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We should preach repentance, it should he preached far more than it is preached, hut it should really be repent ance in the New Testament sense that we preach and not merely sorrow for sin and not merely “ quitting your meanness.” % S i MAKE WAY FOR THE POPE The Catholic Bulletin, March 21, 1918, a Cleveland paper, in a first-page article entitled: “ America and the Vat ican—-Under Seven Different Presidents United States Has Been Represented at the Papal Court.” The opening paragraph contains this remarkable and significent statement: “ One of the probable results of the great world war will be the return of the Holy Father to his rightful place as a sovereign in the general council of the nations,” says Thos. F. Meehan, in Records and Studies, the official publi cation of the United States Catholic Historical Society. “ Already,” continues the Catholic Bulletin, “ there is a demand that his diplomatic rights shall be restored where they have been slighted, and that direct communication with the Vatican be re-established by those gov ernments where for some years it has been broken off.” “ Direct diplomatic intercourse be tween the United States and the Pope is neither novel nor unprecedented in our history.” There you are, dear reader, isn’t that plain and concise enough for even the most stupid, sleepy, non-Catholic apog- ist for Rome with which we are afflic ted? WHAT MIGHT-HAVE BEEN Think of what happened at the begin ning of the war. T}ie meetings for prayer were filled by an anxious, trou bled, burdened people crying to God out of the thick cloud of gloom that
was beginning to settle down over the world. There was a time of shudder ing as men looked into the future, and pictured to themselves some of its awful consequences, and a deep crav ing that God would intervene in the situation with help and healing from the mercy-seat. But as time went on, and there was no evident sign of any miraculous interference of God, ' the meetings died down. It was only a flash in the pan. With some it could not last, for it was born of a craven animal fear. But who knows but if that impulse of prayer had gone on and deepened, and if our hearts had not so easily got tired of waiting, a tempera ture of faith and hope might have been reached in our hearts high enough for God to kindle, them into a. flame that would have lit the world with His glory, and scattered the darkness, and shamed the foul tyranny which has raised its head in Europe into a dumb submis sion.— James Reid. (England) CONDITIONS IN GERMANY The General Superintendent of the State Church in Hamburg says of the general religious situation: Nothing has ' hurt us clergymen more than the total indifference shown by our people to the things of the Kingdom of God. Our classes for com municants have sunk far below the lowest level of the past; there are fewer baptisms; fewer partakers of the Lord’s Supper and the occasions on which we are called in to comfort the bereaved are exceedingly rare. War has brought us greater earthly glory, has filled our hearts with inextinguishable pride, has opened up for us a future of dazzling splendor. But what shall we say about the far more serious things of the soul? They are passed over by the people as though there were no soul, as though there were no God Almighty on His throne to be faced when this transient life was over.”
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