The Catholic bulletin. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1911-1995, 1914-05-30

and the same forever"-words which
all lips, in tones triumphant, will in
stantly re-echo, if lips are hidden to
speak, to which in deepest unison all
hearts will instantly respond, if hearts
are hidden to sound to music their in
most chords
A meaning there is in the magnifi-
cent spectacle unfolded to our won
dering eyes; a mystic power there is,
working within souls, to awaken the
limitless enthusiasm coloring every
countenance, vibrating through every
stepping Of those legions of men who
throng today the broad avenues of
Minneapolis. What this meaning?
What this power? 1 give the answer:
Jesus Christ, yesterday and today,
and the same forever"
What you see, what you hear, is an
act of faith in Jesus Christ, in His di-
Vinity, in His sovereignty over minds
and hearts. Of the faith that is in
us, sunken deeply into our inmost
souls, mastering their every fibre, we
make open, public profession, that so
doing we fasten ourselves yet more
closely to His Kingdom, and give to
His blessed name greater honor and
glory. Christ reigns, Jesus Christ
commands; it is our faith, and of this
faith we make solemn proclamation.
Christ reigns. The announcement
was made in the long ago to the fair
region amid which more recently the
city Of Minneapolis has sprung into
life and form. 1t was in the year of
salvation, 1880. The first white man
to tread upon this soil was a messen-
ger of the gospel of Christ, the Fran
ciscan priest, Louis Hennepin. The
mission of Hennepin was to establish
upon the newly discovered continent
the Kingdom of Christ, to win to His
love its untutored savages. Following
from the st. Lawrence to the Illinois
the intrepid La Sale, he had, with
two companions, turned northward
upon the Mississippi his frail canoe,
the first to sail upon it's waters above
the Wisconsin, the first to behold our
northern forests and prairies, and to
tell, later, to Europe Of natures mu-
nifcences to our favored land. A
prisoner among the Sioux near Mile
Laos, he had there given baptism to
dying child-the first initiation into
the religion of Christ westward Of the
Great Lakes. From Mile Laos, sail
ing down stream, which he named
the st. Francis, he glided into the ma
jestic waters Of the Mississippi, and
soon afterwards paused in admiration
before the cataract, forty or fifty
feet high, divided in the middle by a
rocky island of pyramid FORM" 81
called it, he writes, "St. Anthony of
Padua's in gratitude for the favors
done me by the Almighty through the
intercession of that great saint whom
he had chosen patron and protector of
all our enterprises" Thy name be
st. Anthony, was it said to the cata-
ract, the name of saint of Christ
shalt thou bear; Christian be thou,
and Christian be the whole region,
that listens to the music by thy rush
ing waters. The Church of Christ had
spoken: Christ was proclaimed to the
land, as it then was, as, in the future
it was to be, when the City of Waters
should adorn it's plains and hilltops
How changed the land since Henne-
pin spoke! Then, it was natures own
untrammeled domain, as it had come
from the hand of the Creator, through
the Creators own beneficent laws. It's
native beauty sang the praises of the
Almighty God. God was nigh, readily
OWNED, and readily worshipped. A
wild Indian was praying near the cat
aract as Hennepin approached. He
was asking the protection of the
Great Spirit whom he recognized as
in some manner living in that sublime
work Of superhuman power. It was
easy there for the priest of Christ to
think of the Creator, whom even the
savage remembered, and to think Of
Christ in whom he knew the Creator
to have been incarnated, and to make
there proclamation of the religion Of