In the summer of 1997 I needed to leave Russia and St. Petersburg for a visa renewal trip. Rather than make another visa trip to Helsinki in Finland, I opted for neighboring Estonia instead. As you can see on the map below, the distance from St. Petersburg to the Estonian capital city of Tallinn is not much different than from St. Petersburg to Helsinki, Finland.

And as you see from the maps (see below also), Estonia is the smallest of the three Baltic Republics that were former members of the Soviet Union — by force, not by choice! The other two are Lithuania which is the largest of the three, and Latvia. The only thing they have in common with Russia is a common border. Each Baltic country has its very own language which is not Slavic and therefore not related to the Russian language. The three languages are not related to each other either. Most of the ethnic peoples of these lands would rather have nothing more to do with Russia or the Russian language and tend to be offended if one tries to initiate a conversation with them speaking in Russian. Nevertheless, unless the individuals from neighboring Baltic countries know English or some other common European language between them, they are forced to communicate with each other in Russian, like it or not, because Russian is the only common language they know! Russian was the language of education during Soviet times.

Here we have a closer look at Estonia. You can see that Finland is just across the Baltic Sea. The Estonians have much more in common with the Finns than with the Russians or even the Latvians on its southern border. This is because the Estonians were a Finnish tribe and their language is very similar to Finnish. Like the Finns, they are a hard working people and have rebuilt their country and economy relatively quickly after being set free from the Soviet Union.

After World War 2 Stalin forcibly exiled half the Estonian population to Siberia and replaced them with Russians. If I remember correctly, the ethic population is roughly 40% Russian and 60% Estonian. On the Estonian side of the border with Russia there is a city called Narva that is 90% Russian. During the breakup of the Soviet Union, some Russians wanted the city to become part of Russia rather than Estonia. But in 1997 the Russians living in Narva were glad they didn’t become part of Russia and are happy to live in Estonia! They know they have a much better life in Estonia than they would have had in Russia. The Estonian economy is much better.

In the Summer of 1997 I lived with my missionary friends in the city of Tallinn for one full month. I visited once before for a day on the way to St. Petersburg by land from Poland. My friend Yan drove a tiny Polski Fiat from Warsaw through Lithuania and Latvia. His intention was to re-enter Russia from Latvia but was advised against it as being too dangerous. There are many highway robbers in Russia but few if any in Estonia. So we drove through the Eastern side of Estonia and entered Russia at the border town of Narva. Talk about adventure! If you are bored with life, try driving a car through Eastern Europe some time and enter Russia. You will be greeted by a border guard on the Russian side carrying an AK47 automatic weapon. No joke! I saw it with my own eyes! But that was in 1997. I don’t know if they still carry AK47s today.

Andres with ethnic Russian girl who was raised in Estonia. She could speak fluent Estonian and was our happy helper to distribute Gospel literature.

Russian Olga who was raised in Estonia. She couldn’t speak Estonia but was a good English speaker and so could get a job selling picture postcards to tourists.

Two Estonian girls holding up a poster that says, “What Everybody Needs is Love!”

Estonian young people. I asked the boy on the right if he likes the Russian population. He replied he doesn’t actually hate them but has no Russian friends.

Most of the ethic Estonians and Latvians in Latvia I met resented being greeted in Russian though they all knew it! In order to talk to the young people in the above photo, I had to greet them first in English! This is because they have great national pride and hate the fact they were taken over by the Russian speaking Soviet Union against their will.

When I was in Riga, Latvia, though people knew me and my friends were foreigners, they would still speak to us in Latvian! My Polish friend would smile and them and say in Russian, “I can communicate in only Russian, Polish and English!” They always complied and spoke in Russian.

The young people told me they don’t speak English and so I asked them if they could speak Russian. “Sure we can,” was the reply, “no problem!” So I pulled out my Estonia Bible and showed them Scriptures explaining in Russian what they meant. This impressed them for they knew I didn’t read Estonia but I knew the Bible well enough to find the parts I was looking for. I could recognize the name of the books of the Bible in Estonian.

Before I went to Russia, in Japan around 1992 I met a young lady from Latvia. I was excited to meet her because I was studying Russian then and wanted to practice it with her. But she told me in English she didn’t want to speak Russian with me. “That’s not our language,” she said. “We have our own language.”

Interestingly, the Estonians were the worse speakers of Russian. This is because the Estonian language is not an Indo-European language as is Russian, Lithuanian and Latvian.

Russian girl distributing literature to an Estonian boy

Two Estonian girls who received posters.

Right: Lily from San Jose who was a regular monthly supporter of our missionary work in Estonia.

A beach in Tallinn

Estonian ladies.

Russian Helen and me when I was 44

My elderly Russian friend Helen of St. Petersburg Russia passed away in 1999. I want to honor her memory with this article.

