stantly. But if they will not do the same for us, we must have our own books; that is all there is about it. And we have no desire to represent Protestants or infidels as grovelling in ignorance or laziness; we give them full credit for what they have done and are doing in the natural order, and simply insist that they shall give us credit for what we have also done; if they will not do us justice, we must do it ourselves.

We are ready to do everything that we, can, without sacrificing our most vital interests, for the convenience of all; we do not want separate schools for our children if we can in any other way, without unjust burden on ourselves, get the religious instruction for them which they need. We do not want to build up any walls between our children and others unnecessarily ; we want them to be true patriotic Americans, heart and soul devoted to the interests of the glorious nation to which they belong. But we cannot sacrifice the spiritual for the temporal, the interests of eternity for those of this world.

Try, then, to get rid of these bugbears which have been haunting the English mind for centuries about our wanting to subject this country to the Pope; these visions of armies of Jesuits, in or out of disguise, who want to control the politics of the nation for the temporal aggrandizement of the Church. We would

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like to convert you all to the Catholic faith, that is true; but we want to do so by reason and truth, not by force or trickery. And we desire your conversion for your own sake, not for any advantage it is going to bring to us. The Pope does not want any temporal power or kingdom, except so much as is needed to make him independent of the nations, so that he can freely exercise his spiritual office, without fear of interference or undue influence from any of them. He would not take the Presidency, or even the permanent sovereignty, of this or any other country, except that of which he has been unjustly deprived. He has got quite enough to attend to as it is.

What he wants, and what we all want, is simply to have in fact what all Americans have in theory; that is, freedom to worship God according to the dictates of our own conscience, as long as by so doing we do not injure the liberty or the rights of others. That is the whole matter in a nutshell, though your prejudices may make it hard for you to believe it.

CHAPTER XV.

THE VENERATION OF THE SAINTS, AND OF THEIR IMAGES.

HIS is the next article of our profession. And it is a point on which, more than any other, the Protestant mind in general entertains false notions of our creed, and consequently objects most vehemently to it.

It is even said that in order to indulge our idolatrous practices we have gone so far as to suppress the second commandment of the Decalogue, by which the worship of idols is most clearly forbidden.

It is really a wonderful thing that intelligent people should suppose that we wanted to do such a thing as this, or that we could succeed in doing it even if we wanted to. It would be a great deal more reasonable to say that we had a special edition of our own of the Constitution of the United States, which Catholic lawyers and statesmen held to be the correct Even if you will believe us to be liars and deceivers, this is too palpable a fraud.

one.

But in fact, if you will take the trouble to look into a Catholic Bible, a book to be found in every Catholic book-store, you will find, in

the same place of course as in your own (Exod. xx. 4), the words: "Thou shalt not make to thyself a graven thing, nor the likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or in the earth beneath, nor of those things that are in the waters under the earth. Thou shalt not adore them, nor serve them."

And you will find the same thing in our catechisms, large and small.

It is, however, true that in some of the smaller ones, intended only for little children, this commandment is omitted. But this is simply because it is long and hard to remember, and because it would be difficult for the very young to understand what it means. fore they get through their Sunday-school they have it all in full; it is not kept back or concealed from any Catholic.

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But in fact, even when it is omitted, the omission can hardly do harm. For really the prohibition of the worship of idols which it contains is implicitly contained in the words which go before, and which are always given in all our books, "thou shalt not have strange gods before me,' or as it stands in the Protestant version, "thou shalt have no other gods before me." And the real truth of the matter is, that Protestants have made a mistake in making two commandments out of what is really one.

The gist of this one commandment is the worship of the one true God to the exclusion of all others. And when we have the words "thou shalt not have strange gods before me "' we have idolatry completely shut out. If we cannot worship any god but the One, it is plain that we cannot take images for gods, and worship them. These words then, out of which Protestants make their second commandment, are really only a principal application of what goes before.

To compensate for the error made in dividing the first commandment into two, Protestants have been obliged to run two into one somewhere else in order to get the number ten, as it should be. They have, therefore, taken the two prohibitions at the end about coveting the neighbor's wife and his goods (which are distinct exactly in the same way as those about adultery and stealing, being the desires corresponding to these acts) and made one out of them. And because we look at the matter in a different and really more reasonable light, they jump at the conclusion that we want to get idolatry in by suppressing the prohibition of it. They take one little catechism, and that is enough to settle the matter. But I hope you see by this time that we have and teach all. this about the making of graven images just the same as you do.