A SURVIVAL OF MEDIjEVAL CREDULITY. 715 



with tlie movement in favor of greater freedom of thought and 

 independence of research, known as " Americanism " in the Catho- 

 lic Church, and regards its extension to the Old World as a vital 

 necessity,* 



It is creditable to the Catholic prelates in the United States 

 that thej were not among the foolish birds caught with the lime 

 laid by Leo Taxil. Indeed, the Bishop of Charleston went to Rome 

 for the express purpose of warning Leo XIII against this trickster, 

 but was sharply reprehended and admonished to be silent. A 

 similar rebuke was given to the Apostolic Vicar of Gibraltar for 

 denying the existence there of Tubal-Cain's subterranean labora- 

 tory for manufacturing microbes. 



The Breviarium, Bomanum, the daily use of which, as a manual 

 of devotion and edification, is enjoined by the Pope on the clergy, 

 is full of legends which are recorded as historical facts, and quite 

 equal in absurdity to Taxil's most extravagant and fantastic inven- 

 tions. The tales there told of the miracles wrought by saints, their 

 communion with angels, and their combats with devils may have 

 easily suggested many incidents narrated in The Devil in the ITine- 

 teenth Century and the Memoirs of Diana Yaughan. It is no 

 wonder that minds accustomed to accept the marvels of hagiology 

 as actual events should be readily deceived by a clever caricature 

 of them, especially when appealing to a prejudice so absurd and 

 yet so strong as that entertained by the papacy against Freema- 

 sonry. It would seem from many indications that the Romish 

 Church, as an ecclesiastical organization, bears about the same rela- 

 tion to contemporary culture that Roman paganism did to the best 

 thought of the period when Lucian wrote his sprightly dialogues 

 and Lucretius his genial and comprehensive didactic poem De 

 Rerum Natura. Is it doomed to the same fate, or has it, as Pro- 

 fessor Schell and Dr. Mliller assert, a saving, recuperative power? 



Of the geological age of the building stones used in the United States, 

 George P. Merrill observes, in his report to the Maryland Geological Sur- 

 vey, that few stones are used to any extent that are of later date than 

 the Triassic, and few, if any, of our marbles are younger than the Silurian, 

 while nearly all our granites, as now quarried, belong at least to Palaeozoic 

 or Archaean times. Stones of later age than Triassic are, so far as re- 

 lates to the eastern United States, so friable or so poor in color as to have 

 little value. 



* Since these lines were written Professor Schell has been disciplined and threatened 

 with excommunication by the See of Rome. We regret to be obliged to add that he did 

 not have the courage to maintain his opinions, but made a public recantation of them. The 

 cause of progress in the Catholic Church has now found a new and apparently more fearless 

 advocate in a Bavarian priest, Dr. Miiller, of Munich, whose pamphlet on Reformkatholizis- 

 mus can hardly escape the interdict of the papal hierarchy. 



