EASTER APRIL, 1909 Christ is risen! Christ is risen! At His touch of love and power All earth's forces own His sway; In His sign, the Cross, to conquer, Christ is risen! O earth, now greet Him! Christ is risen! The heavens adore Him! -S. Mabel Cohen: THE FACT OF THE RESUR- The fact of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ must indeed be admitted as beyond a doubt if it be attested by numerous obviously truthful witnesses-that is to say, by witnesses who could not have been deceived themselves, who could not have wished to deceive others, who could not have deceived even if they had wished to do so. Now the resurrection of Jesus Christ is attested by such witnesses as these: (1) The Apostles, who saw their risen Master during forty days, contemplating Him with their eyes, hearing Him with their ears, touching Him with their hands; who, though at first unbelieving, yet afterwards, converted by evidence, devoted tl:eir existence to publishing this great event, and, in fact, announced it to the whole world, sanctioning their testimony by miracles, and sealing it with their blood. (2) Women and disciples of every kind, numbering in all more than 500 ocular witnesses. (I Cor. xv. 6). (3) Auricular witnesses not less trustworthy, such as innumerable Jews and pagans who, vanquished by the evidence of things, became converted, admitted the Resurrection, and believed in it with the deepest and fi mest faith. (4) The very enemies of Jesus Christ, the chiefs of the Jewish nation, hearing the Apostles declare the Resurrection, did not attempt to arraign them as impostors, and by this conduct themselves gave testimony to the truth. For if there had been imposture, these hostile men would not have failed to confound the impostcrs. On the one hand, it was their interest and their duty to do so; on the other, they had every means at command for doing so; for, having placed guards at the entrance to the sepulchre, they were likely to know what had become of the body of Christ, and had but to produce it. If, then, they did not unveil, or seek to unveil, the imposture, it was because there was no imposture. Enemies so pcwerful and so vigilant, whose interests lay in not being taken unawares, were not likely to be imposed hallucination impossible. (2) That they did not wish to deceive; their conscientiousness and their piety, their interest and the prospect of the most terrible consequences of deceit, must have excluded from their minds the very thought of such a crime and of such folly. (3) That they could not have deceived, even if they had wished to do so. In order to succeed in deceiving, they would have had to do two things: (a) to take away the body of their Master, who had deceived them; and (b) to persuade men that He had come to life again. Both were equally impracticable, on account of the satellites who guarded the tomb, of the impossibility of maintaining secrecy, and of the disinclination of the Jews, and of the world at large, to believe such intelligence, unless imposed upon them by the force of evidence. We may add, that if we compare this event with every other fact recorded in history, we shall not find another that is established on proofs so numerous and so certain; therefore, if the resurrection of Jesus Christ could be called in question, nothing could be certain in history, and the best authenticated facts would be doubtful, such as the assassination of Cæsar and the conquests of Alexander. All these testimonies are confirmed by the living monument built upon the resurrection of Jesus Christ, namely, the Church and the feast of Easter, the centre of her solemnities. To-day, as in the earliest days, the Church proclaims the resurrection of her Author, saying to all generations: "I am founded, with my worship and my faith, on the resurrection of Jesus. Christ. If He had not risen, I should not exist, the world would not have believed, and would still have been lcst in idolatry." The resurrection, then, of Christ is an absolutely incontestable truth. This resurrection is the seal imprinted by God on His religion; this religion is, then, true, and every man must ac cept it under pain of eternal damnation, according to those words of His, "Qui non crediderit condemnabitur"— "Whosoever believes not, shall be condemned." (Mark xvi, 16). -Rev. F. X. Schouppe, S.J. POPE PIUS X'S BOYHOOD A townsman and schoolmate of Pope Pius makes his living as a gardener in Sofia, Bulgaria. His name is Andrea Feltrin. "What a contrast," he said to an American correspondent. "Guiseppe Sarto occupying the proudest throne in all Christendom, and I, his schoolmate, a simple gardener. But I do not envy him, he deserves all the honors he achieved. "When we were boys together in Riese Venetia, our friends used to say that I would never amount to much in the world while pious women prophesied that Giuseppe would live and die an honored pastor or even a prel LOVERS' DAY IN THE MIDDLE AGES In the middle ages troth plighted on Easter Sunday was regarded as peculiarly sacred; and it was customary for lovers to exchange poetical addresses somewhat after the manner of valentines. The following, rendered into modern spelling, is by Athelstane Wade, a folk poet of the time of Richard I., and is regarded as one of the best specimens of its kind: 'Tis God's Sunday, precious one, That binds your heart in love to me. Let us, then, all folly shun; Be true, my sweet, as I to thee. FIFTEEN MILLIONS The Catholics in the United States now number nearly 15,000,000. The figures given by the 1909 Directory are 14,235,451. But in some dioceses, where exact statistics, based on an actual census, were lacking, a too conservative estimate was made. The real total is about fifteen millions. This is a goodly number, and is nearly one-fifth of the entire population of the republic. Large as it is, it would