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sighed and prayed, and toward which the pagan sages had stretched forth their hands with eager longing, arose and shone unto them" that sat in the darkness and the shadow of death." The truth concerning our Creator, which had hitherto been hidden in Judea, that there it might be sheltered from the world-wide idolatry, was now proclaimed, and in far greater clearness and fulness into the whole world. Jesus Christ taught all mankind to know one true God-a God existing from eternity to eternity, a God who created all things by His power, who governs all things by His wisdom, and whose superintending Providence watches over the affairs of nations as well as of men, "without whom not even a sparrow falls to the ground.' He proclaimed a God infinitely holy, just, and merciful. This idea of the Deity so consonant to our rational conceptions was in striking contrast with the low and sensual notions which the pagan world had formed of its divinities.

The religion of Christ imparts to us not only a sublime conception of God, but also a rational idea of man and of his relations to his Creator. Before the coming of Christ, man was a riddle and a mystery to himself. He knew not whence he came, nor whither he was going. He was groping in the dark. All he knew for certain was that he was passing through a brief phase of existence. The past and future were enveloped in a mist which the light of philosophy was unable to penetrate. Our Redeemer has dispelled the cloud and enlightened us regarding our origin and destiny and the means of attaining it. He has rescued man from the frightful labyrinth of error in which Paganism had involved him.

The Gospel of Christ as propounded by the Catholic Church has brought, not only light to the intellect, but comfort also to the heart. It has given us "that peace of God which surpasseth all understanding," the peace which springs from the conscious possession of truth. It has taught us how to enjoy that triple peace which constitutes true happiness, as far as it is attainable in this life-peace with God by the observance of His commandments, peace with our neighbor by the exercise of charity and justice toward him, and peace with ourselves by repressing our inordinate appetites, and keeping our passions subject to

the law of reason, and our reason illumined and controlled by the law of God.

All other religious systems prior to the advent of Christ were national, like Judaism, or State religions, like Paganism. The Catholic religion alone is world-wide and cosmopolitan, embracing all races and nations and peoples and tongues. Christ alone, of all religious founders, had the courage to say to His disciples: "Go, teach all nations. Preach the Gospel to every creature. You shall be witness to me in Judea and Samaria, and even to the uttermost bounds of the earth. Be not restrained in your mission by national or State lines. Let my gospel be as free and universal as the air of heaven. The earth is the Lord's and the fulness thereof. All mankind are the children of my father and my brethren. I have died for all, and embrace all in my charity. Let the whole human race be your audience, and the world be the theatre of your labors!"

It is this recognition of the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of Christ that has inspired the Catholic Church in her mission of love and benevolence. This is the secret of her all-pervading charity. This idea has been her impelling motive in her work of the social regeneration of mankind. "I behold," she says, "in every human creature a child of God and a brother or a sister of Christ, and therefore I will protect helpless infancy and decrepit old age. I will feed the orphan and nurse the sick. I will strike the shackles from the feet of the slave, and will rescue degraded woman from the moral bondage and degradation to which her own frailty and the passions of the stronger sex had consigned her."

Montesquieu has well said that the religion of Christ, which was instituted to lead men to eternal life, has contributed more than any other institution to promote the temporal and social happiness of mankind. The object of this Parliament of Religions is to present to the thoughtful, earnest, and inquiring minds the respective claims of the various religions, with the view that they would "prove all things, and hold that which is good," by embracing that religion which above all others commends itself to their judgment and conscience. I am not engaged in this search for the truth, for, by the grace of God,

I am conscious that I have found it, and instead of hiding this treasure in my own breast, I long to share it with others, especially as I am none the poorer in making others the richer. But, for my part, were I occupied in this investigation, much as I would be drawn toward the Catholic Church by her admirable unity of faith which binds together in common worship two hundred and fifty million souls, much as I would be attracted toward her by her sublime moral code, by her world-wide catholicity and by that unbroken chain of apostolic succession which connects her indissolubly with apostolic times, I could be drawn still more forcibly toward her by that wonderful system of organized benevolence which she has established for the alleviation and comfort of suffering humanity.

