Below is the OCR text representation for this newspapers page.

'N<Z — — ** 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