The Cause of Prosperity.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXX, Issue 36, 4 September 1902, Page 2

The Cause of Prosperity.

Prbachino recently in the Catholic Church, Stroud Green London the Rev. Gilbert Higgins said that Englishmen had been told till they be)i >ved the tale that their material prosperity was a clear evidence that the Protestant religion was true and approved of by God. Yet the theory was an absurd one. If material prosperity was, as Protestants were told, a trustworthy siifn of Divine sanction and of the truth of a religion, then it must follow that paganism was a true religion when Egypt, Greece and Rome were ao mighty and bo prosperous. ' Romanism ' was a true religion 400 years aeo when as Dr. Horton told them, ' Spain, this great Catholic country was the leading power in Europe,' and Buddhism, the religion of our new allies, the clever, progressive, and prosperous Japanese must be a true religion and approved of by God. The prosperity theory had to face other problems and very disagreeable facts If England is prosperous because she is Protestant, what makes our commercial rival, Catholic, priest-ridden Belgium so prosperous? It Italy languishes because she is Catholic, how is the decadence of Protestant Sweden to be explained ? The conclusion they were compelled by reason, com non-sense, and facts to arrive at wa« stated by the Spectator years ago in the following words • ' We Bee little or no comyction between national success and Christianity. 1 bir Michael Hicks Beach hit the nail on the head when he said the other day that what made England prosperous was not the Reformation. 1 but her c..al. It what he (Father Higgins) had said was not, enough to dispel this unreasonable fear of Rome which possessed so many ill-informed minds he would show in a few wordi tak-n from a book which he held in his hand, ' National Decay and Romanian,' by Mgr. John Vaughan, how little ' this England of ours mi«ht suffer if she were ' handed back to the priest and the Pope.' England in her Catholic days was known throughout the world an ' Merrie England.' England when under the priests and the Pope saw ri«e : (1) Her glorioun Constitution, '2) her representative form or government, (3; her two H man- of Parliament (i) her u.al by jury, (5) the. OU-ter of her hbert.es, Magna Charta (fi) her 11, ble n.nver-irus, (7) hr ,pl<.,i.u. cathedral. and churches' I hat is wh.t England has receive) 'from Romanism, 1 which th« JNoiKionf.jrniHt champion, Dr. Clifford, dogmatically brands ' * paganised form of Christianity.'