-
after having ridden on an engine
from New York to&AlbanS, having sat
ir the electric chair, having been in
tcrviewed by brisk and charming
Journalists, having had a becfsteals
supper in chequered apron and walk
i, e1 up Fifth, avenue Nth a. millionaire
and a tailor's assistant-havins un-
derstood something !! oil that joyous,
hoisterous public spirit that lies at tho
root both of the virtues and the vices
OF Amcrica-so utterly alien from the
melancholy happines ses AID the lux
urious sorrows of SEA,rope-he will, ii
he is Il wise man, begin to enquire as
to Americas religion; for tho religion
OF a country is its; sole certain inter-
pretation. (
| Hc will find first SSan immense ac-
tivity; and that the same vital ald
unbounded rush. tlIa, creates huge
winking faces of electric light in New
York by night, builds churches two
or three stories high, creates orphan
ages that occupy. dse acres of ground,
drives cnematogHapl lanterns in
crypts, and creates Men and Religion
Movements in aS;thousand a towns si-
| lrultaneously. .S#se
On the religiousgg side our English
man will have found the same. kind
OF lavishness ana IN .oss tsir Is. Protestant.
ism will j be. absolutely ail that a hu.
1ra1 system sof f;lisH Gan ever hope
! to be. 1t will be splendid and gilt
tering and artistic (within very clear
limits, and unboundedly optimistic
| and philanthropic. But it will be dc.
void of dogma; since dogma is the
one Divine thing we have left. And
Catholicism will be fully as pllila:l.
| tl1ropic, and as ;glitterihg, and as op.
| timistic; it will lack, certainly, that
Intimacy and that remoteness and
that contemplativc attitude that are
suggested Oct us say) by the side
chapels of Chartres Cathedral; but
those things arc not vital. howcye,
sweet and lovely they may bc--not
vital, that is, to the Church itself
however necessary to some church
men. For all that she asks is that
the Rock may remain untouched, and
God will take care Of the building;
that authority may remain unques-
toned. After that, God, in her, viii
do the rest; will bring the glory and
honor of the nations into her." will
work up into her fabric the joyous
ness and the generosity and tho
childlikeness Of the American, as vel
as the patience and the silence ant
| the. feudalism of the European. And
it, may be- one day He will shift tho
brunt of the battle from this side O.
the Atlantic to the other; from E,l-
rope who has played with the faith
and already half forfeited it, to Am.
erica who has worked for it so :lobly
/, Rev.) Robert Hugh Benson.