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A tKOOOH 
A 

Brief History of Religion 
P R O M T H E 

CREATION TO THE PRESENT DAY 

S*»SHS2S9 

N E W Y O R K ! 

T H E COLUMBUS P R E S S 

120 West 60th Street • 



C O P Y R I G H T , 1 8 9 3 , B Y " T H E M I S S I O N A R Y S O C I E T Y O F S T 
P A U I , T H E A P O S T L E I N T H E S T A T E O P N E W Y O R K , " 

P R I N T E D A T T H E C O L U M B U S P R E S S , 1 2 0 W E S T 6 0 T H S T . 

Deacfdifled 



A Brief History of Religion. 

FROM ADAM TO MOSES. 

In the beginning God created heaven and earth. He 
said, " Let them be made," and they were made. He made 
the light and the darkness; He made the heaven and the 
earth, with the dry land and the sea; He made the sun, 
the moon, and the stars; He made the plants, the trees, 
and the animals. And last of all God created man to His 
own image and likeness. T h e name of the first man was 
Adam, and the name of the first woman was Eve. They 
were just and holy, and were friends of God. They were 
placed in a Paradise of happiness, and they and their de-
scendants were never to die. 

T o test their obedience God commanded them not to 
eat of a certain tree lest they should die. But the tempter 
said to them: " You shall not die the death. For God 
doth know that in what day soever you shall eat 
thereof, your eyes shall be opened; and you shall be as 
gods, knowing good and evil." Adam and Eve believed 
the tempter, and broke the command of God. For this 
sin of disobedience they were deprived of all right to 
Heaven which they might have gained had they obeyed 
God, and all their descendants with them. They were 
driven from the Garden of Paradise, and were banished 
from God. But at the same moment God promised them 
a Redeemer, who should make an atonement for them, 
and give them another chance to enter Heaven (Gen. 
rii. i s ) . 

Cain and A b e l were the first children of Adam and 



IO A Brief History of Religion. 

Eve. And when they offered sacrifice to God, He ac-
cepted Abel's sacrifice, but Cain's He rejected. And Cain 
being jealous of his brother, killed him, and as a punish-
ment was cursed by God, and became a vagabond on the 
earth. 

T h e next child of Adam and Eve was Seth. A f t e r 
many hundred years his descendants became very wicked, 
so that God resolved to destroy them in a flood. But 
God had mercy on Noe and His family, and saved them 
from destruction. 

The descendants of Noe became very numerous and 
spread abroad all over the earth. In their wickedness 
they began to build a tower to scale the heights of Heaven, 
but God so confounded their language that they had to 
leave off building, and the place was called Babel," or 
confusion. T h e descendants of Noe also became very 
wicked, and left the true faith which God had given to 
Adam, and which Noe had handed down to them. In-
stead of worshipping the true God of whom Noe and his 
sons had taught them, they began to worship idols : the 
sun and moon, the stars and other objects of nature. 
This degeneration from the truth brought with it, as it 
always has, all kinds of vices, which prevailed again 
amongst mankind. 

God, however, provided that the true faith should 
not die out entirely, and so He chose Abraham [B.C. 1920], 
and revealed Himself to him. He promised him that if 
he would be faithful, and keep the laws of nature and 
worship Him, that He would make of him a great people 
like the sand on the sea-shore for multitude; that from 
among his descendants should come forth the long-prom-
ised Redeemer. In order to test his faith, God told him 
to take his only son Isaac and offer him up as a sacrifice 
to Him. Abraham was ready to do all that God required, 
not doubting but that God would do what was perfectly 
just in the matter. And when God saw that Abraham 



IO A Brief History of Religion. 

was faithful to Him, He sent an angel who saved the life 
of Isaac. Ever since this event, Abraham has been called 
the " F a t h e r of the faithful" by his descendants. 

T h e patriarch Jacob was the son of Isaac and lived 
with his family in the land of Chanaan, the country into 
which God had called Abraham. He had twelve sons, 
who became the fathers of the twelve tribes of Israel. 
One of them, Joseph, was chosen by God to be a figure 
of Jesus Christ. He was hated by his brethren, and was 
sold away as a slave into the land of Egypt. There he 
at last, by the providence of God, was appointed, next to 
the king, the supreme ruler of the country. By his wis-
dom and foresight he saved the people of Egypt and the 
surrounding countries from starvation in a great famine, 
whence he obtained the title " Saviour of the world." 

His father, and all the other children of Jacob, 
when they knew that Joseph was ruler over the land, 
went there to live. When Joseph was dying he spoke 
the remarkable prophecy regarding the Redeemer: " T h e 
sceptre shall not be taken away from Juda till He come 
that is to be sent; and He shall be the expectation of 
the nations " (Gen. xlix. 10). And, indeed, when Christ 
came who was sent by God, Herod -the king was seated 
on the throne of the kings of Juda, and in a very few 
years the kingdom came to an end. 

FROM MOSES TO CHRIST. 

A f t e r the death of Joseph the Israelites grew to be 
a great people, so that the Egyptians, fearing that they 
might rule the land, subjected them to the. most cruel 
slavery. After four hundred and eighty years God re-
vealed Himself to Moses, a Hebrew, and making him 
His messenger, sent him to lead the children of Israel 
out of the land of Egypt, back again to the land of Cha-



IO 
A Brief History of Religion. 

naan whence their fathers had gone out. A s long as the 
king of Egypt would not let them go, so long did Moses, 
by the command of God, trouble the land with ten great 
and awful plagues. Finally, when in one night the first-
born died, and all the first-born of cattle as well, Pharao 
called for Moses in the middle of the night and told him 
to leave at once. T h e Israelites had s^ved their children 
from the destroying angel by sprinkling the doors of their 
houses with the blood of the lamb which they had killed 
that day in honor of their departure, which God had told 
them was at hand. 

A s soon as the people were gone, the king w a s 
sorry that he had let them go. In great haste then he 
summoned his troops and started off in pursuit. He sur-
rounded them at the shore of the Red Sea. When they 
were in despair, God miraculously opened the waters of 
the sea, and the Israelites went through the sea with the 
waters on either side of them like walls. T h e army of 
Pharao attempting to follow them, were, at the prayer of 
Moses, overwhelmed and drowned. 

Now began the work of founding the great nation 
from whom was to come forth the Redeemer. A f t e r fifty 
days' travel the people came to a mountain called Sinai. 
A t this place God called Moses to Him up on the moun-
tain, and he w a s forty days there making ready, under 
the direct inspiration of God Himself, the law which was 
to make of them a people fitted to be blessed with the 
name of the " C h o s e n People." 

In consequence of their sins, however, which they com-
mitted in spite of all the wonders which God had worked 
in their sight, they were compelled to wander in the 
wilderness for forty years, until all those who had come 
out of Egypt were dead. God visibly protected them in 
their wanderings, and worked every day miracles which 
should have made them believe His words. Their cloth-
ing never grew old upon their backs during the forty years 



IO A Brief History of Religion. 

of their wanderings; they were fed with manna, or bread 
which fell from heaven fresh for their use every night; 
and at last, after Moses died, they went across the river 
Jordan, as their fathers had crossed the Red Sea forty 
years before. 

This was the land of which they had heard so much, 
in which they were to dwell when they had conquered it 
from the wicked and corrupt people who at this time 
inhabited it. 

Four hundred years they lived under the govern-
ment of the judges and the high-priests. During this 
time they were constantly falling into vice and idolatry by 
the mixed marriages which they made with the abomin-
able pagans, whom they had not destroyed as God had 
told them. A t the end of this tim« the people were de-
sirous to have a king to rule over them, like'their neigh-
bors. So God, by the hand of His prophet Samuel, anointed 
a man named Saul to be their king. 

This was in the year 1095 B.C. For some years. Saul 
was a good man; but being disobedient, he was deprived 
of the kingdom, and at last perished miserably by his own 
hand. T h e next king was David, the " man after God's 
own heart," as he was called. He was_noted for his great 
physical strength; when he was a mere lad he had killed 
the giant Goliath, the champion of the Philistines. He 
was a war-loving monarch and extended his kingdom far 
in all directions. He was also a great prophet, and wrote 
many of the psalms which have been used in the wor-
ship of God through the centuries by both Jews and 
Christians. T h e most remarkable of these psalms are 
those which tell of the Redeemer, who w a s to be born 
of his family, and of whose kingdom there was to be 
no end. For this reason Christ is called the Son of 
David. 

K i n g Solomon the Wise was the next king after his 
father on the throne. He built a magnificent temple to 



IO 
A Brief History of Religion. 

God, and dedicated it in Jerusalem with great pomp and 
splendor about the year iooo B.C. In the sanctuary w a s 
the ark of the covenant, which contained the two tables 
of stone which Moses had brought down from Mount Sinai 
when God gave the law to the people. No one w a s 
allowed to g o within these sacred precincts except the 
high-priest, and he only once in the year. This was the 
only place where sacrifice could be offered to God in all 
the land, and every man over twelve years was obliged to 
go there at least once in a year, to offer sacrifice by the 
hands of the priests for his sins and the sins of his 
family. 

Solomon did not persevere in his wisdom or his good-
ness, but intermarried with the pagan women and wor-
shipped their false gods.. 