I first met Helen in the fall of 1994. She was sitting on a park bench near the famous Hermitage art museum of St. Petersburg. I was distributing Gospel tracts in the area and offered one to her. She gladly received it and began conversing with me in fluent English.

Helen was born in the Russian city of Pyatigorsk, a city in southern Russia near Cheynya. Some of her family were killed by the Bolsheviks in the Revolution. Pyatigorsk’s Orthodox church was subsequently destroyed. In spite of that, Helen managed to retain her faith in God and His Son Jesus.

Helen in her poor communal apartment.

Helen had a good education in Moscow and majored in both English and German language. Later she became a well paid interpreter.

Yuri Gagarin with the Japanese press. Helen is on the far right.

I didn’t learn until months later and several visits to her apartment that she was once the main interpreter for Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin during a press conference in Moscow with journalists from Japan! She said that when Yuri Gagarin entered the room, she was the first woman he saw and immediately approached her, took her hand and kissed it in the manner of Russian greeting.

She lost her life savings during the Ruble crash when the Soviet Union broke up. The money she had in the bank had been enough to buy a good automobile. Its value was reduced to the purchasing power of less than one loaf of bread by the time I met her! She had to learn to exist on a pension that would barely cover only her rent. In order to make ends meet, she gave English lessons to school pupils. Many couldn’t afford to pay her with cash but would bring food instead. At times she and her mentally handicapped son Sasha would go outside to collect cardboard boxes and bottles to resell them.

Helen with her cat

Helen told me once she would rather starve than see her cats go hungry. She was frequently ill. I suppose her age was around 79 when she passed away – about 17 years above the average life expectancy for a Russian women of that time.

There were many poor elderly people in St. Petersburg when I lived there, and of course I couldn’t help them all but I felt especially led by God to try to help Helen because she manifested a spiritual hunger and appreciated all the Bible related materials I gave her. Not only did she read them all, she shared them with her friends. She once told a friend, “Read this and you’ll never want to read anything else again!

With Finnish Magda

She attended the Russian Orthodox church but didn’t find much spiritual satisfaction from it. Once she said, “You go to church, give an offering, light some candles and pray. What do they give you in return? Absolutely nothing! But you, James, you not only bring me food and money sometimes, but you’ve given me the greatest gift of all, the Words of God!

Helen in front of her apartment building

On July 31 1996, Yanek from Belarus, Angela from St. Petersburg and I traveled overland by bus from Murmansk to the remote village of Teriberka. We went to visit our friend Marina who was a student we met in Murmansk. These two areas are circled in red on the map below. The distance is a bit more than 100 KM or 60 miles, but it took 5 hours by bus on dirt roads! Though it was summer, we could still see patches of snow on the ground! Most of the area in between these two places is tundra. There is nothing growing higher than an inch or so from the ground due to the permafrost just beneath the soil.

In the year 2000 a Russian submarine sank not far from where I lived. The city next to Murmansk called Severomorsk is a Russian Navy base. Only Russian military and the local town’s people have permission to enter this city. And believe it or not, even the tiny village of Teriberka is part of a military restricted zone. I didn’t know that before arrival. On the 3rd day border guards came to Marina’s apartment and told me I had until the next morning to leave or be incarcerated!

A map showing the relationship of this area to the rest of the world. You’re probably thinking, “What’s so special about that village anyway?” It’s special to me because it probably is the most remote area I’ve ever been in the world — a place only missionaries and National Geographic people would want to visit!

A view of Teriberka from Marina’s apartment! It was the most miserable looking place I have ever been to in the world!

Belarussian Yanek in front of a typical Teriberka dwelling. The blue sign above the door says, “Welcome”.

Yakek, Angela and Teriberka resident Marina near her apartment.

Marina’s daughter (right) with a friend on a hill overlooking the Barents Sea (part of the Arctic Ocean). It’s August 1st but only 13 degrees Celsius (55F) and windy.

There was nobody else on that beach except for the people with me! It was clean with no litter whatsoever which is unlike most Japanese beaches. Parts of it are rocky with very smooth large stones. Even in the summer the water is too cold to swim in without a wet suit.

Me with Yanek and Angela toward the left on that same hill, August 1, 1996.

Yanek, friend Marina and Angela.

Next day August 2! It warmed up to around 18C (70F)!

Yanek on the same day, same area.

Yanek with Marina. There is not a paved road in the entire village.

In Marina’s apartment. Notice the rug hung on the wall? This is very typical of Russian homes. I think the photo was taken with a timer on the camera.

