Neoplatonism as a collapse, and some as a consummation. It was certainly far in advance of any school of philosophy which had ever preceded it. The doctrines and ethics of that school are far nearer the truth of our holy Christianity than are many of the dogmas and teachings of modern Rome. It is reassuring to know that our inheritance from Luther has helped to uplift these mighty Protestant nations and make them what they are and ever will be, the leaders and guides and protectors of all mankind. We should not shrink from acknowledging that we are proud of the inheritance we have received from Henry VIII. He it was who broke the yoke of priestly tyranny from the neck of Britain and thus made her future greatness possible.

Mr. Joseph Müller, a Roman Catholic writer of Bavaria, after pronouncing Protestant dogma utterly worthless, speaks out as follows:

We have, however, to remark a victorious movement of Protestantism, spite of the nothingness of its dogma, and a surprising retreat of Catholicism in all domains and in all countries. Wherever Catholicism encounters Protestantism it seems unable to cope with it. . . . In Alsace the increase of Protestants is double that of Catholics. In 1895 there were in Prussia 18,000 conversions from Catholicism to Protestantism, and only 2,000 from Protestantism to Catholicism. Worse even than this numerical inferiority is the backward movement of Catholics in all that concerns rank, intelligence, and prosperity. In the Catholic States it is simply astonishing to see the influence which a Protestant fraction, a merest minimum, exercises in the direction of political affairs and in scientific questions. One is most struck with this in France and in Hungary.

The Homiletical Review, after making these quotations, justly remarks:

That is confessedly a bad state of things for Romanism at its entrance upon the twentieth century, and the worst thing about it is that it is undoubtedly so. The reason given by Mr. Müller for this political, intellectual, and religious inferiority and decadence is that Roman Catholics "do not accord to reason and to action the important rôle that they play among Protestants." But does not this show that Romanism is not the religion needed to elevate and save mankind? And do not all the signs indicate the approach of a great breaking up of the false and impracticable system?

Well may the train men of Rome go tapping on the wheels

to see that all is well before the great train goes plunging, mid the fog and darkness, down grade, into the twentieth century. Many outside of the priesthood and the religious orders see clearly that there is danger ahead.

An editor in Barcelona, Spain, has recently reviewed the history of Catholic nations, from the defeat of the great Armada sent against England by Philip II to the defeat and overthrow of Maximilian, and the expulsion of the Spanish power from the western hemisphere. "Of what avail is it," he cries, "that popes, cardinals, archbishops, and bishops bless our banners and send them forth with the promise of victory, when the experience of centuries has taught us that they will return to us again trailing in the dust? Protestant nations are growing stronger and more prosperous all the time, while Roman Catholic nations are either stationary or on the down grade." The lesson to be learned from the Barcelona editor's article is that God blesses what the pope curses and curses what the pope blesses.

A strong side-light thrown upon this subject comes from a book recently published in France, which has already been translated into many languages and is having a large circulation. Its title is Anglo-Saxon Superiority: to What It Is Due. It is a work dealing, from a French point of view, with the causes of the superiority of the English-speaking peoples. The author's name is Edmond Demolins. He begins his preface thus:

Anglo-Saxon superiority! Although we do not all acknowledge it, we all have to bear it, and we all dread it. The apprehension, the suspicion, and sometimes the hatred provoked by l'Anglais proclaim the fact loudly enough. We cannot go one step in the world without coming across l'Anglais. We cannot glance at any of our late possessions without seeing there the Union Jack. The Anglo-Saxon has supplanted us in North America, which we occupied from Canada to Louisiana, in India, at Mauritius (the old Ile de France), and in Egypt. He rules America by Canada and the United States, Africa by Egypt and the Cape, Asia by India and Burma, Australasia by Australia and New Zealand, Europe and the whole world by his trade and industries and by his policy.

A map accompanies this remarkable book, in which the author shows that the Anglo-Saxon race dominates half the world

and threatens much of the other half. After contrasting the individual life, the family life, the school life, the social life, the business life, and the army life of the French with the English, the author gives startling statistics concerning marriage, births, and deaths, which are enough to make the face of any Frenchman who loves his country turn pale. From 1883 to 1890 there were more deaths than births. In 1890 there were twenty thousand two hundred and twenty-three less marriages than in 1884-a period of six years-and the decrease has been constant. Norway doubles her population in fifty-one years, England in sixty-three, and, the author might have added, the United States in thirty-five years. And since this book was written Dewey has sailed into the harbor of Manila, and the Stars and Strips are waving over the Philippine Islands. The prophecies of the ever-extending dominion of the AngloSaxon race seem in process of rapid fulfillment. The book is vastly interesting, but is somewhat disappointing. The author gives all the reasons for Anglo-Saxon superiority but one, and that is by far the most weighty of all. He does not say, as he should say, in all fairness, "The dominant religion of France is the Roman Catholic, and the dominant religion of England and the United States is the Protestant faith." Why does he not confess this? Why does he not acknowledge that as a nation builder Rome is a failure, an utter failure? She can destroy, but she cannot build. Whatever of national prosperity may come to a people dominated by the Roman Catholic faith comes in spite of the Church and not because of it. But there are so many confessions in this book that we may forgive M. Demolins for ignoring the religious question.

