WENDELL PHILLIPS ON EUROPEAN CATHOLICS.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume II, Issue 65, 25 July 1874, Page 13

WENDELL PHILLIPS ON EUROPEAN CATHOLICS.

Os March 22, Wendell Phillip* lectured on th" «nb]ent. of " life in Enrope," in aid of the fair for St ■Franks T)e Rales' Church. Charlestown, Mass. "We take the following extract from his I wish to say something about the worship and decorum «f the Catholic Chnroh'. You know very well that the doors of the C-vthohc Church are never shnt. Yes, there are door* that have not turned on their hinges for hundreds of years : for. as the crowd come* into the city to work, or goes home again at twilight, harllv a peasant pa«ses a whole day of his existence without, e oin<» to a Catholic Church, somewhere on his route, to say a prayer. Then, again, the Church js one broad marble floor ; there is no hateful aristocracy of pewi. Wealth cannot, purchase a posy place in which to worship Q-od alone # I have eeen the blood royal of Nanles kneeling at, GM's altar; and its velvet was swept by the rags of the beggar, who had just Baked for alms at the door. The slave girl of Havana will bring the cushion of her mistress, place it where directed, and then kneel, herself at one end, her mistress at the other— equals before God— (applause.) The poet Kenyon says : — J "l love the free and open door \ - That directs to the honse of God ; I love the widespread marble floor By every foot in freedom trod." (renewed applause.) Then, again, there is a certain profound decorum (I will not go any lower, to say whether it is feeling or behaviour) ; but, at, any rate, as you walk throush the Church there is a decorum of the place which you remark. A Tennessee chaplain went to Kansas to look in the face of John Brown ; and he came home again, and tried to teach his people, who came to meeting, decorum. Perhaps you hay gone into a Presbyterian or a Congregational Church, in the middle of a long prayer, and you found that pne half of the congregation turned around to look at you (laughter.) Well, the Tennessee chaplain told his people that, if they did not turn around, he would tell them who was coming in. So he said: Wow, it is Mr A , the groat planter ; he lives far off, and naturally comes late. Now, it is Madam B , she lives near by, and ought to be here earlier. Now, it is a little, old man, with white hair. I don t Tbnow who it is, look around and see for yourselves (great laughter.) Ifow, co with me into any cathedral in Southern Europe. There is one counting his beads, and swarming through tha church are travellers, criticizing the paintings and statuary. Perhaps in that chapel there is a Bermon, and in that other there is Mass, and m another confessions are being heard, yet, there that one kneels ; and I have seen Queen Victoria's uncle, the Duke of Cambridge, brush by him and lie never lifted his eyes; he never turned his head ; for he felt he was greater than the Duke— he was talking with God (applause.) You might huve made a statue of him and set him up m one half of the churches of New England as a model of behaviour (laughter). He then roferred to the condition of the women of Europe, and concluded a« follows : Another thing— the people of Europe do not know black from white. I was in Boston, and saw a colored girl refused a place

in the omnibus because she was black ; and yefc old President Quiney, who was seated in the stage-coach when she tremblingly asked to be admitted — she was colored, and was about to be pushed away, when the old President said : "If she don't come in, Igo out." They admitted her (applause.) I went to London, and gut into an omnibus, and the man next me was as black as the ace of spades (applause.) I crossed the Channel, and was walking on the Boulevard in Paris, at the most fashionable hour of the most fashionable day — five o'clock on Sunday afternoon — and I saw half a dozen couples, black and white, arm in arm. I went to the Invalides, beneath which rest the ashes of the great Napoleon ; and our crowd was mnrshalled to its place by a one-armed colonel who had fought with him at Austerlitz. He was black. I went to the Propaganda College, Rome, where sons of princes are educated for princes and bishops ; and the man who took the third prize was a native of Africa, and went out of the building arm in arm with a duke. I wa3 at St. Peters, the Cathedral of the Christian world. I heard the beautiful Latin service of the Catholic Church chanted most musically ; and when the nobles of Rome kneeled round, I went nearer to see whose voica was so melodious. The priest was black 5 and I said to myself: "This mu3t ba four thousand miles from Boston." Loud applause followed the con« elusion of Mr. Phillips' lecture.