A KENTUCKY woman who opposes the renomination of Col. W. C. P. Breckinridge for Congress, has written a letter “To the Men and Women of the Blue Grass,” in which she says: “What we need from the Ashland district is a clean, pure man, with brains enough to know that it is a man’s actions and not his religious twaddle that make for righteousness, and not brains enough to fool a whole community for half a century into thinking him a Christian gentleman when he is directly the reverse.” This is unkind to National Reform, the stock in trade, of which is high profession; not that many engaged in this movement are not highly moral men, but they are—unwittingly, it is true, but none the less really—doing all in their power to commit the whole nation to a course of hypocrisy similar to that pursued by the father of the Breckinridge Sunday bill. To dub the nation “Christian” will no more make it such than did years of false profession make a Christian gentleman of the “hero” of the worst scandal that has ever shocked Washington society.
IT is stated that Cardinal Gibbons has received a letter from the pope “couched in very affectionate terms,” inviting him to visit Rome. This he proposes to do, it is said, probably before the close of the present year. It is supposed that the pope wishes to consult the cardinal about matters of importance relative to the interests of “the church” in America. It is intimated that Satolli is to be clothed with still greater authority by the pope, and that the cardinal’s visit to Rome may have something to do with the contemplated enlarging of the powers of the papal delegate. Protestants who sneeze when papal dignitaries take snuff, will of course feel flattered that the pope is paying so much attention to this country; but others will watch to see what new phase of the popish conspiracy against American institutions will unfold next. It will not be forgotten that according to the pope himself, “what the church has done in the past for others she will do for the United States;” and until this dire threat has been retracted Americans cannot feel otherwise than apprehensive, and start at every new evidence of the pope’s affection for, and interest in, this country.
THE New York Observer has this to say about how Sunday is observed by Roman Catholics in Japan:—
The Romanists in Japan have a special dispensation from the pope, allowing them to labor half of the Sabbath day and attend to their religious services the other half. But in spite of these concessions, Romanism does not receive the favor given Protestantism. A half-breed religion wins no one’s respect. Even the Japanese can see through the hollow sham which the pope offers them and despise it.
Why should the Japanese “see through the hollow sham which the pope offers them and despise it,” any more than so-called Protestants in other countries? It seems that the Japanese take only half of this papal sham—a false Sabbath—while the Observer, and with it nearly all the Protestant world, has greedily swallowed the whole of it, even though warned by Rome herself that it rests only on the authority of the church, and that the Protestants have no right to any part of it.
But if the Japanese are to accept Sunday at all, why not take it just as the pope gives it to them? As a “Christian” institution it was made by the papacy, and what authority other than the papacy can so well tell how it ought to be observed. The intent of the lawmakers is the law; and who better than the Roman Catholic Church can tell the meaning of her own law for the observance of the false Sabbath which she has given, not alone to her own votaries, but to the world? The Observer has in this matter of Sunday observance not a leg to stand upon in opposition to Rome. If Protestants would only teach the heathen that which the Bible says about the Sabbath, teach them to keep the Bible Sabbath instead of a base counterfeit, then might they properly criticise this dispensation granted by the pope to Japanese Catholics; but so long as they adhere to the papal day, they should keep silence as to the papal manner of observing it. Let Rome do what she will with her own.