A f t e r his death the kingdom was divided. T h e 
two tribes of Juda and Benjamin remained faithful to the 
kingly line of the house of David, and their kings ruled 
always in Jerusalem. T h e other ten tribes made Samaria 
their capital, and were from that time known as the King-
dom of Israel. T h e Kingdom of Israel w a s destroyed 
and the ten tribes lost for ever, as a punishment for their 
sins, by the Assyrian captivity. In the year 718 B.C. the 
people of the Kingdom of Israel were carried off into the 
country about Nineveh, and never returned. So also the 
Kingdom of Juda was many times severely punished by 
God for its unfaithfulness. In the year 588 B.C. the King 
of Babylon destroyed the temple and carried away all the 
sacred vessels and ornaments, with the people, into cap-
tivity. 

In the year 536 B.C. K i n g Cyrus took Babylon and 
set the Jews free to return to the land of their fathers, 
where they began at once to rebuild the temple. When 
the old men complained that this second temple could 
not compare in glory with the first, the prophet A g g e u s 
foretold that the glory of this latter should be greater 



IO A Brief History of Religion. 

than that of the former house, because " the Desired of 
all nations" should enter it ( A g g . ii. 8-10). 

This captivity did away with the hateful vice of 
idolatry among the Jews, and henceforth they worshipped 
the one true God, in the manner prescribed by Moses 
many centuries before. T h e books of Holy Scripture were 
now collected and most carefully read and interpreted, 
and the people began to keep the law with the greatest 
precision. Some of them were found willing to suffer 
martyrdom rather than worship idols in the time of the 
K i n g of Syria, Antiochus. T h e seven brothers known as 
the Machabees, and their heroic mother, are a glorious 
example of constancy in time of trial, preferring as they 
did the most horrible of deaths to disobedience to the 
law of God. 

W e now come to take our stand- at the end of the 
Mosaic law, and at the establishment of the law of Christ. 
The whole world groaned under the burden of wicked-
ness which the ungodly race of men had inflicted on it. 
With the exception of the Jews the whole world were 
idolaters. Nevertheless there still survived a tradition 
that a great teacher was one day to come, and bring 
back the days of purity which all men agreed had once 
existed. Many believed that this teacher would come out 
of Judea. Among the Jews themselves there had sprung 
up certain sects called the Pharisees and the Saddu-cees, 
and owing to their influence a great corruption in morals 
had taken place. It is true that they honored God with 
their lips, but their conduct was according to the sinful 
desires of their heart. Such was the state of the world, 
and the only hope for it lay in the speedy advent of 
some great reformer who should fearlessly rebuke the 
vices of the sons of Adam, and give to them a religion 
which they might follow for ever with confidence and 
love. 



IO A Brief History of Religion. 

HISTORY OF CHRIST. 

It was beyond the power of any man> however good 
and holy he might be, to remedy the evil of the world at 
this time. No one but God Himself could do it, and, in 
accordance with His promise to our first parents in the 
Garden of Eden, He was about to send His Divine Son 
into the world, that the world by Him might be saved. 
The whole world was at peace; Augustus was the em-
peror of the Roman nation, and Herod K i n g of Judea 
when Jesus Christ was born of a Virgin in a stable of 
Bethlehem. He was of the royal family and house of 
David. His birth was announced by angels to the shep-
herds at Bethlehem ; and three kings, led by a star, came 
from the East to worship Him. Herod the king was angry 
when it was told to him that " t h e K i n g of the J e w s " 
Was born, and he endeavored to put Him to death, slay-
ing in the attempt several thousand infants. He hoped 
by this means to include the Child of Mary,; but God pre-
served Hirn, and when the slaughter took place they were 
•safeiy hidden away in the land of Egypt. A f t e r some 
years they returned, and came and dwelt at Nazareth, an 
abscure little village of Galilee. Here He was subject to 
His parents as if He were not the Creator of the uni-
verse. A t the age of twelve years He went up to Jerusa-
lem to celebrate the Pasch, or the Passover, a feast which 
the Jews celebrated in memory of their deliverance from 
the land of Egypt. 

A t the age of thirty years He went to the River Jor-
dan, where John the Baptist was baptizing, and was there 
baptized by him. When He came up out of the water 
the Holy Ghost descended upon Him in the form of a 
dove, and a voice from heaven was heard saying " This is 
my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased" (Matt, 
iii. 17). 



IO A Brief History of Religion. 

A f t e r His baptism our Lord was led away by the 
Spirit into the desert, and there, after a fast of forty days, 
underwent a most mysterious trial. Coming forth in the 
strength of His victory, He was prepared to begin His 
work of the Redemption. He began to gather together 
disciples in order to found the Church, by which His doc-
trine should in later times be spread over the world. So 
He went about teaching and preaching, and the first 
members of His Church were taken from every walk of 
life. He proved the trsth of His doctrine by many-and 
astounding miracles, so that no one could reasonably deny 
the truth of it. 

Those who heard Him were filled with wonder and 
amazement, and many believed Him to be the Messias. 
He chose out of His followers twelve men, whom He 
knew to be fit for the great work of spreading the Gos-
pel, and appointed them His Apostles, or messengers. 
They were to be the witnesses of His doctrine and works, 
that, after He left the earth and went away to Heaven, 
they might preach what they had seen and heard of Him 
to all nations. These are the names of the twelve Apos-
tles: Simon, who is also called Peter, and Andrew his 
brother; James the elder, the son of Zebedee, and John 
his brother; Philip and Bartholomew; Thomas and Mat-
thew ; James the less, the son of Alpheus, and Thaddeus 
his brother, sometimes called Jude; Simon the Chanaan-
ite, and Judas Iscariot, who afterwards betrayed Him. 
He chose also seventy-two disciples who preached His 
doctrine during His own ministry. 

He prophesied to His Apostles concerning the 
foundation of His Church., T h e Church was to be to 
them in His stead after He had left the earth, and they 
were to | hear the Church " and obey its decisions as the 
voice of God. He promised by the aid of the Holy Ghost, 
whom He would send to them, never to allow the Church 
to fall into any error in those things which it is necessary 



IO A Brief History of Religion. 

for men to do and to believe in order to save their souls 
(Luke x. 16). He appointed Peter to be the visible head 
of his Church on ¡earth, called him the rock on which 
he said he would build his church, against which the 
gates of hell should never prevail, and promised him the 
keys of the kingdom of Heaven (Matt. xvi. 18-19, "Luke 
xxii. 32, John xxi. 15-17). He told them distinctly 
that he left the earth and went to the Father in order 
that he might send the Paraclete, the Spirit of Truth, 
who would remain with them all days unto the consum-
mation of the world. This Spirit of Truth was to be the 
living soul of the Church animating all its members. 
T h e twelve Apostles, the seventy-two disciples, and the 
others "who adhered to Jesus, formed the beginning of 
that society of all the faithful which we call the Church 
of Christ, 

T h e Redeemer of mankind gave to the people of 
His own race such proofs of His Divine mission as never 
had been given to any people before. He made the 
blind to see and the lame to w a l k ; He restored the sick to 
health, and raised the dead to life. He fed five thousand 
with a few loaves and fishes. He fearlessly rebuked the 
prevailing vices of the men who occupied places of high offi-
cial trust, and thereby brought upon Himself their undying 
hatred. These men were determined to ruin His work and 
to put Him to death. Shortly before his Passion He had 
raised to life Lazarus, His friend, who had been dead long 
enough to become corrupt in the grave. The people, 
hearing of this miracle, were filled with enthusiasm ; and 
when Jesus went into Jerusalem, a few days after, they 
went forth to meet Him with palm branches in their 
hands. T h e y spread down their garments in the way as 
He passed, and cried aloud: " Hosanna to the Son of 
David: Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the 
Lord. Hosanna in the h i g h e s t " (Matt. xxi. 9). This 
scene and the feelings of the people made his enemies 



IO A Brief History of Religion. 

still more angry, and from that clay they sought to put 
Him to death. 

These things happened at the end of His ministry, 
when He was thirty-three years of age. T h e Feast of 
the Passover was at hand, and Jesus sent two of His 
disciples to prepare the room for the feast where He 
was to institute the worship of the New Law. It is a 
principle of religion that sacrifice should be the essential 
part of its worship of the God in whom it trusts. From 
the days of Adam to the time of Christ the worshippers 
of the true God had not departed from the tradition which 
had been handed down from that memorable day, when 
Adam and Eve received the command to offer sacrifice 
to God, for their sins and for the sins of their children. 
The prophet Malachi had foretold that the cRtys should 
come when in every place there should be sacrifice, and' 
a clean offering. T h e sacrifices of the Old Law had been 
those of blood, and their administration was always at-
tended with a great deal of washing and purifying c o n -
sequent upon the slaughter of an animal. 