On the third day, two men who said they were government officials came to Marina’s apartment when I was there and asked me if I obtained permission to visit their area. I told them I didn’t know I needed permission. Marina told them I am an invited guest. The men said I was in a military area restricted to foreigners (especially Americans!) and that I needed permission. I didn’t see a single sign of any military activity at all! They told me to leave at the earliest opportunity and that I may be fined later. But there was no fine and nothing more came of it.

More photos of Teriberka.

I lived in St. Petersburg, Russia, from August of 1994 to October of 1997. It was known as Leningrad during the time of the Soviet Union. Many people who don’t live in St. Petersburg still call it Leningrad! At least they did during my stay in Russia. But I don’t remember a resident of St. Petersburg refer to it by the Soviet name. They are proud of their pre-Soviet history when Peter the Great founded the city on the tributary of the Neva river — actually a wetland. The mosquitoes in the summertime are terrible!

Gostiny Dvor on Nevsky Prospect.

The photo is Gostini Dvor on the main street, Nevsky Prospect. In 1997 I spent over 2 whole hours looking for a weather thermometer but could not find one. The salespeople kept telling me to go to a pharmacy. I replied, “I’m not looking for a body thermometer! I want a weather thermometer.” They replied, “Yes, but they also sell those at the pharmacy.” Well, can you guess what happened when I posed the same question to the pharmacy people back then? They looked at me like I was nuts! “This is a drugstore, not a household appliance store!” “I know I know! But the main department store in town TOLD me to come to you!” And so I was bounced back and forth about 3 times before I finally gave up. A few weeks later I went back to my old neighborhood in Chicago and found what I was looking for in a Dollar Shop in a matter of minutes.

Nostalgic communist lady

The lady on the right is a nostalgic communist who is campaigning for the return of communism. Behind her are photos of Stalin, Lenin, and a contemporary politician named Zugannof. If you guessed by the sour look on her face that she doesn’t like me, you’re correct. She knows that I am a foreigner and a Christian missionary. I just smiled back at her and walked on.

A beggar in St. Petersburg

St. Petersburg is situated on a tributary, and so it is divided into several small islands that are linked by bridges and tunnels. Here is a typical beggar in Petrogradskaya Ostrov (Petersburg Island). It is hard to tell which beggars are really in need and who is faking. Some are professional beggars who actually pay the Mafia to beg on their turf. After a day’s work of soliciting donations, they can relax in a fine restaurant eating a good meal. This is something I could not afford to do when I was there!

James and Helen

There was real poverty in St.Peterburg when I was there. I often visited a poor lady named Helen. Here I am with her in 1997. But though she was old and needy, she never begged. She taught English and got paid in groceries. Sometimes I would bring her food and gifts. Read more about Helen, a former interpreter who helped in an interview with the famous Yuri Gagarin, the first man to be shot into space into orbit!

Giving a talk about the meaning of Easter in a school in St.Petersburg

Here is a picture of me and my friends in a school in St. Petersburg. It is close to Easter and I am giving a talk to the pupils on the meaning of Easter — the resurrection of Jesus Christ. I had the total support of the school teachers and principal to do so. Do you think I could get away with this in a public school in my homeland, the USA? Only deep somewhere in a rural area in the State of Indiana where the Amish live perhaps.

With Natasha Blond

Here I am with Natasha Blond in a park in front of a horse. Isn’t she pretty? The horse was kinda pretty too. Her family name is not “Blond” but I named her that because of her real 100% natural blond hair, smooth as silk! You can tell that I really liked Natasha Blond! But alas, she was way too young for me.

Selling audio-visuals at an exhibition in St. Petersburg

In the photo is Russian Stephanie, American Nat, and me at the main exhibition hall in town. We are offering audio-visual teaching material for children. This is partly how we supported ourselves. The rest of the support came from donations from the headquarters of The Family and monthly donations from my faithful friends in Japan to whom I wrote monthly newsletters of my missionary activities in Russia.

Lydia with a women from Georgia

In the picture on the right is Lydia (right) talking to a lady from the former Soviet republic of Georgia. I don’t know why in English we say “Georgia” because the correct pronunciation doesn’t sound anything like the US state of Georgia. It sounds more like Gruzia. Lydia was a friend of the head of security at the main exhibition hall of St. Petersburg. He would let us inside for free when everyone else had to pay $1.00. A dollar doesn’t sound like much now but it sure did then! That was 5000 RUBLES!! It was nice to walk around with the head of security. This way the other guards would get to know us and leave us alone while we offered our teaching materials to the guests.

Lydia by a vendor of flowers

Here’s Lydia again on a street by a vendor of flowers. Lydia is from Kiev, Ukraine. People often remarked that she spoke with an accent, unlike a Ukrainian. This is due to her learning English and being with missionaries from America. She married and has a one-year-old daughter named Diane.