The book has been reviewed almost universally by the French press. In L'Echo de Paris, M. Lucien Des Caves wrote, under the title of "A Book of Alarm:"

Truly a terrible and admirable book-terrible because of its lamentable statements founded on carefully verified documents; admirable because of its conclusions, which, if intelligently heeded, can only lead us to improvement. I should like to see M. Demolin's book in the hands of all heads of families, of all educators of our youth-if not in those of the men who govern our country-for the author has sufficiently demonstrated that the interest of these is solely to keep whole as long as possible the crust of the now rancid cheese in which they live.

Another great paper, Le Paris, ends its review as follows: "We often feel we know of no remedy, so that we, the descendants of the Fontenoy soldiers, are disposed to thus address Messieurs les Anglais, Morituri vos salutant."

Since M. Demolins's book was written the lurid light of the Dreyfus case has been thrown upon France. But there is life for France. In Loubet she may have found her Abraham Lincoln. Mexico is setting a grand example to all Roman Catholic nations. Her renaissance never came until Comonfort in 1856 reduced the Church to obedience to the civil power and compelled the Roman hierarchy to submit to the laws of the land. Juarez and Diaz followed the same line of policy, and to-day there is religious liberty everywhere in Mexico. There is secure and stable government; there is protection for life and property such as were never enjoyed under the old régime. In 1856 Comonfort would not allow the clerical party to drive him from the presidential chair, as they had many of his predecessors. The monks of St. Francis formed a conspiracy against him, and secretly planned his overthrow. But, just before the time set for the uprising, he marched his troops to the monastery of St. Francis, entered it by force, captured the monks, and sent them adrift, fully six hundred strong. Then with his cannon he plowed a street through the monastery, which street bears the significant name "Independencia."

The assertion that an Italian priest on the banks of the Tiber has civil and spiritual control over all the nations of the earth is monstrous and ridiculous; and the attempt to make that claim good will be resisted by even so-called Catholic nations. The time is passed for that. That wheel is cracked and broken. The train men had better take it off and put a sound wheel in its place. This would be a good substitute: "Civil and religious liberty must be acknowledged by the Roman Catholic Church as the inalienable inheritance of all mankind." Take off your old cracked wheel, ye Romanists, and put this other on, and your great train may roll in safety down the grade to the plain below. A cartoon published in a certain illustrated paper in February, 1899, deserved a wide circulation. It was a picture of a lean, hungry-looking Spaniard, tottering along with a great fat priest on his back. Around the feet of

the Spaniard were spread the maps of France, Spain, Portugal, and Italy, and underneath it all this legend: "The Burden of the Latin Race." The cartoon was republished in Mexico, and made its impression upon thousands of people. It was circulated in the cars by the newsboys far and wide. The writer sent a copy of it to the Freeman's Journal, of New York, with the request that it be amended a little and published again. The amendment proposed was, to add to the map all of South America, Mexico, the south of Ireland, and lower Canada, and write underneath the picture thus amended, "The Burden of all these Races." And what a burden they have borne for centuries! Think of Ecuador with its ninety-six per cent of illiteracy. Think of all South America with its eighty-five per cent of illiteracy. Think of Spain with its eighty per cent of illiteracy; and then think what these nations might have been, if they had been the inheritors of the civil liberty won by Henry VIII in his battle with the Church, and of the theology and faith and scriptural ethics of Martin Luther.

But the leaders of the Roman Church do not appreciate their own failures. They are not willing that Protestants should try where they have failed. Archbishop Ireland gravely informs us that Protestant missionaries are not wanted in Porto Rico, Cuba, or the Philippines. The Archbishop of Manila has been thundering forth his anathemas against all those who have any dealings whatever with Protestants. The following is a quotation from a paper called The Standard:

A recent issue of the Manila Times, sent to the Standard by a correspondent, contains a report of a sermon preached by a Jesuit priest in one of the leading churches of Manila, in which he enumerated the various offenses for which excommunication was the penalty. Two specifications are that "any one contributing so much as one cent to any Protestant object-schools, hospitals, or anything Protestant-comes under the worst form of excommunication," and that "all newspapers and publications which commend Protestants for their work, or publish announcements of Protestant gatherings, or openly favor heretics in any way, come under the fiercest excommunications of the papal bull." The Times, a non-sectarian and, judged by its advertising columns, not particularly scrupulous sheet, protests against such utterances, and publishes announcements of Protestant services along with the Roman Catholics.