But now had come the true Lamb who was to be put 
to a cruel "death, and henceforth the sacrifice which was 
to be offered in the New Law was to be an unbloody 
one. And so they were gathered together in the room 
which had been made ready. A s they were eating, the 
Divine Master took bread into His holy and venerable 
hands, and said: " T a k e ye, and e a t : This is My Body 
which shall be delivered for you." Then He took a cup 
of wine and gave it to them, saying: " This is My Blood 
which shall be shed for you and for many for the remis-
sion of sins. Do this for a commemoration of me." 
T h a t is to s a y : " Offer this sacrifice as you have seen Me 
do it. By so doing you make a real and true sacrifice of 
My Body and Blood, the same sacrifice that to-morrow I 
shall offer on the altar of the Cross. And this you 
shall do until I come again to judge the world." This, 



A Brief History of Religion. .21 

then, is the sacrifice which Jesus Christ instituted, and 
which has been offered in His Church from that day to 
this, and shall be offered until He shall come again. A f t e r 
He had done this He gave some beautiful lessons on the 
charity which they ought to have for one another; of the 
unity which should prevail amongst them, and the holi-
ness of life which each should make his own, if he 
wished to be known as a true disciple of Him. He told 
them that He was about to leave them, and that He 
would not leave them alone, but would send them a Com-
forter, the Holy Spirit of truth, who should abide with 
them for ever, and who would teach them all things. 

A f t e r this He led them out into the garden of Geth-
semani; there in the night, alone, His chosen ones heavy 
with sleep* He underwent an agony of suffering for the 
sins of the world. His sweat became as it were great 
drops of blood falling down to the ground. " M y Father," 
He prayed, " i f it be possible, let this cup pass from Me. 
Nevertheless, not as I will, but as Thou w i l t " (Matt, 
xxvi. 39). In the meantime, Judas, one of the twelve, 
was about to betray Him to the chief-priests. T h e price 
of his treachery had been paid to him, and so «for thirty 
pieces of silver the traitor led them to the garden. Here 
Jesus again showed His divinity by miracles, healing 
the ear of the servant which Peter in his zeal cut off. 
But the time was gone by when men would listen to any-
thing but their own passions; they had said that He 
must die, and the thing must be speedily accomplished. 
So they bound Him and led Him away, and all His dis-
ciples forsook Him and fled. He was delivered up to the 
Roman governor, who, being a coward and in fear of the 
mob if he did not give them their will, condemned Him 
to be crucified. And so, crowned with thorns, they led 
Him out to crucify Him. 

On that sorrowful " W a y of the Cross," as the 
Church calls it, He met His Mother. She saw Him to 



IO A Brief History of Religion. 

whom she had given birth in the stable at Bethlehem 
now, like a despised criminal, going forth without the city 
to be the Ransom for the sins of the world. Filled with 
faith, she offered Him up to that same God who had 
found her worthy to be the mother of the Redeemer. 
T h e place of execution was called Calvary, or " the place 
of a skull," because there was a tradition that the skull 
of Adam had been buried there. 

He was thrown down on' the ground, and nailed by 
His hands and feet to a huge wooden cross which He 
had carried, until, falling three times, the guards had a 
little pity on Him, and made a man by the name of 
Simon carry it to the end of the journey. The cross was 
then raised up and planted in the ground, and the sol-
diers who had crucified Him sat down to watch Him, 
and to throw dice for His garment, of which they had 
stripped Hitn. They gave Him w i n e ' to dull the pain, 
but He would not receive it, for He was determined to 
suffer to the last extremity every torture which they in 
their malice could inflict upon Him. In the midst of all 
His sufferings He displayed the greatest patience, never 
saying a word except of mercy and prayer for forgive-
ness of His enemies. He pardoned also the thief who 
begged for it, and He provided for His blessed Mother 
by bidding St. John, who was there, to be a son to her, 
as she would be a mother to him. By this act He showed 
that His Mother was to be in time to come the great 
Mother of the Church, which He came into the world to 
found. A t the time that these things were going On there 
was darkness over the land for three hours, so that the 
priests in the temple could not go on with the sacrifices 
until the true Paschal Lamb was slain. A t the end of 
three hours He bowed His head and gave up His soul 
to His Father. A t this moment there was a great earth-
quake, and the veil of the temple, which screened the 
Most Holy Place from the eyes of common people, was 



A Brief History of Religion. .21 

rent in two from top to bottom. A t the same time the 
dead saints of the Jews appeared to many in the city of 
Jerusalem. 

The soul of Jesus went to the place where the souls 
of the just were awaiting the coming of the Redeemer, 
who should take them thence and carry them with Him 
to Heaven. 

In order to be sure that He was dead, one of the sol-
diers there took a spear and plunged it into His side, and 
there came out a deluge of blood and water, which sight 
was the occasion of the conversion of the soldier to the 
faith. 

And now came His friends to take down the body, 
and to prepare it for burial. They washed it, and anointed 
it, according to the custom of the country, and then, wrap-
ping it up in a long white linen cloth, placed it in a 
sepulchre which was given for the purpose by a man 
named Joseph, from Arimathea. The Jews, remembering 
that He had said that He would rise from the dead the 
third day, set a guard, lest, as they said, " the disciples 
might come and steal the body and then say that He 
was risen." Christ rose from the dead very early on the 
morning of the first day of the week. For forty days He 
remained on the earth instructing and teaching His 
apostles. He gave them the power to forgive sins, and 
commanded them to remain together and await the com-
ing of His Holy Spirit. He again gave to Peter the 
supreme headship, constituting him His Vicar, and finally, 
having given them orders to preach the Gospel to the 
whole world, He left them and went up into Heaven, 
with the assurance that He would so come in like man-
ner as they had seen Him go away. 



IO A Brief History of Religion. 

T H E AGE OF PERSECUTION. 

T e n days after the ascension of our Lord He sent 
to them, as He had promised, the Holy Spirit who was to 
guide them, and be the means of their sanctification and 
that of their hearers. He gave to them the power of 
speaking in the various languages of the people whom 
they should be called upon to teach. When this was 
known the people came together, and St. Peter preached 
such a powerful sermon that three thousand of them were 
converted to the new doctrine. A t the same time they 
received the gift of working miracles, and five thousand 
of the people came asking to be baptized after St. Peter 
had cured a lame man who was lying helpless at the 
gate of the temple. 

These things aroused the anger of the chief priests, 
and they determined to put an end to them at once. 
They found that this was easier to say than to do, and 
so they took the advice of one of their number, Gamaliel, 
and let them alone for awhile. But this would not do, 
the people were fast becoming filled with new doctrine, 
and they determined to stir up the people on the first 
opportunity. This came very soon. They had been for-
bidden to preach in the name of Jesus, and had been beaten 
for so doing. This only made them the more active in 
their endeavors to spread the Cospel. There was one of 
them named Stephen, a deacon in the Church, who by 
the means of a sermon that he preached stirred up the 
wrath of the rulers; they took him out of the city and 
stoned him to death, and then took the most stringent 
measures to prevent, if they could, any further preaching 
in the Name of Jesus Christ. 

But there was no earthly power that could stop them, 
for they had their command from God, and they were 
ready at all times to prove it by their works and by the 



A Brief History of Religion. .21 

blamelessness of their lives. One of the witnesses who 
had been present at the death of Stephen was a young 
man by the name of Saul. But Jesus appeared to him on 
the road to Damascus, converted him, and made him the 
great Apostle of the Gentiles! He joined the other 
apostles in their missionary work, and, now known as Paul, 
by his preaching and his epistles added new power to the 
Church of Christ. He planted the Church in various parts 
of the world, and lived to see the Christian communities he 
founded grow until they became well established churches. 

T h e history of the Church of God in the early ages 
is a history written in blood. There were ten great and 
cruel persecutions of the Christian Church by the Roman 
emperors. T h e first was under Nero, and the last, under 
Diocletian, came to an end in the year 317. During 
these years the Church gained countless converts in every 
part of the world, and the numbers of martyrs who shed 
their blood for the Faith will never be known on this 
side of the grave. During this time the city of Jerusa-
lem had been entirely destroyed, and the Jews had been 
driven out of it into all countries of the world, as Christ 
had foretold. T h e sacred vessels of the temple were car-
ried to Rome and melted down, or thrown into the river 
that runs through the city. W e have remaining to the 
present day enough of the writings of this period to let 
us know what was the state of affairs in the Church at 
these times. T h e unity of the Church is the most striking 
thing which we notice. T h e headship of Peter's succes-
sor is acknowledged by all as a necessary thing in the 
Church. W e find that the seven Sacraments, the daily 
Sacrifice, and all the other things in our holy religion 
which are dear to us to-day, were cherished by those 
saints and martyrs as sacred. T h e Prince of the Apostles 
and the Apostle of the Gentiles were crowned with mar-
tyrdom on the same day at Rome, in the year 67, on the 
29th of June. A l l the Popes but one received the mar-



IO A Brief History of Religion. 

tyr's crown until the end of the last persecution. T h e 
reason of these persecutions was on account of the teach-
ing of the Christian religion, which openly, condemned the 
false religions of the empire, and taught that only by the 
Name of Jesus could eternal life be attained. T h e fact 
that Christianity endured these attacks on its life, and 
grew and prospered under them, ought to be a standing 
proof of its divinity; for how could any merely human 
institution flourish in the midst of such terrible opposition 
as was seen in these centuries of warfare ? " T h e blood 
of the Martyrs is the seed of the Church," is the saying 
of one of the writers of these times. Indeed it often hap-
pened, as in the case of St. Peter and St. Paul, that the 
executioner himself would declare that he was a Chris-
tian, and be put to death on the spot, receiving the bap^ 
tism of blood. 

