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Vol. VIII—No. 38
THE TRIUMPHS OF PROTESTANTISM
IN a gathering of the subsidiary organi
zations of the Roman Catholic church,
| held recently in the city of Milwaukee,
a prelate of that church declared that
gn
Protestantism is a confessed failure, and that
Romanism is the one coherent and prosper
ous form of religion known to Christendom.
This gratuity has been so often uttered that it
has come to be accepted as true by most Ro :
man Catholics and by not a few poorly inform
ed Protestants. The facts, as broadly writ
ten in history, are contrary to the claims so
confidently made by our Roman Catholic an
tagonist. In fact ,the annals of men during
many centuries past show clearly, that it is
Romanism itself which is a demonstrated fail
ure, viewed from all those points of advance,
self correction and spiritual and ethical vital
ity which are marked in revelation as tokens
of the true church of Jesus Christ.
Numbers of Romanists and Protestants.
In the outset, it is well to say that accord
ing to the most authentic figuress (those made
by German experts) the number of Roman
Catholics in the world is two hundred and
thirty millions, while the number of Protes
tants is one hundred and eighty-five millions, a
difference of only forty-five millions. That is
to say, that Roman Catholicism, starting prop
erly at least as early as the beginning of the
fifth century, with the impetus of fourteen
hundred years of tradition and prejudice, and
with the undisputed patronage for a thousand
years of the mightiest empires and kingdoms
of Europe, is only nineteen per cent in ad
vance of Protestantism with less than four
centuries of organization and growth to its ac
count.
Very many Protestants have been dismay
ed at what appears to be the growth of Roman
Catholicism in this country. As a matter of
fact, however, Romanism is not growing in the
American republic. On the contrary, it is suf
fering its greatest losses here. Its numbers
are being augmented by immigration, but an
appreciable loss is being suffered in its Amer
icanized population, due to the attrition of the
great body of Protestantism.
The facts stand thus: There are at present
in this country about eighteen millions of for
eign born people. Os these at least nine to ten
millions are from Roman Catholic countries.
LUKE LEA’S ELOQUENT TRIBUTE TO CA RMACK—PAGE 5.
ATLANTA, GA., NOVEMBER 13, 1913
By H. M. DUBOSE, D.D.
The Roman Catholic church claims a popula
tion in the States of fifteen millions. This
shows that of the children born to fifteen mil
lions of Roman Catholics only five to six mil
lions are saved to the church whose methods
of claim and counting are well known.
Last year more than a million and a quar
ter of immigrants came into this country. Os
these at least five hundred thousand were from
Roman Catholic countries, as Italy, Austria,
Poland, Bavaria, France and Ireland. But for
this foreign augment Romanism in the United
States had long ago declined or come to a
standstill. A slight increment accrues to Roman-
Bl
' ■ ■
DR. H. M. DUBOSE,
Pastor First M. E. Church, Atlanta.
ists from Protestant children educated in their
schools, but for every convert thus gained
they lose two of their own children in the
general contact with Protestant ideas and life.
Grounds of Protestant Triumph.
But striking as these facts are, they are not
the true grounds from which the triumphs of
Protestantism are to be argued. The first
great and continued triumph of Protestantism
relates to its achievement for Christian men
of the freedom of thought. Protestantism
awoke with the revival of letters, and with the
first hunger of the mediaeval Christian mind
for the freedom of scientific and philosophical
inquiry.
It is forever to remain to the honor of Pro
testanism that its earliest motions were ex
pressed in the demands of the unfettered intel
lect, fulfilling the saying that “not that which
is spiritual is first, but that which is natural,
then that which is spiritual.” The revival of
letters was logically followed by the reforma
tion of religion. The beginnings of this relig
ious life were expressed in the efforts and his
tory of such men as Copernicus, Galileo and
Bruno. Copernicus, the German monk, who
discovered the rotary motion of the heavenly
bodies, and devised the system of astronomy
known by his name; Galileo, the Italian scien
tist who invented the telescope and perfected
the system of Copernicus, and Bruno, the philo
sopher who laid the foundations of that free
dom of philosophical inquiry which has made
the learning of the last four centuries, were the
apostles of that age of intellectual liberation
in which Protestantism had its beginning.
These men not only embodied the spirit of
opposition to papal tradition and bigotry and
cherished that love of enlargment which is the
very soul of Protestantism, but they suffered
persecutions, and one of them martyrdom, at
the hands of the agents of the papal church.
One of the incidental triumphs of Protestan
tism was the setting up, a dozen years ago, in
the city of Rome and against the bitter but
inane protest of the papacy, of a statue of
Bruno, furnished by the friends of Protestant
liberty and learning in the old • and the new
world.
Triumphs of Thought and Interpretation.
How the hunger for scientific and philoso
phical inquiry which marked the earliest mo
tion of Protestantism was satisfied, and how
that inquiry has triumphed in spite of Rome,
let the last three centuries of thought in Eng
land, Germany and the Protestant new world
say. From Francis Bacon and Isaac Newton,
to Sir Oliver Lodge and Sir William Ramsay,
in the British Isles, and from Copernicus, the
Rome-discredited monk of Thorn, to Emmanuel
Kant and George William Frederick Hegel in
Germany is a stretch of triumphant centuries,
demonstrating the free and coherent ideals of
Protestantism in a tremendous way.
(Continued on page 7.)
ONE DOLLAR AND FIFTY CXNTt
A YEAR :: FIVB CPNTB A COPT