be 30,000,000 if all the Catholics who came to this region from Europe within the past 300 years, had kept the faith themselves and had firmly reared their children in it. But a legion of them settled in parts remote from church and priest. They were unable to practice their religion themselves and many of them failed to impart it to their sons and daughters. Even when they did try to teach the catechism to their descendants, the latter grew up without the Mass, without the Sacraments, amidst a non-Catholic population, trained in Godless or practically Protestant public schools, coaxed to Sabbath Schools and welcomed in meeting houses. The want of instruction in the Catholic doctrine, the lack of facilities to be practical Catholics, the influence of a Protestant training, the pressure of Protestant surroundings, and consequences of mixed marriages-all these combined to cause millions on millions to lose the faith and millions on millions of others to be deprived of it. Even yet there are, as the Church Extension Society can testify, whole counties in which there is no Catholic church, and where Catholics are today going through that same process of spiritual starvation. All through the vast region west of the Mississippi River, down South and on the Pacific coast the Church is at this moment suffering the loss of many souls that should belong to it by the right, as it were, of inheritance. Throughout the rural districts of that immense territory hundreds of thousands of nominal Catholics rarely get to Mass and seldom receive holy Communion, and their children are growing up in ignorance and in sin. There is no reason for us to boast, therefore, because the Catholics in America number 15,000,000. Rather we should search our conscience and see if we are not partly to blame for the terrible losses the Church has suffered in this country in our time. We should consider whether or not we are even yet doing what lies in our power to put an end to the falling away that is now taking place. AN OVER-WORKED MAXIM "To the pure all things are pure." So say some gentlemen, as a protest against those who do not see eye to eye with them. With this maxim as a disinfectant we may see anything and read anything and not take harm. Were our artistic sense developed we might discover beauty in literary cesspools and purity in anything from lowrate vaudeville to the divorce court. People with the artistic sense have been ere this on the primrose path of dalliance. But this of course matters not to those whose optic nerve is so sensitive as to be able to discern purity in things where less gifted persons would behold but filth. It is because, to quote Kipling, "we are a poor little street bred people." Still, we are admonished to pray that we enter not into temptation. They who burned the books worth 50,000 pieces of silver minded this advice. the rest," says St. Paul, "whatsoever things are true, whatsoever modest, whatsoever just, whatsoever holy, whatsoever lovely, whatsoever of good fame. * * think on these things." * "For The Church is against the dirty writer, against the indecencies of the stage, and the Catholic knows it. Sin is not a mere breaking of conventionality, and the Catholic knows this also. DANGERS OF THE MOVING PIC- The Very Rev. J. H. Slinger, one of the pioneer Dominicans of New York City and one of the most efficient parochial school directors in the United States, sounds a note of warning to priests and parents of the danger to our children from indecent moving pictures. Father Slinger has been for many months past quietly conducting an investigation of the facts of the case. An examination of the children themselves in our parochial schools on what they have seen in moving picture theatres will bring out shocking revelations and make apparent the in measurable danger to young, forming minds of the indecent and lying presentations in many of the moving picture theatres. Father Slinger's warning is this: "We will not allow a plant or a tree to grow up, regardless of the conditions conducive to or destructive of its growth. The sapling that is bent and distorted cannot be straightened when it has become the full grown tree. More susceptible to formation and perfect development than the sapling is the young mind; but the conditions of mental growth must be watched. Early impressions are are life-lasting. Morbid curiosity and prematurely aroused passions are seeds sown that develop strong public criminals. Parents, be considerate of the future lives of your children. Spare them years of the sorrow and of the misery of sin. Recognize that you must be more attentive to the condition of your children's moral health than to those of their physical well-being." Father Slinger has called the attention of the Board of Education of New York to this matter, and the Right Rev. Monsignor Mooney, D. D., V. G., and the Rev. Dr. Joseph H. McMahon, have been appointed as a committee to investigate, to report to authorities and elicit the coöperation of clergy and educators against what seems to be an organized movement for the corruption of public morals and for the extension of an anti-religious propaganda. KIND WORDS NOW A young man buried his face by the bedside of his dying mother, crying out: "O mother, I cannot give you up; I love you so!" "My boy," whispered the dying woman, "you never told me that before." We take it for granted that people know how we appreciate them. How often we speak the critical word! How rarely the complimentary one! We know very well how we feel when others tell us how our work and our talents are appreciated, but we are prone to forget that our neighbors, our friends and our fellow-workers are the same kind of people with the same kind of hearts. A few flowers or the desk and less on the grave. Speak the good word, and speak it in good season. |