FROM THE CONVERSION OF CONSTANTINE 

TO THE RISE OF PROTESTANTISM. 

In the year 312 Almighty God worked a miracle to 
free the Church from her bondage under the Roman 
emperors. It was a dark and gloomy time for the Chris-
tians. Diocletian had lately boasted that the name of 
Christian was blotted out. There was war in the em-
pire—civil war. One day Constantine, the Emperor of the 
West, seeing that the forces of his enemy were far greater 
than his own, prayed to the true God for assistance. 
Suddenly there appeared in the sky a cross with these 
words over i t : " In this Sign thou shalt conquer." T h e 
emperor made this his standard and carried it into 
the battle, and his troops were victorious. A s an act of 
thanksgiving Constantine ordered that the Christian reli-
gion was henceforth to be protected and defended in the 
empire. 

T h e gates of hell had not prevailed against the Church; 



2 0 A Brief History of Religion. .21 
she had conquered, but only to begin another kind of 
warfare. Now were to come those days foretold of by 
our Lord, when " a man's enemies shall be those of his 
own household." Satan, finding that he could not injure 
the Church from without, begins now a more subtle attack 
from within. There sprung up almost immediately numer-
ous heresies. A s in the time of the Apostles so now and in 
subsequent ages, the rulers of the Church, under the in-
spiration of the Holy Ghost, held what are called Gen-
eral Councils under the presidency of the Pope or his 
legates, the first of which was that of Nice, in Bithynia, 
which in 325 condemned Arius and his followers for 
denying the divinity of Christ. • This age was also that 
of the great teachers called the Fathers of the Church, 
such as St. Athanasius, St. Basil, St. Chrysostom, in the 
E a s t ; and in the West, St. Ambrose, St. Jerome, and St. 
Augustine. In the See of Peter were many great Pon-
tiffs, such as St. Leo the Great, and later, St. Gregory 
the Great. 

One of the wonders of God's grace in this age was the 
life of the Hermits, devout men and women who lived in 
solitude and communed alone with God, distinguished 
among whom were St. Paul the Hermit and St. Anthony. 
This preceded the monastic life, the patriarch of which 
in the West is St. Benedict, who lived in the sixth cen-
tury, and whose spiritual children, gathered in monasteries, 
saved religion and civilization amid the torrents of the 
barbarous invasion of the wild tribes from A s i a and the 
north of Europe, and then gave these ancestors of the 
races of modern Europe the doctrine and Church of 
Christ and painfully trained them to the ways of civilized 
life. 

Meanwhile St. Patrick had converted Ireland. France 
and England and Germany, and later on Sclavonia and 
Scandinavia, accepted the Gospel of Christ and bowed to 
His yoke. But these brief sentences mean ages of 



A Brief History of Religion. .21 
heroic suffering and labor, and even martyrdom, on the 
part of many thousands of Catholic missionaries. 

In the seventh century Mohammedanism arose, a 
fanatical sect founded upon the lying visions of Moham-
med, the world's greatest deceiver. In the East it grad-
ually gained ground, and finally nearly destroyed Chris-
tianity in those countries. The West was saved from it by 
the Crusades, or the wars of the cross, inspired by the 
Popes and preached by such servants of God as Peter the 
Hermit and St. Bernard. 

In these centuries (called the middle ages) arose the 
great universities of learning in all Europe. 

FROM THE RISE OF PROTESTANTISM TO. 

THE PRESENT TIME. 

But the rulers of the nations in a great many cases 
were not half so well converted to the faith as their sub-
jects, and there were many great and long disputes 
with the Church as to her authority. In spite of the 
great missionaries whom God raised up to teach them, 
like St. Francis of Assisi, St. Dominic, St. Vincent Fer-
rer, and St. John Capistran, heresy found enough' of fos-
tering among the rulers to keep it alive; so that when 
the sixteenth century dawned the world was ready for the 
great desertion. Great plagues had laid waste the popu-
lation, the clergy were decimated, and the people were 
not instructed, either from lack of priests or from their 
neglect of duty. 

In Germany the rebellion against the Christian Church 
was led by Luther, an apostate monk. In England it 
was begun by an adulterous king, served by a greedy 
aristocracy and a time-serving episcopate; but the E n g -
lish people themselves never wanted the false religion, 
and resented it and fought against i t ; but by mingled 



22. A Brief History of Religion. .21 
cunning and violence it was finally fastened upon them. 
Half of Germany and Switzerland, all of Ireland and Po-
land, most of the Netherlands and all of Southern Europe, 
rejected the new religion and remained Catholic. 

Protestantism became the name of the new faith. 
Luther and Calvin, on the Continent of Europe, and the 
kings and queens of England, were its founders and lead-
ers ; and by the favor of princes who enriched themselves 
on the Church's property, it obtained control of most of 
the nations of Northern Europe. T h e fundamental doc-
trine was that the Bible is to be interpreted by each one 
for himself. A s might be expected, this led to disputes, 
disunion, contention, and finally to most cruel religious 
wars, not only between Catholics and Protestants, but 
•among Protestants themselves. T h e present divisions of 
Christendom are due to the same cause; and to it may be 
attributed the calamitous fact that paganism still holds 
captive the bulk of the human race, and t h a t doubt and 
infidelity so widely prevail. 

T o thoroughly reform the Church and to meet and expose 
the errors of the new sects, the Pope assembled the Gen-
eral Council of Trent, in the middle of the sixteenth cen-
tury. Its success was marvelous. T h e progress of error 
was stayed, the entire Church was filled with new life. 
Saints appeared in every nation; new religious orders, es-
pecially the Jesuits, founded by St. Ignatius Loyola, sprang 
to the aid of truth and virtue ; the older ones took on a 
new youth, and the recently discovered parts of the world, 
in America and Asia, gave to the Church of Christ new races 
of Christians in place of those lost to the faith in Europe. 
The maxims of a devout Christian life and the ways of 
divine love were taught by St. Francis de Sales with an at-
tractiveness hardly ever equalled. In the city of Rome itself 
religion flourished in an amazing degree, led on by such 
glorious servants of Christ as St;. Philip Neri. 

In the domain of charity the Catholic religion won the 



IO A Brief History of Religion. 

greatest victories. St. Vincent de Paul, one of the holiest 
and greatest of men, by founding the Sisters of Charity— 
the first of hundreds of other such orders—has filled the 
world with the sweet fragrance of the love of Christ for 
suffering and fallen humanity. 

During the last two centuries Europe has undergone 
many political and social convulsions. T h e Church has 
suffered much both in the person of her chief ruler, the 
Pope, and in her clergy and people. But the religion of 
Christ comes out of all these perils holding his standard 
of truth and virtue high above the tumult. And 
everywhere Catholics feel that the present era of liberty 
and intelligence is full of promise for their holy religion. 

T H E AGE OP ENLIGHTENMENT. 

A t the end of the eighteenth century the outlook was 
exceedingly gloomy. T h e royal house of France had been 
overthrown, and Napoleon had, by his sagacity and 
strength of character, seized the reins of government. 
The principles of the Revolution were in all men's minds, 
and it was believed by many that in them lay the only 
chance for men. 

A few years before this thirteen colonies of the 
Kingdom of England had thrown off the unjust yoke 
which that country had been trying with ill-success to 
impose upon them. These colonies united themselves to-
gether under certain articles of union, and formed the 
nation which is now called the United States of America. 
One Si the clauses in the Constitution forbids the inter-
ference of the government in matters of religion. T h e 
oppressed Catholics of all countries soon fled to our coun-
try, and there found a place where they could worship 
9 o 4 in peace and quietness, 



A Brief History of Religion. .21 

T H E H I S T O R Y O F T H E C A T H O L I C 
C H U R C H I N T H E U N I T E D S T A T E S . 

Adapted from, the V. Rev. I. T. Hecker. 

What relation does Catholicity hold to the discov-
ery of America and the settlement of this country ? The 
discovery of the western continent was eminently a reli-
gious enterprise. Columbus had in vain sought aid for 
his great undertaking from his native city, Genoa; from 
Portugal, England, Venice, and the court of Spain; and it 
was after these fruitless applications that Juan Perez, the 
Prior of La Rabida, took up his cause and pleaded it with 
so much earnestness and ability in a letter to Queen 
Isabella that she at once sent for Columbus and offered 
to pledge her jewels to obtain funds for the expedition. 
T h e motive which animated Columbus, in common with 
the Franciscan prior and Isabella the Catholic, was the 
burning desire to carry the blessings of the Christian 
faith to the inhabitants of a continent, and it was the 
inspiration of this idea which brought a new world to light. 

This inspiration has never died out; and if the Span-
ish and French missionaries did not accompany the first 
discoverers, they followed speedily in their track, and the 
work of the conversion of the aborigines was earnestly 
begun. In a short time they traversed the whole northern 
continent from the mouth of the St. Lawrence to Califor-
nia, and from the Gulf of Mexico to Hudson's Bay. Some-
times missionaries were slain, but the fearless soldiers of 
the cross continued unceasingly their work of converting 
the natives and bringing them into the fold of Christ. 
The pages of history which narrate the self-sacrificing 
labors of the missionaries to the Indians are among the 
brightest in the annals of the Church. 

