Great Britain can date her preeminence only from 1763, and the United States only from 1848, the peace of Guadeloupe Hidalgo, at the conclusion of the Mexican war, by which we acquired New Mexico and California. Before the peace of 1763, the superiority, even in material civilization, was on the side of Catholic Europe, as it may be again during the lifetime of some now living. Austria is preparing to become a great maritime power; Italy and Greece are in a fair way of regaining their former commercial importance; Spain shows a wonderful recuperative energy, and is rapidly recovering her industrial and commercial importance; and should Great Britain in the next maritime war lose her naval supremacy, which France is even now in a position to dispute, she would lose her industrial and commercial supremacy. We say not that it will be so; we say not that we even wish it to be so; but we do say stranger things have happened, and may happen again. We have great confidence in the energy, in the strength, and the pluck of the English people; but no man can say the present position of Great Britain is not more or less precarious, and that she has not to struggle with formidable enemies, if not formidable odds to maintain it. She may fall, as fell Tyre and Carthage, as fell Venice and Genoa, Spain and Portugal, Holland and Sweden, and if she does, what becomes of the Protestant argument? An argument which has only a few years support in the past, very little in the present, and may have none to-morrow, cannot have much weight with thinking men, or be urged with confidence in its conclusiveness.

If abstraction be made of all that directly or indirectly pertains to the moral order, we cannot be indisposd to award the superiority at the present moment to the non-Catholic nations of what is called Christendom. We are willing to concede, also, that Catholicity does tend more than Protestantism in those who embrace it, to moderate devotion to the world, and the desire for mere material greatness and prosperity, and in our judgment it would not be worthy of the slightest respect, if it did not. It would ill-deserve the

love and veneration in which we hold it, if it placed no check on the ambition of princes, imposed no restraint upon the fraud and cupidity of traders, and did nothing to make Catholic populations feel that there is something besides this world worth living for, and that, after all, it is far more important to be rich in the virtues which ensure eternal life than this world's goods. "Blessed are the poor in spirit," said our Lord, and, "How hardly shall they who have riches be saved? Verily, I say unto you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven." It would be sad to think that these words have no effect on Catholics, who believe them to be words spoken by God himself. We should expect to find a Catholic population more engrossed with spiritual than with temporal things, and more anxious to make sure of heaven than of earth. Nevertheless, in the purely material order, we are not prepared to say that Protestant nations owe what superiority they have to their religion, save in so far as it leaves them free from all regard for heaven, and from all sense of moral obligation. It is to the fate of wars, to the disasters of internal revolutions, and to the discovery of new routes of commerce, and other changes to which all nations are more or less liable, that we should ascribe it.

Not only has Dr. Manahan sought to give a briefer and more conclusive answer to the Protestant argument drawn from the comparison of civilization in Catholic, with that in Protestant nations, than the one given by Balmes in his great work, but he has endeavored to account for the existence in Protestant States of that regard for the poor, the infirm, the afflicted, that you never find in Gentile, or even Mahometan nations. The mass of the Protestant world, no doubt, as regards the world to come, are very much in the condition of the ancient Gentile nations. They cannot be assumed to live in Christ, and to have the promise of the supernatural reward promised to the true Christian who perseveres to the end; they have, we must fear, forfeited, even in case they have been baptized, their

birthright; or, like Esau, sold it for a mess of pottage. But they retain their nature, as did the ancient Gentiles, and are capable of the natural virtues, as all men are, or else we could not call them natural virtues. Now in these Protestant nations we find a spirit of humanity, a generous sympathy with the unfortunate, a tenderness for the afflicted, a sentiment of justice, a respect for the rights of men and of nations,-if far below what they should be,that we find in no ancient Gentile nation. Whence this fact? Are we to accuse them of insincerity, of hypocrisy, or of acting by calculation from mere selfish motives? Not at all. We need not suppose the English are wholly insincere in their opposition to slavery and the slave trade, although we need just as little suppose no pride or selfishness mingles with their philanthropy; we need not doubt that she mingles much real disinterestedness in her efforts to improve her legislation, to reform prison discipline, to dif fuse generous sentiments, and defend the cause of popular freedom. We may say as much of our own non-Catholic countrymen. Alms-houses, public hospitals, houses of reformation, homes of the friendless, societies for the relief of the poor, and the thousand and one other associations wisely or unwisely directed, effecting or not effecting these ends, founded and supported by our non-Catholic countrymen, are not mere calculations of interest; and they are, to a great extent, the offspring of disinterested tenderness, of genuine humanity. True, they are not, strictly speaking, Christian, and are no more than men can do, if they choose, by their own natural light and strength. How happens it, then, that we find none of these things among the ancient Gentiles? Simply, our author maintains, because they are, though in the natural order, the effect of the education the modern nations have received from the Church; modern civilization lies in the natural order, it is true, but even in non-Catholic nations within its pale, it is Catholic, in the sense that it has been developed and grown up under Catholic influences. It has not, indeed, been baptized and taken up into the supernatural order, but it has been

