S C R I B N E R ' S M A G A Z I N E Important ... - Rparchives.org

E D I T O R I A L
NEW YORK, OCTOBER 8, 1913.
THE REUNION AT CHATTANOOGA.
Union and Confederate veterans have been
assembled at Chattanooga.
The press recalls
the autumn days oi fifty years ago, when the
armies met in conflict along Chicamauga
Creek, and the Union army, under Rosecrans,
had to fall back on Chattanooga, to be led
cut again by Grant and later by Sherman.
The enthusiasm created by these late gatherings
in July at Gettysburg and now at Chattanooga,
has led to the thought of an assembly
at Richmond in 1915, fifty years after
the evacuation by Lee, and the surrender at
Appomattox. Some Northern men in their
enthusiasm would be ready to pension the
Confederacy, and some of the latter's descendants
would remake history. Great
changes have taken place in fifty-two years.
In 1861, a few weeks before Sumter fell,
Alexander Stephens, then the Confederate
\'ice President, spoke at Savannah, Georgia,
to a cheering assembly, saying that they had
founded a State on the cornerstone of human
slavery, a State that would last. William
iLloyd Qarrison was in the assembly
that gathered at the Fort in 1865, when the
National flag was again flung to the breeze.
Addresses here and there cannot remake history.
The slave empire went down in blood.
In 1911 the United States Government
erected a monument in the National Cemetery
in Germantown, Pa., to the memory of
18.1 Confederates, prisoners of war, buried
there, wth tbis inscription:
"Erected by the United States to mark the burial
place of 184 Confederate soldiers and sailor-s,
as shown by the records, who, while prisoners
of war, died either at Chester, Pa., and were
buiried there, or at Philadelphia, and were
buried in Glenwood Cemetery, and whose remains
were subsequently removed to th's cemetery,
where the individual graves cannot now
be identified."
The Philadelphia Chapter of the Daughters
of the Confederacy arranged the ceremony
of the unveiling, Oct. 'i, and John Shepard
Beard, of Staunton, Va., was the speaker of
the occasion. He took up Secession and the
Causes leading up to it. He said:
"The South is to be judged not alone by the
courage and efficiency of her armies and the skill
of her commanders, hut by the righteousnes-s of
the cause for which they fought and suffered. The
question of paramount magnitude is the justice
of that cause—not that there should be a doubt
in any candid, well-informed mind, but from the
fact that such persistent efforts have been made
to fasten upon the South the stigma and to impress
posterity with the conviction that the Southern
States were in rebellion and the Southern
patriots were traitors, and an unjust and partial
world is too ready to stamp upon the back of
the defeated soldier 'Rebel' and 'Traitor,' however
just his cause. Therefore, we of this generation
aJe under a high and sacred obligation to the
THE CHRISTIAN NATION. Vol. 69.
preceding generation to rescue their name and
fame from the aspersion of treason and rebellion."
Apart from any name given to them, their
"Cause" was one which could not succeed. The
judgment of mankind was against it. The
painful thought is that there are other lands
which have yet to pass through the same ordeal,
till liberty, constitutional liberty, shall
be established throughout the world.
THE EALL 'RELIGIOUS PROCESSIONS.
Attention has been called to the transfer to
this country of the religious processions of
Roman Catholic States. Our cities have of
late years witnessed these processions at the
goal, the Cathedral, at evening, the bringing
forth of the consecrated Host, for the adoration
of the multitude.
In Allegheny, last Spring, a lecture on
Maritin Luther and the Reformation led to a
tumult at the doors of Carnegie Hall. This
onset led to the calling in of an ex-priest who
gave a series of lectures in Pittsburgh under
complete police protection, to a great multitude.
Recognizing the seriousness of the situation,
the following has been given out by
the diocesan bishop:
"To the Holy Name Societies of the Diocese of
Pittsburgh:
"It is well known that the American people are
now passing through one of those trying periods
of prejudice and intolerance that rise and spread
over this country every 10 or 15 years, like an
epidemic of anti-Catholic frenzy.
