feriority of Romanists in education, and consequently in social standing; in the higher schools throughout the German States the relative proportion attending being given as one Catholic to two Protestants. Nothing can be more disastrous to a cause, however venerable, than this failure to keep pace with the growing enlightenment of the times; for every church will, in the long run, have to take account of this increasing intelligence.' If it is supposed that this decline on the continent of the Old World is more than balanced by the gains in England and the New, Dr. Dorchester's volume on "The Problem of Religious Progress," will speedily dispel any such illusion. He proves that "Roman Catholicism has not been progressive in England for about a quarter of a century." The Oxford movement had practically been arrested by 1875,-that is, at least, so far as numerous secessions from the Anglican Church to Romanism is concerned; and yet, with the influx of wealth and distinguished people during the first half of the century, the Catholics in England barely numbered a million in 1877.2 Dr. Dorchester also shows that, in the various provinces that make up the Dominion of Canada, the Romanist communion has been relatively losing and not gaining. The situation may be summed up in the sentence: "Instead of only ten Protestants to sixty-five Romanists, as in 1765, there are now twenty-six Protestant to nineteen Roman Catholics."3 And in the United States, the increase of Roman Catholics has not equaled the number of Catholic immigrants from beyond the sea. The Roman Catholic 1 See London "Spectator," Oct. 21, 1899, p. 564. 3 Ibid., p. 550. immigrants from all countries, and their offspring during the past forty years, must have amounted to full ten millions, making no account of those here prior to 1880 and their descendants. But their Year-Book for 1891 gives the total Catholic population, eight million five hundred and seventy-nine thousand nine hundred and sixty-six,' illustrating the common impression that "this country is the biggest grave for popery ever dug on earth." This survey may fittingly be closed with a few suggestive figures, which demonstrate that, however wonderful and extensive the renaissance of medieval Catholicism may have been, it has not progressed so amazingly as the Reformation has advanced from the sixteenth century to the dawning of the twentieth : "Romanism, starting in the year 1500 on a basis of about eighty millions, has not quite doubled, while the total population of Europe has increased three-and-ahalf-fold, and Protestantism, starting nominally from unity, has gained eighty-seven million nine hundred and twenty-five thousand one hundred and thirty-nine, which is thirteen million three hundred and fifty-six thousand nine hundred and eighty more than the total gain of Romanism."2 Thus, then, we have reached the existing boundaries of romanticism in modern religion. We have followed its rise in our times, have traced its advance, and have been brought to what seems to be its limitations. Whether these will ever be passed, it is not easy to foresee, and certainly it would not be wise, without additional light, to predict. Classicism in the beautiful 1 See London "Spectator," Oct. 21, 1899, pp. 584–5. gardens of the Medici at Florence, fostering philosophy, poetry, and art, may ambitiously have anticipated a day when the entire world would be governed by its ideals and spirit; and yet its children and heroes, Poliziano, Filippo, Brunelleschi, Michelangelo, Rustici, Donatello, Francesco Bandini, and the other celebrated men who rendered famous the villa at Careggi, appeared upon the scene, wrought their work, faded from human vision, while the leafy groves withered and the cause they represented lost much of its unique and distinctive character. But while the literary renaissance found its limitations and was to be modified and generalized by other tendencies, there was much that it denoted and more that it produced of priceless value, which was destined to survive and permanently to influence the course of civilization. Thus it may be with the modern revival of Catholicism. Its special forms, its peculiar institutions, its stereotyped expressions, its narrowing theories of religion, and its provincialism scarcely hidden under its clamorous asseverations of universality, may go the way of other perishable elements; and yet it may bequeath to the coming ages exalted conceptions and ennobling examples. Succeeding generations may translate its materialistic and sensuous speech into the language of spirit; and in the transformation there may rise to bless mankind a sublimer type of Christianity than pontiffs in their imaginings of world-wide dominion. ever painted, or ecclesiastics in their most elaborate and gorgeous ceremonials ever dreamed of symbolizing. IV THE SEERS AND SAGES Are there no wrongs of nations to redress; -T. L. Harris |