fostered by the Church, and moulded to a certain extent after her image, so that what in these nations themselves places them really in advance of the ancient Gentiles, they owe to the Church, and are most ungrateful when they boast it against her. The argument is a good one. Nature is the same in both, and if the modern Protestant surpasses the ancient Gentile in the natural moral order, as he undoubtedly does, he owes it, for he can owe it to nothing else, to the changes in civilization effected by the Church, or the new principles of love, tenderness, and humanity, developed by Catholicity even in human nature itself.

On the other hand, the Catholics need not make war on the principle of these various philanthropic movements outside of the Catholic body, or in any way oppose them, unless they take a direction hostile to the rights and interests of Catholicity. As the learned author has said elsewhere, "Nature is not good for nothing." It is good for nothing by itself alone, without the grace of Christ, in reference to salvation, for in no sense can we by any natural virtue merit the grace of conversion. The man who remains in the state of nature, unborn by the grace of regeneration into the supernatural order, has no more title to heaven if he keep than if he break every precept of the Decalogue; and we cannot say that he is any more or less likely to receive, that grace in the one case than in the other. There is sometimes a disposition in now and then a Catholic, to regard those who have been brought by conversion into the Church, in mature life, as having been in some way, better or less sinful than those with whom they were brought up. It may sometimes be so, and we know it is sometimes not so; and no one can regard his conversion in any sense as due to his natural merit; yet a man who keeps in the main the whole law of nature, deserves less punishment than he who breaks it; and even if he die unconverted will suffer less, for he has fewer actual sins to be punished for. But in the order of nature, non-Catholics may perform works which, though they do not merit heaven, are good in that order, and ought never to be slighted by

the Catholic. More especially is this the case when, though they have rejected her authority, they have been under the tuition of the Church, and are still more or less influenced by her example and the memory of her lessons. In this fact, since nature, though below, is not, unless by abnormal development, against Catholicity, there is a basis of community of action between Catholics and non-Catholics, and so long as non-Catholics do nothing against the Catholic religion, that is to say, against the Christian supernatural order, Catholics can coöperate with them in politics, in benevolent enterprises, and in works of philanthropy, if they see proper. The benevolent associations in our cities, for the relief of the poor, to supply food, clothing, and fuel to the needy, or to save the orphans from ignorance and vice, if they respect the religion of Catholics, and do not seek to detach them from their faith; or, in case of children, do not aim to withdraw them from Catholic influences, and bring them up in a non-Catholic religion, or in no religion at all,—may receive, without any violation of Catholic principle, the support of Catholics. Unhappily we find, for the most part, in these associations more Protestant zeal than natural benevolence; or at least a feeling that it is necessary for their worldly respectability and well-being in this life to withdraw our children who need assistance from Catholic influences, and to prevent from being brought up in the religion of their parents. This compels us often to assume towards them an attitude of hostility, when otherwise we would heartily join in them.

Still in nations that have once been Catholic, though now far gone in heresy, we find always a benevolence, a regard for human life, a tenderness towards the sick and infirm, a respect for the rights of the poorer and more numerous classes, that we find in no purely Gentile nation ancient or modern. It is true we find as those nations remain longer outside of the Catholic communion, and plunge deeper and deeper into heresy, they fall back nearer and nearer to the moral condition of the ancient Gentiles, and reproduce more and more of the ancient Gentile vices and