"That a bigotry so nnfounded, so unjustifiable,
so virulent and so disgraceful, can be called
forth periodically in the United States and succeed
in blinding the judgment of Intelligent men
and destroying all feelings of good will and
brotherly love in their hearts, is the strangest, as
it is the most shameful fact in American history.
The large majority of the American people who
are separated from us in belief are honorable,
trustworthy, fair-minded and just. They would
not do their neighbor a wrong, even in thought,
but there does exist in our midst a malicious and
treacherous faction of fanatics and unprincipled
demagogues, who are seeking to wage religious
and political war against their Catholic fellowcitizens
by methods wholly un-American and destructive
of the principles and traditions of our
free institutions. In these days of excited bigotry,
when the entire Catholic church is condemned
and execrated for the crimes and scandals
of a few degenerate members, a criterion hy
which no other society is judged; when there is
a market and a demand for fabrications no matter
bow absurd, and calumnies, no matter how gross,
against Catholics; when political interests and
ambitions are to be served by appeals to bigotry;
consderations of charity, or truth, or justice, or
peace, do not restrain the malignity of distempered
zealots and anti-Catholic politicians in their
efforts to incite intolerance, injure others in their
civil and religious rights, and destroy the peace
and confidence which fellow-citizens and neighbors
ought to cherish toward one another. Because,
at a time like this, special prudence and
caution should guide every word and action of
Catholics. I feel it my duty to request our Holy
Name societies to omit their public procession
which was to take place next month; and I recommend
that, instead of the procession, appropriate
church services be held for the societies during
October or November. While we may have no
fears of provocation or disorder, it is better to
avoid anything that might tend to arouse hoetility
or increase prejudice in a community where,
but recently, the public villlfication and malevolent
denunciation of Catholics and their religion
were openly planned, approved and applauded,
by men and women who call themselves Christians.
The annual procession is an inspiring and
edifying spectacle, hut it is not by any means
the chief purpose of Holy Name societies. They
have for their end the fortifying of their members
in the love of God and their neighbor, by prayer,
by the sacraments, by the power of mutual kindness
and edification, and by the imitation of
Christ in daily life. To these things the procession
is, indeed, a help. It is a solemn avowal ot
belief in God, or readiness to obey His law, or
reverence of His Holy Name; of faith in the
divinity of Jesus Christ, and of loyalty to Him
and to our country! But when the procession
might be regarded as an ostentatious display of
numerical strength to challenge the intolerant
and evil-minded, or viewed, or misrepresented, as
a disguised political demonstration, then Christian
charity and prudence counsel us to pause
and rather forego our intentions and plans of
this year, than exasperate still more minds already
excited and unbalanced by the fervor of
anti-Catholic prejudice and rancor.
" 'Let us follow after the things that are of
peace, and keep the things that are of edification,
one toward another.' "
J. REGIS CANBVIN,
Bishop of Pittsburg."
The prtocession has been abandoned for
this Fall. Would it not be well for the hierarchy
to consider the impropriety of this annual
public exhibition of the consecrated
Host for adoration, a service that the Protestant
world cannot but view as idolatrous,
since no earthly priest can work the miracle
of transforming bread intO' the very body of
our Lord? It is well not to gather a multitude
as if to justify such acts.
SOCIALISM NO. 4.
Collectivism.
By the Rev. J. M. Coleman. ,
Of the four doctrines peculiar to Marx,
Economic Determination, Surplus Value,
Class Struggle and Collectivism, the last is
the only
principle which is necessary, as I
believe, to a socialistic plan of production. If
this is the only one essential to the plan it
may be questioned why Socialists in general
continue to swear by antiquated dogmas,
some of which appear as truth only on the
assumption that there is no god but force.
The reason seems to be that this is the
only way in which
they can keep up then
party lines. Therefore it is that Haywood,
who has lately been excommunicated, and
the majority who did it, both swear by Marx,
tthile the few Christian Socialists in the
ranks join their praises of the materialistic
theories to the voices of the atheistic major-
ity-
Another reason is that most Socialists have