T h e raising of the red men to the height of the Chris-



A Brief History of Religion. .21 
tian faith was but one of the fruits of the discovery of the 
new continent; another was to offer an asylum to all who 
in other lands were persecuted and oppressed on account 
of their religious convictions. Among the first to seek this 
relief from" oppression on the virgin soil of the New World 
were the English Catholic colonists under Lord Baltimore. 
T o their honor it is to be said that, both by the original 
design of the proprietary, Lord Baltimore, and by the leg-
islative enactments of the freemen of the province, there 
reigned while their rule lasted in Maryland a perfect 
equality among all Christian denominations, and to all 
were secured the same rights and privileges, civil and re-
ligious. This act on the part of the colonists of Mary-
land was in harmony with the dictates of right reason 
and the authentic teachings of faith; for all attempts to 
bring by coercion men who differ in their religious con-
victions to uniformity in the profession of religious belief, 
if successful, would logically put an end to all rational 
religion. Compulsion never gave birth to faith, which is 
I not by any means a blind assent of the mind " (Vatican 
Council, " De Fide," chap, iii.), but essentially an intelli-
gent and voluntary act. Convinced of this, as Catholics, 
the idea of religious tolerance flowed naturally and con-
sistently in the minds of the first settlers on the shores of 
the Potomac. It was a noble act on their part to pro-
claim that within the province and jurisdiction of Mary-
land no Christian man should be molested in worshipping 
God according to the dictates of his conscience, and who-
ever supposes that the Syllabus teaches anything to the 
contrary seriously mistakes its meaning. Honor, then, to 
the pilgrim fathers of St. Mary! who, when the other 
settlements had a state-supported church and were intol-
erant to all others, asked for themselves no favor, but 
offered equal rights to all; thus excluding the secular 
authority of the state from interfering in matters of reli-
gion—a principle for which the Popes, in their struggles 



A Brief History of Religion. .21 

with the secular powers for the rights of the Church, have 
always contended, and for which they still have to contend. 

Let, then, those Catholic Anglo-Americans have their 
due share of praise for the religious toleration of which 
they were the first to give an example—an example, fur-
thermore, which had a formative influence in shaping the 
Republic and its free institutions. For the principle of 
the incompetency of the state to enact laws controlling 
matters purely religious is the keystone of the arch of 
American liberties, and Catholics of all climes can point 
to it with special delight. This noble course of the 
Catholics of Maryland, however, was little appreciated, 
and they were hindered in their progress and trampled 
upon when those to whom they had so generously offered 
a refuge from persecution had attained to power in the 
province; nevertheless, they kept their faith, and were by 
far the largest part of the body of the Catholic Church 
up to the time when the great tide of immigration set in 
towards the shores of the United States, and their de-
scendants still form a prominent and influential portion of 
the Catholic community. 

T h e next original element was that furnished by 
France. T h e soil of the United States was at an early 
period watered by the blood of the French missionaries 
to the Indian tribes. In 1775 an accession to the Church 
came through the expulsion by the Puritans of Massachu-
setts of a colony of French Catholics from Acadia, on the 
Bay of Fundy. In spite of the solemn engagements of 
the capitulation, that they should not be disturbed, they 
were driven from their peaceful homes, and about seven 
thousand were scattered among the British colonies. 
These are the Acadians whose sad tale has been told by 
Longfellow in the beautiful poem of " Evangeline." T h e 
influence exerted by the flower of the French army and 
nobility who entered the service of the infant Republic at 
a time when, but tor their aid, its cause would likely 



IO A Brief History of Religion. 

have been lost, in removing prejudices from the minds of 
colonists against the Catholi'C religion, and compelling 
them to show at least a decent respect for the religious 
convictions of their Catholic allies, is not lightly to be 
estimated. Then the storm of the French Revolution 
drove to the shores of the United States, between the 
years 1791 and 1799, a body of apostolic clergymen whose 
labors reanimated the zeal of Catholics, caused conver-
sions to the faith, organized new parishes, founded semi-
naries and colleges, and created bishoprics. It would be 
difficult to estimate the influence which these French 
missionaries exercised throughout the country by their ex-
emplary lives, their learning, their virtues, and their quali-
ties as men. Among them was a Maréchal, a Cheverus, 
a Bruté, a Flaget, and a Dubois. Twenty-three French 
priests came at that period to aid the young Church in 
the United States ; six were made bishops, and of these 
Maréchal became the third Archbishop of Baltimore. 
Cfeverus was the first Bishop of Boston, and was re-
called to France and made Archbishop of Bordeaux and 
Cardinal. 

T o these are to be added several thousand Catholics, 
among whom were some hundred colored people,, who 
came from San Domingo and other West Indian islands 
in 1793 to escape the effects of the French Revolution 
and the negro insurrection. These French Catholics add-
ed faith, piety, wealth to the infant Church, and their 
posterity, constant to their religion, rank among the dis-
tinguished citizens of the Republic. Their number was 
al'sé considerably increased by the territories acquired or 
¿dPftittw ro the Union, which were mostly inhabited by 
French1 catholics. Louisiana was acquired in 1803, and i 
feci at wait time about thirty-two thousand inhabitants, 
néarly all of whom were Catholics. Besides these were 
other settlements, peopled by the descendants mostly of 
French Canadians, at St. Louis, Detroit, Vincennes, which 



A Brief History of Religion. .21 

have grown since into places of importance, and still re-
tain the deep imprint of the French race. 

Moreover, the immigration of the French from Canada 
to the United States has been slowly on the increase, 
and in recent years has grown rapidly in volume. The 
presence of this Canadian element is a marked feature in 
all the dioceses bordering on Canada, which contain a 
considerable number of parishes composed entirely of 
French Canadians. Thus it will be seen that the Catho-
lic French element was an active and important one, 
both in regard to character and numbers, in the for-
mation of the Catholic Church in the New World. 

T h e Catholics from Ireland will not be found so num-
erous as those from England and France among the early 
settlers of North America. The Irish settlers, however 
considerable their aggregate number may have been, were 
not concentrated in any one locality like the Spanish, 
French, or English. A rmmber of Catholic Irishmen, 
however, or their descendants, one of whom was Charles 
Carroll, the signer of the Declaration of Independence, 
took an active part in the struggle for independence. 
The first commodore, the father of the American navy, 
was John Barry, born in Ireland, a faithful Catholic, a 
true American, and an able seaman. But before the great 
exodus Ireland had given to America prelates distinguished 
for their faith, virtue, learning, eloquence, and apostolic 
zeal—prelates such as Bishop England, Archbishops Ken-
rick and Hughes. No man did more in his day than 
Bishop England to make the Catholic Church respected. 
Love for the free institutions of his adopted country was 
with him a vital principle, and often prompted his elo-
quence. Bishop England as a pulpit orator was unri- * 
vailed, and may be called the Chrysostom of the American 
Church. T h e first bishop and archbishop of the Church 
in the United States, John Carroll, and the first in 
North America to be invested with the dignity, of the 



IO A Brief History of Religion. 

cardinalate, the Archbishop of New York, John McCloskey, 
were Irishmen by descent. 

But the famine of 1846-47 gave the impetus to a 
mighty stream of immigration which did not cease in 
volume until it supplied millions of faithful children to the 
young Church in America and rapidly extended her borders. 

There will not be found in the Catholic Church in the 
United States a people, as a class, more devoted, sincere, 
and better instructed in their religion than the Germans. 
The number of their churches, schools, seminaries, hos-
pitals, orphan asylums will compare advantageously, from 
an intellectual no less than a material point of view, with 
those of any other portion of the Catholic population. 
None are better supplied with priests for their people and 
teachers for their children than the Germans. The reli-
gious orders flourish among them, and are represented by 
the Benedictines, with several abbots; the Capuchins, 
and other branches of the order of St. Francis; the Jesu-
its, Redemptorists, and other religious congregations both 
of men and of women, especially such as are devoted to 
teaching. 

Conversions to the Catholic faith during the early part 
of the century were few and isolated instances; but with-
in the last forty-five years they have become more 
numerous. Speaking on this subject, a French writer who 
visited, twenty-six or more years ago, the United States, 
says: " It is difficult to apply a statistical table to the 
study of the question of conversions. T h e different Pro-
testant sects furnish very unequal contingents to the little 
army of souls daily returning to the true faith; and it is 
a curious fact that the two sects which furnish the most 
are the Episcopalians, who in their forms and traditions 
approach nearest to the Catholic Church, and the Uni-
tarians, who g o to the very opposite extreme, and appear 
to push their philosophical and rationalistic principles al-
most beyond the pale of Christianity. These two sects 



A Brief History of Religion. .21 

generally comprise the most enlightened and intellectual 
people of North America." 