Let us briefly review what the Catholic Church has done for the elevation and betterment of humanity:

I. The Catholic Church has purified society in its very fountain, which is the marriage bond. She has invariably proclaimed the unity and sanctity and indissolubility of the marriage tie by saying with her founder that: "What God hath joined together, let no man put asunder." Wives and mothers never forget that the inviolability of the marriage contract is the palladium of your womanly dignity and of your Christian religion. And if you are no longer the slaves of man and the toy of his caprice, like the wives of Asiatic countries, but the peers and partners of your husbands; if you are no longer tenants at will, like the wives of pagan Greece and Rome, but the mistresses of your households; if you are no longer confronted by uprising rivals, like Mohammedan and Mormon wives, but are the queens of domestic kingdoms, you are indebted for this priceless boon to the ancient Church, and particularly to the Roman pontiffs who inflexibly upheld the sacredness of the nuptial bond against the arbitrary power of kings, the lust of nobles, and the lax and pernicious legislation of city governments.

II. The Catholic religion has proclaimed the sanctity of human life as soon as the body is animated with the vital spark. Infanticide was a dark stain on pagan civilization. It was universal in Greece with the exception of Thebes. It was sanctified and even sometimes enjoined

by such eminent Greeks as Plato and Aristotle, Solon, and Lycurgus. The destruction of infants was also very common among the Romans. Nor was there any legal check to this inhuman crime, except at rare intervals. The father had the power of life and death over his child. And as an evidence that human nature does not improve with time and is everywhere the same, unless it is permeated with the leaven of Christianity, the wanton sacrifice of infant life is probably as general to-day in China and other heathen countries as it was in ancient Greece and Rome. The Catholic Church has sternly set her face against this exposure and murder of innocent babes. She has denounced it as a crime more revolting than that of Herod, because committed against one's own flesh and blood. She has condemned with equal energy the atrocious doctrine of Malthus, who suggested unnatural methods for diminishing the population of the human family. Were I not restrained by the fear of offending modesty and of imparting knowledge where "ignorance is bliss,' I would dwell more at length on the social plague of antenatal infanticide, which is insidiously and systematically spreading among us, in defiance of civil penalties and of the Divine law which says: "Thou shalt not kill."

III. There is no phase of human misery for which the Church does not provide some remedy or alleviation. She has established infant asylums for the shelter of helpless babes who have been cruelly abandoned by their own parents, or bereft of them in the mysterious dispensations of Providence before they could know and feel a mother's love. These little waifs, like the infant Moses drifting in the turbid Nile, are rescued from an untimely death and are tenderly raised by the daughters of the Great King, those consecrated virgins who become nursing mothers to them. And I have known more than one such motherless babe, who, like Israel's law-giver in after years, became a leader among his people.

IV. As the church provides homes for those yet on the threshold of life, so, too, does she secure retreats for those on the threshold of death. She has asylums in which aged men and women find at one and the same time a refuge in their old age from the storms of life and a novitiate to prepare them for eternity. Thus, from the cradle to

the grave, she is a nursing mother. She rocks her children in the cradle of infancy, and she soothes them to rest on the couch of death. Louis XIV erected in Paris the famous Hotel des Invalides for the veterans of France who had fought in the service of their country. And so has the Catholic religion provided for those who have been disabled in the battle of life, a home in which they are tenderly nursed in their declining years by devoted sisters. The Little Sisters of the Poor, whose congregation was founded in 1840, have now charge of over two hundred and fifty establishments in different parts of the globe, the aged inmates of those houses numbering thirty thousand, upward of seventy thousand having died under their care up to 1889. To these asylums are welcomed, not only the members of the Catholic religion, but those also of every form of Christian faith, and even those without any faith at all. The Sisters make no distinction of person, or nationality, or color, or creed-for true charity embraces all. The only question proposed by the Sisters to the applicant for shelter is this: Are you oppressed by age and penury? If so, come to us and we will provide for you.

V. She has orphan asylums where children of both sexes are reared and taught to become useful and worthy members of society.

VI. Hospitals were unknown to the pagan world before the coming of Christ. The copious vocabularies of Greece and Rome had no word even to express the term. The Catholic Church has hospitals for the treatment and cure of every form of disease. She sends her daughters of charity and mercy to the battle-field and to the plaguestricken city. During the Crimean War I remember to have read of a Sister who was struck dead by a ball while she was in the act of stooping down and bandaging the wound of a fallen soldier. Much praise was then deservedly bestowed on Florence Nightingale for her devotion to the sick and wounded soldiers. Her name resounded in both hemispheres. But in every Sister you have a Florence Nightingale, with this difference-that, like ministering angels, they move without noise along the path of duty, and like the angel Raphael, who concealed his name from Tobias, the Sister hides her name from the world.

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