This observation is exact and has a profound reason 
for its basis. The human mind is uneasy until it has 
reached unity and grasps universal truth. And this is 
arrived at by two diverse but equally legitimate ways. 
Those who are born in sectarianism, as soon as they 
allow their reason to act on their faith learn that they 
have but fragments of Christian truth; and by tracing 
these to their logical connection with other truths con-
tained in divine revelation they gain by degrees the 
knowledge of the whole body of revealed truth. Having 
reached this stage of preparation, there breaks upon their 
mental vision the divine character and mission of the 
Catholic Church. This once seen, to enter her fold be-
comes a test both of their intellectual consistency and of 
the sincerity of their faith in Christianity. This is the 
road which leads Episcopalians and others who still re-
tain firmly one or more of the revealed truths of Chris-
tianity to the Catholic Church. T h e second class fall 
back upon the essential truths of natural reason. This 
basis recovered, the rejection of sectarianism logically 
follows, for the denial of any one truth of divine revela-
tion involves of necessity a contradiction of human reason. 
Indignant at this, they ask rightly for a religion which is 
consonant with the dictates of reason and finds its foun-
dation in the human breast. Americans who have repu-
diated Protestantism on the grounds of reason—and they 
are not a few—have made the discovery that the exposi-
tion of Christianity by the Catholic Church agrees with 
the dictates of reason, and that it takes in its scope alb 
the faculties of human nature. This is the Unitarian | 
road, which is destined, in our opinion, to become the 
great American highway to the Catholic Church. 

There is scarcely an American family, distinguished 
either by its ancestry, or by its social position, or by its 



IO A Brief History of Religion. 

wealth, which to-day has not one or more representatives 
among the converts to the Catholic Church. In some 
parts of the country there are congregations almost alto-
gether made up of converts. Converts will be found 
among the bishops and clergy, and a large share also 
belong to the different learned professions or hold posi-
tions of similar respectability. T o the foregoing source of 
Catholic increase is to be added the accession of Florida 
by purchase in 1819, containing a population of about 
18,000; also the acquisition of Texas in 1845, and Cali-
fornia and New Mexico in 1848, having about 160,000 
inhabitants. These people were for the most part of 
Spanish-American blood, and nearly all Catholics. Finally, 
if w e add 153,000 colored people and 80,000 Indians, we 
have all the original elements which the power of the 
Catholic faith has blended together in one, forming the 
organization and strength of the Catholic Church in the 
Republic of the United States. 

T h e connection between the Republic and the Catholic 
Church, if satisfactorily treated, requires that the funda-
mental principles of the Republic should be clearly stated, 
and their relation with Protestantism first be disposed of. 
This is what we now attempt. 

T h e Republic of the United States is the result of the 
gathered political wisdom and experience of past ages, 
shaped by a recognition of man's natural rights and a 
trust in his innate capacity for self-government beyond 
what had found expression in the prevailing political sys-
tems of Europe. T h e fundamental articles of the Ameri-
can political creed and the formative principles of the 
Republic are embodied in the Declaration of Independence, 
whence they passed gradually into the constitutions of the 
several States and into the Constitution of the United 
States, and have step by step worked their way more or 
less perfectly into the general and special laws of the coun-
try. These articles consist principally in the declaration 



32 A Brief History of Religion. .21 
" that all men are created equal ; that they are endowed 
by their Creator with certain inalienable rights ; that among 
these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness ; that, 
to secure these rights, governments are instituted among 
men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the 
governed." 

These declarations can be looked upon only by super-
ficial thinkers as " glittering generalities," whereas some 
are divine and fundamental, and all are practical verities, 
having a ground both in reason and revelation. They are 
divine, inasmuch as they declare the rights of the Crea-
tor in his creature; they are fundamental, for without the 
enjoyment of the natural rights which they proclaim man 
is not a man, but a slave or a chattel ; they are practical, 
for man is, or ought to be, under his Creator, the master 
of his own destiny and free from any dominion not found-
ed in divine right. T h e Creator invested man with these 
rights in order that he might fulfil the duties inseparably 
attached to them. For these rights put man in the pos-
session of himself, and leave him free to reach the end 
for which his Creator called him into existence. He, 
therefore, who denies or violates these rights offends God, 
acts the tyrant, and is an enemy of mankind. And if 
there be any superior merit in the republican polity of the 
United States, it consists chiefly in this: that while it 
adds nothing and can add nothing to man's natural rights, 
it expresses more clearly, guards more securely, and pro-
tects more effectually these rights ; so that man, under 
its popular institutions, enjoys greater liberty in working 
out his true destiny. 

Since Christianity claims to be God's revelation of the 
great end for which He created man, it follows that those 
rights without which he cannot reach that end must find 
their sanction, expressed or implied, in all true interpre-
tations of its doctrines. 

Universal suffrage is the most efficient school to 



IO A Brief History of Religion. 

awaken general intelligence, to teach a people their rights, 
and to arouse in their bosoms the sense of their man-
hood. For what' is a vote? It is the recognition of 
man's intelligence and liberty and responsibility, the qual-
ities which constitute his manhood. What is a vote? It 
is the admission that man, as man, is, or ought to be, 
considered a factor in a tolerably perfect political society; 
that he has the right to shape, and in bounden duty 
ought to shape so far as his ability extends, the course 
of the destiny of his country. A vote is a practical means 
by which every man can exercise his right and fulfil his 
duty by making his voice heard in the councils of the 
nation. It is the practical application of the truth that 
" all men are born equal"—that is, " all men have an 
equal right to life," to " liberty," and to the " pursuit of hap-
piness," and, armed with a ballot, a man has the power of 
maintaining and protecting these rights. Every vote right-
ly understood means at least all that has been here stated. 

There exists a necessary bond and correlation between 
the truths contained in the Declaration of Independence 
and the revealed truths of Christianity, since the truths 
of the natural order serve as indispensable supports to 
the body bf revealed truths of faith. Deny to man rea-
son, ajid religion can have no more meaning to men than 
to a brute or a machine. Deny the certitude of reason, 
and there would be no foundation for certitude in super-
natural faith. Deny the innate freedom of the will, and 
the basis for all morality would be undermined, and the 
fountain-head of personal, political, and religious liberty 
would be dried up. Deny to man the gifts of reason and 
free-will, and the natural rights of man which flow from 
these gifts are the wild fancies of a dreamer, and a republic 
founded upon them becomes the baseless fabric of a vision. 

T h e following declarations will throw more light on 
the value of human nature, and of the bearing of the 
truths of reason upon the supernatural truths of faith, and 



34 A Brief History of Religion. .21 
make our road still easier. . Reason is the organ of truth, 
arid acts upon the truth which lies within its domain 
with infallible certitude. T h e action of reason precedes 
faith, and can admit the claims of no authority which 
does not appeal with entire trust to its jurisdiction for its 
verification, and can accept of none that does not accord 
and blend with its dictates. Man is by nature in posses-
sion of his free-will ; therefore freedom is a birthright, 
and he holds it in trust from his Creator and is respon-
sible for its right use. Human nature, as :t now exists, 
is essentially good, and man naturally seeks and desires 
his Creator as the source of his happiness. Man has lost 
none of his original faculties and has forfeited none of 
his natural rights by Adam's fall, and therefore is by 
nature in possession of his natural rights, and it is rightly 
said : " A m o n g these are life; liberty, and the pursuit of 
happiness." " God has created all men equal " in regard 
to these rights, and therefore no one man has the natural 
right to govern another man ; and all political authority 
in individuals is justly said to be derived from the con-
sent of the collective people who are governed. 

T h e people, under God, associated in a body politic, are 
the source of the sovereign political power in the civil state. 
T h e light of reason is the light of God in the soul, and 
the natural rights of man are conferred by God directly 
upon man ; and therefore a religion which does riot af-
firm the value of human reason and defend the natural 
rights of man is baseless, and by no manner of means 
revealed by his Creator, but is a delusion or an imposi-
tion and worthy of no respect. With the light of these 
statements, the truths of which are in conformity with her 
authoritative teaching, the connection of the Catholic 
Church with the American Republic can easily be under-
stood, and at the same time thè light which they shed 
lays bare to the view of all men the real motives which 
actuate Catholics in their devotion to popular rights, and 



IO A Brief History of Religion. 

places above all suspicion the sincerity of their love for 
popular institutions. 

T h e American people in the Declaration of Indepen-
dence avowed unequivocally their belief in the value of 
human nature, made a solemn act of loyalty to human 
reason, grounded their popular government on a solid 
foundation, and opened the door which leads directly to 
the truth: • those truths which jt asserted were not the 
fruits of philosophical speculations, but evident truths of 
human reason; and the rights which it affirmed were not 
the declamations of political dreamers, but rights insepar-
able from man's rational nature. Nor were these truths 
and these rights proclaimed to the world for the first 
time on the 4th of July, 1776, by the Continental Con-
gress of the colonies; for they are as old as human 
nature, and will be found among the traditions of all 
races of civilized men. They are not lifeless abstractions 
but living truths, concreted more or less in all political 
governments, in their institutions and laws. Freedom is 
no tender sapling, but a hardy tree and of slow growth, 
whose roots are grounded in and entwined around the 
very elements" of human nature, and under the shelter of 
its stout branches man has reached, through many strug-
gles, his existing state of manhood. 

T h e W a r of Independence was a struggle for man's 
sacred rights and liberties, and in support of these rights 
and liberties the colonists, as British subjects, cited the 
Magna Charta outlined by Cardinal Langton and his 
compeers, and won by them from K i n g John in the mea-
dow of Runnymede. Upon these inherent and acknow-
ledged rights of man, and upon the conclusion which they 
derived from them that no taxation without representa-
tion ought to be permitted, as a practical maxim of gov-
ernment and safeguard of these rights which they had 
received as a legacy from our common Catholic ancestors, 
the war for independence began, was fought, was won; 



A Brief History of Religion. .21 

the Republic was erected, and stands unchanged and im-
movable. Had the farseeing Count de Maistre been as 
well acquainted with the history of the American colonies 
as he was with the history of his own country or that of 
England, he would not have hazarded the statement, ad-
vanced in his Considerations on France, that he " did not 
believe that-the United States would l a s t " or that " t h e 
city of Washington would accomplish the object for which 
it was projected." A l l the conditions which he consid-
ered as essential to form a nation, and the vital princi-
ples necessary to produce a constitution, were existing 
and gave birth to the Republic. T h e Republic cíime forth 
from these into existence as naturally as the flower ex-
pands from the bud. T h e illustrious count's unbelief was 
in contradiction to his own political doctrines no less than 
to the truths of his Catholic faith. He whose intellectual 
vision is open to the light of first principles and their main 
bearings, and who is not altogether a stranger to true 
history, knows full well that the Catholic Church has 
battled her whole lifetime for those rights of man and 
that liberty which confer the greatest glory on the Ameri-
can Republic. 

That the pages of history testify to the- close relation-
ship existing between popular governments and the 
Catholic faith is shown by the fact that all republics 
since the Christian era have sprung into existence under 
the influence of the Catholic Church, were founded in the 
ages of faith and by a Catholic people. T h e republic of 
San Marino has existed in an entirely Catholic population 
in the heart of Italy one thousand years or more; and 
that of Andorra, on the borders of Spain and France, 
has stood the same number of years, and neither shows 
any signs of approaching dissolution. But these republics 
are small in numbers and in extent of territory ? Grant 
i t ; yet they are large enough and have existed long 
enough to illustrate the principle that republicanism is 



IO A Brief History of Religion. 

congenial with the Catholic religion and at home in a 
Catholic population. Then, again, we have the Italiari 
republics in Catholic ages—those of Venice, Pisa, Genoa, 
Milan, Florence, Padua, Bologna. In fact, there were no 
less than two hundred republics spread over the fair land 
of Italy. The principal Italian cities may be regarded as 
model republics. Some were founded in the ninth, others 
in the tenth or eleventh century, and lasted several hun-
dred years. Venice stood one thousand years and more. 
The Swiss republic was founded in mediaeval times, and 
counts among its heroes and martyrs of political liberty 
William Tell, Arnold von Winkelried, and Andrew Hofer; 
all faithful sons of the Catholic Church. The republics 
in South America, though rather quarrelsome, are at least 
the growth of a population altogether Catholic. How else 
can we explain that the love of liberty and popular insti-
tutions should spring up spontaneously and exclusively on 
Catholic soil, unless it be that republicanism and the 
Catholic Church have one cómmon root ? 

From this point of view it is a matter of no surprise 
that Catholics were the first to proclaim religious freedom 
among the original colonists, and were also among the 
first and stanchest patriots in the war for independence. 
None will be found among the signers of the Declaration 
of Independence whose position in society and wealth 
were equal to those of Charles Carroll, the intelligent, 
sincere, and fervent Catholic layman. T h e priest who 
became the first bishop and first archbishop in the hier-
archy of the Catholip Church in the United States was 
the intimate friend of Benjamin Franklin, and, an associ-
ate with him, invited by Congress to engage the Canadi-
ans to be neutral if they were not ready to join their 
efforts for independence. Washington, with his charac-
teristic impartiality, publicly acknowledged at the close of 
the war the patriotic part which Catholics as a class had 
taken in the great struggle for liberty. No one can 



A Brief History of Religion. .21 

appreciate the depth of conviction and the strength of 
affection of Catholics for republican institutions unless he 
sees, as they do, the same order of truths which serve as 
the foundation of his religious belief underlying, as their 
support, the free institutions of his country. T h e doc-
trines of the Catholic Church alone give to popular rights, 
and governments founded thereupon, an intellectual basis, 
and furnish their vital principle. What a Catholic believes 
as a member of the Catholic Church he believes as a 
citizen of the Republic. His religion consecrates his 
political convictions, and this consecration imparts a two-
fold strength to his patriotism. 

What a Catholic believes as a citizen of the Republic 
he believes as a member of the Catholic Church ; and 
as the natural supports and strengthens the supernatural, 
this accounts for the universally acknowledged fact that 
no Catholics are more, sincere in their religious belief, 
more loyal to the authority of the Church, more generous 
in her support, than the Catholic republican citizens of 
the United States. Catholicity in religion sanctions re-
publicanism in politics, and republicanism in politics 
favors Catholicity in religion. 

Their relationship is so intimate and vital that no 
attack can be made against the Church which is not 
equally a blow against the Republic. T h e animus of the 
American Protective Association is hostility to the Catho-
lic Church, and its principles are in direct contradiction 
to the American bill of rights, and its policy is a fla-
grant violation of that religious, civil, and political liberty 
guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States. 

T h e first amendment of the Constitution says that " C o n -
gress shall make no law respecting an establishment of re-
ligion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." 

Let it, then, be clearly understood that what we main-
tain is that "the common aim of all legitimate political 
government is the security of man's natural rights ; that 



IO A Brief History of Religion. 

the American Republic is most distinctly founded on this 
common basis ; that the Catholic interpretation of Chris-
tianity emphatically sanctions its declaration of these 
rights, and as the natural and supernatural spring from 
one and the same divine source, " and God cannot deny 
himself, nor one truth ever contradict another" (Vat-
ican Council, " De Fide et R a t i o n e " ) , it follows that 
the Republic and the Catholic Church can never in 
their normal action, if intelligence reigns, clash, but, 
by a necessary law of their existence, mutually aid, ad-
vance, and complete each other. A citizen of the Ameri-
can Republic who understands himself is all the more 
loyal to the Republic because he is a Catholic, and all the 
better Catholic because he is loyal to the Republic. For 
the doctrines of the Catholic Church alone furnish him 
with the principles which enable him to make a synthesis 
between republicanism and Christianity. - -

T h e increase of Catholics in the United States has 
been due almost altogether to immigration; and when 
immigration diminishes will not her progress cease ? T h e 
number of immigrants may fall short of what it has been, 
but still,'for good reasons, it will continue to be large; 
for the liberty which is enjoyed under popular institutions, 
and the material advantages which the country offers to 
settlers, especially in its cheap and fertile lands, are in-
ducements that will suffice of themselves to attract large 
numbers to its shores. The millions of immigrants set-
tled in the Republic as their home and their country act 
as an attractive force to their relatives, friends, and formei 
countrymen. T h e desire to escape the almost insupport-
able btifden of military service by forced conscriptions, 
oeeasiotfed by frequent wars and by the dangers from 
rival nationalities continually looming with threatening 
aspect on the political horizon, will drive large numbers 
in the prime and vigor of manhood to a country that has 
no standing army to speak of, and whose geographical 



A Brief History of Religion. .21 

position renders it free from all threatening dangers to 
its peace. Last and not least of the causes bearing on 
this point are religious persecutions. These have sent 
large numbers, thanks especially to Prince Bismarck, to 
the land of religious toleration. For these- and other cau-
ses, from Ireland, Germany, and other countries of Europe 
will flow a continuous stream of immigrants to the United 
States. And as three-fifths of Europe retain the Catholic 
faith (omitting to count the promise of a greater increase 
from its Catholic population for which there are special 
reasons), the Catholic Church in the United States may 
rely on having, relatively at least, her share in the future 
immigrants. 

No vessel sails without backwater, and this is true of 
the bark of the Church. Her counter-current has been 
in the number of her children who have strayed from her 
fold on account of the insufficiency of priests, churches, 
and the means for their religious instruction; and, again, 
the increased death-rate of the children of foreign parent-
age, occasioned for the most part by reason of poverty. 
A s to the first drawback, the number of priests, church-
es, schools, these are in the larger settled States ap-
proaching to the needs of the faithful. T h e vocations to 
the priesthood in the most settled dioceses, we are in-
formed, do not suffice for their wants. 

But it is not only in branches of industry that Catho-
lics have become prominent; there will be found among 
the distinguished merchants, bankers, judges, legislators, 
inventors, officers of the regular army, professors in col-
leges, literary and scientific men, members of the Catholic 
Church, and in all these classes Catholics are gaming, 
proportionately, representatives of their faith. 

This prosperity and elevation have also their effect 
upon the material advancement of the Church. T h e 
Catholic cathedrals, both as to size and style of architec-
ture, are the most conspicuous structures in the largest 



IO A Brief History of Religion. 

cities in the United States, such as Philadelphia, Balti-
more, Boston, Cincinnati, N e w Orleans, Buffalo, Newark, 
Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Albany, Rochester^ Columbus, Mo-
bile, Portland. Preparations are being made for the con-
struction of cathedrals, or cathedrals are actually being 
built, in other populous cities—in Brooklyn, St. Louis. 
That of N e w Y o r k has, as becomes the metropolis ot 
the Union, no rival in size, in costliness of material, and 
in architectural character on the continent of America. 

T h e Catholic Church in the Republic finds her strength 
in relying for her material support upon the piety of the 
faithful, and the spirit and generosity with which all 
classes of her children respond to this test of the sincerity 
of their faith is an example which has a meaning at this 
moment for the whole Christian world. Socially and po-
litically Catholics are slowly taking the rank to which 
their education, virtue, wealth, and numbers entitle them 
among the prominent forces of the Republic, and the light 
which their, religion throws upon its vital principles and 
its Constitution will make them conspicuous as intelligent 
and patriotic citizens. 

T h e future of the United States belongs, under God, 
to that religion which, by its conscious possession of 
truth and by the indwelling Spirit of divine love, shall 
succeed in bringing the American people to unity in their 
religious belief and action, as they are actually one in the 
political sense. It would be the utter despair of reason 
to suppose that truth cannot b e known with certitude, 
and it is the virtual denial of God to question His readi-
ness to fill the hearts of all men with His love. T h e 
thought that the existing wranglings in religion are to go 
on and increase for ever can only enter base minds and 
satisfy vulgar -souls. 

Admitting, then, all that has been said as true, it may 
be added that as the faith of the greater part of Catholics 
who come here from abroad rests on a traditional and 



42 A Brief History of Religion. .21 
historical basis almost exclusively; conceding that this 
traditional faith will be firm enough to keep its hold upon 
the immigrants and retain them in the fold of the Church 
until death—granting all this, the question starts up for-
cibly here: But will not the Catholic faith, under the 
influence of republicanism, lose its hold in one or two, or 
at most in three, generations on their children ? 

It is too obvious to admit of denial that a people born 
and educated under the influence of popular institutions 
will tend to exalt reason, and emphasize the positive in-
stincts of human nature, and be apt to look upon the 
intrinsic reason of things as the only criterion of truth. 
It is equally clear that the Catholic Church, if she is to 
keep within her fold those who have received her bap-
tism, and to captivate an intelligent and energetic people 
like the Americans, will have to receive their challenge 
and be ready to answer satisfactorily the problems of 
reason; meet fully the demands of the needs of their 
spiritual nature; bless and sanctify the imagination and 
senses and all man's God-given instincts. And while an-
swering the most energetic and sublime intelligence at the 
bar of reason, she will have to know how to retain her sweet 
and gentle hold on the tenderest affections of the child. 

T h i s task will not be an arduous one; for the authori-
tative teachings of the Catholic Church maintain, the na-
tural order as the basis of the supernatural, and, in the 
minds of many of the class of which we speak, Catholic-
ity is still identified with Calvinism. . Hence they do 
themselves the injustice to believe that in rejecting Cal-
vinism they have also rejected Christianity altogether. 
They are not aware that the truths on which they based 
their rejection of Calvinism are affirmed by Catholicity. 
What they did in their repudiation of Calvinism—and 
Calvinism is nothing else but the logical basis of the 
dogmas of Protestantism—was only a repetition of the 
anathemas of the fathers of the Council of Trent, and 



IO A Brief History of Religion. 

their action at bottom w a s founded mainly on the'same 
reasons. They have abjured Protestantism, and never 
can be led to g o back to what they know to be hostile 
to the genius of their country, contrary to the dictates of 
reason, and repugnant to their holiest affections. Its 
promised heaven has lost for them all attractions; its 
hell no longer excites any fear in their bosoms; and its 
ministers openly confess that, as a religious system, Protes-
tantism fails to exercise any authority over the minds, or 
to exert any influence on the conduct, of the majority of 
the American people. It demands from them a crippling 
of their nature and a sacrifice of its rights which, once 
its thraldom has been broken, nothing can restore. These 
minds have impeached Protestantism on Catholic grounds, 
and when they have been led to see that, their prejudices 
against Christianity will be removed and they will be 
willing to complete their task. 

They cannot rest content where they are, for the hu-
man mind was made by its Creator for truth, and in the 
absence of truth it ceases to live. When' it refuses its 
assent to truth it is either because the truth has been 
travestied and made to appear as false, or because it is 
seen through a colored medium. For the intellect is 
powerless to reject the truth when seen as the truth. It 
is not in the search after truth, but in the tranquil posses-
sion of truth and appropriation of it by contemplation, 
that man finds the fullest and purest joy. Man craves to 
know the enigma of life, and until this is known his 
intelligence cannot be wholly content with the investiga-
tion of bugs, or baffled by a word which contains a 
sound and nothing more—the "unknowable." 

Moreover, the American mind in one aspect is unlike 
the European, in that infidelity, scepticism, materialism, 
and atheism cannot find a lodgment in it for any length 
of time. Their minds, like the native soil of their country, 
have something virginal, and furnish no nourishment for 



A Brief History of Religion. .21 

these-poisonous weeds, which, failing to take root, soon 
wither. There is a profound reason for this, and it will 
bear explanation. T h e reason may be found here : the 
denial of any one truth, carried out to its logical conse-
quences, involves the denial of all truth. T h e so-called 
Reformers of the sixteenth century began by denying 
the supernatural origin of the divine institution of the 
Church, and by force of logical sequence proceeded 
to the denial of its divine authority, and thus by pro-
gression to the denial of all supernatural truth; thence 
the denial descended to philosophy, to politics, to the en-
tire natural order of truth, and finally to the denial of 
Him from whom proceeds all truth, ending in its logical 
termination—atheism. T h e dominant intellectual tendency 
of Europe has, during these last three centuries, followed 
the law of negative sequence of error to its ultimate 
logical conclusion. 

On the other hand, the affirmation of any one truth, 
logically followed out, leads to the knowledge and affirma-
tion of all truth. T h e American Republic began afresh 
in the last century by the declaration of -certain evident 
truths of reason. T h e law of its progression consists in 
tracing these truths out to their logical connection with 
all other truths, and finally coming to the knowledge of 
all truth, both in the natural and supernatural order, end-
ing in the affirmation of universal truth and the union 
with the source of all truth—God. T h e dominant ten-
dency of the American people is towards the law of the 
positive sequence of truth. T h e course of Europe was 
that of negation ; the course of the United States was 
that of affirmation. T h e first was destructive ; the second 
was constructive. T h e one was degrading ; the other was 
ïlevating. That bred dissension ; this created union. Eu-
rope, under the lead of the religious revolution of the 
sixteenth century, turned its back on Catholicity and en-
tered upon the downward road that ends in death; the 



IO A Brief History of Religion. 

Republic of the United States, in affirming man's natural 
rights, started in the eighteenth century with its face to 
Catholicity, and is in the ascending way of life to God. 

From this point of view the, Declaration of American 
Independence has a higher meaning, and it may be said 
to be the turning-point in history from a negation to an 
affirmation of truth: interpreting democracy not as a 
downward but as an upward movement, and placing po-
litical society anew on the road to the fulfilment of its 
divine destiny. 

Christianity, like republicanism, has in the last analysis 
nothing else to rely upon for its reception and success 
than reason and conscience and the innate powers of hu-
man nature, graciously aided as they always a r e ; and let 
it once be shown that the Catholic interpretation of 
Christianity is consonant with, the dictates of human rea-
son, in accordance with man's normal feelings, favorable 
to the highest conceptions of man's dignity, and that it 
presents to his intelligence a destiny which awakens the 
uttermost action and devotion of all his powers, and you 
have opened the door to the American people for the re-
ception of the complete evidence of the claims of the 
Catholic Church, and prepared the way for the universal 
acceptance of her divine character. 

There is a general conviction abroad that the people's 
share in the government of a nation ought to be enlarged. 
It must be admitted that the American Republic has con-
tributed not a little to form and support this conviction. 
But the principles of the Republic are not like those of an 
Utopia in the air; they are fixedly rooted in the ground 
of reason and revealed truth. If the framers of the R e -
public set aside certain privileges and institutions inherit-
ed from pagan, barbaric, or feudal times, it was not to 
break with the past, but because these things were un-
serviceable to a people with the spirit and in the circum-
stances of the colonists. Besides, they were no less 



A Brief History of Religion. .21 

inharmonious with the more rational ideas of equity due 
to Christian influences; and by their omission the found-
ers of the Republic providentially advanced political govern-
ment, at least for a people situated as the American 
people were. 

When the nature of the American Republic is better 
understood, and the exposition of Christianity is shaped 
in the light of its universal principles so as to suit the 
peculiarities of the American mind, the Catholic Church 
will not only keep her baptized American children in her 
fold, but will at the same time remove the prejudices ex-
isting in the minds of a large class of non-Catholics, and 
the dangers apprehended from the influence of republi-
canism will be turned into fresh evidences of the Church's 
divine character. 

T o sum up: He who does not see the hand of Divine 
Providence leading to the discovery of the western conti-
nent, and directing its settlement and subsequent events 
towards a more complete application to political society 
of the universal truths affirmed alike by human reason 
and Christianity, will fail to interpret rightly and ade-
quately the history of the United States. It is also true 
that he who sees Heaven's hand in these events, and 
fails to see that Christ organized a body of men to guard 
and teach these universal truths to mankind, with the 
promise of his presence to the end of the world, will fail 
to interpret rightly and adequately the history o f - t h e 
Catholic Church, and is like a man who sees the light 
but has his back turned to the sun. But he who sees all 
this will not fail to see that the Republic and the Catholic 
Church, under the same divine guidance, are working to-
gether in the United States, forming the various races of 
men and nationalities into a homogeneous people, and by 
their united action giving a bright promise of a broader 
and higher development of man than has been heretofore 
accomplished. 







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