This is a documentary by Steven L. Anderson, the pastor of Faithful Word Baptist Church in Tempe, Arizona, USA. The church describes itself as “an old-fashioned, independent, fundamental, King James Bible only, soul-winning Baptist church.” Source: Wikipedia.

As you can see from the graph, I hitchhiked in 2016 much more than in 2015! It was my second best year since keeping records from August 2, 2004.

If you think in miles, just divide the distance in kilometers by 1.6.

Including what I kept track of in 2004, the total distance I traveled to date which includes my 1000-kilometer trip to Osaka in January is 233, 415 kilometers. This took 1010 days of hitchhiking, but not all of them were entire days. Sometimes I hitchhike to town from my countryside home which is only 30 minutes by car.

Of all the rides I got, only 5% were from trucks. The rest were regular cars, and a few were even buses! I also got a few rides in sports cars, classic old cars, and luxury cars such as a Mercedes.

Most of the people who picked me up were Japanese with only 1.7 non-Japanese. This includes Chinese, Koreans (not including those born in Japan) Russians, Americans, British, French, Brazilian, Peruvian, one Iranian, a few Bangladesh, and many Pakistanis. There have been even young mothers with their little children in the car, around 65 far so far! Can you imagine a lady with little kids picking up strange men in any other part of the world? I can’t.

Most of the time the purpose of my travels is to earn money in locations that offer me part-time jobs. Other times it is simply to see friends such as my next trip to the Tokyo area. I love to meet new people this way because I love to share my faith in Jesus Christ with the Japanese who do not know Him, which is most of them. Chances they will hear the Gospel for the first time in their life from me, and they may never hear it again.

Just think of what a missionary faces in Japan: First, you have to learn how to communicate in a difficult language. Japanese is not especially difficult to pronounce, but because most words have two roots which are pronounced differently, one from Chinese and the other Japanese, it is not easy to add new vocabulary. The best way is to also learn how to read the Chinese (Kanji) characters, and this takes time, at least a couple of years of daily study. Secondly, even though you can speak Japanese fluently and base your message of the Gospel solely on Bible Scriptures, they still will not understand you! The core doctrine of mankind being born into sin is alien to the Japanese. One reason is there is no specific word for “sin” in the Japanese language. The word they use for sin is the same word meaning “crime”. Therefore to say we are sinners is to call ourselves criminals in the Japanese mind, and because Japanese culture teaches people to be law-abiding citizens, the idea of being a criminal is loathsome to them! I have to spell out exactly what I mean about sin — breaking God’s moral laws which are stricter than man’s legal laws. Also, the concept that Jesus’ Blood cleanses us from sin is totally foreign to the Japanese. I have to explain the Jewish former practice of animal sacrifices for them to understand. And the evolution verses creation debate is almost unheard of in Japan. It’s interesting that though they have been brainwashed with evolution in school and on television, most Japanese don’t think deeply about it and have no strong opinions either for or against evolution.

To sum up, it takes much longer to win a soul in Japan than in Western nations, even those where Roman Catholicism is the primary religion. One good thing about the Catholics is they all know they are sinners! Most of them anyway. I sure did. My mother told me so. 🙂

Charles Chiniquy

This is all of chapter 1 of Fifty Years in the Church of Rome by Charles Chiniquy

My father, Charles Chiniquy [pronounced, “Chi-ni-quay”], born in Quebec, had studied in the Theological Seminary of that city, to prepare himself for the priesthood. But a few days before making his vows, having been the witness of a great iniquity in the high quarters of the church, he changed his mind, studied law, and became a notary.

Married to Reine Perrault, daughter of Mitchel Perrault, in 1803 he settled at first in Kamoraska, where I was born on the 30th July, 1809.

About four or five years later my parents emigrated to Murray Bay. That place was then in its infancy, and no school had yet been established. My mother was, therefore, my first teacher.

Before leaving the Seminary of Quebec my father had received from one of the Superiors, as a token of his esteem, a beautiful French and Latin Bible. That Bible was the first book, after the A B C, in which I was taught to read. My mother selected the chapters which she considered the most interesting for me; and I read them every day with the greatest attention and pleasure. I was even so much pleased with several chapters, that I read them over and over again till I knew them by heart.

When eight or nine years of age, I had learned by heart the history of the creation and fall of man; the deluge; the sacrifice of Isaac; the history of Moses; the plagues of Egypt; the sublime hymn of Moses after crossing the Red Sea; the history of Samson; the most interesting events of the life of David; several Psalms; all the speeches and parables of Christ; and the whole history of the sufferings and death of our Saviour as narrated by John.

I had two brothers, Louis and Achille; the first about four, the second about eight years younger than myself. When they were sleeping or playing together, how many delicious hours I have spent by my mother’s side, in reading to her the sublime pages of the divine book.

Sometimes she interrupted me to see if I understood what I read; and when my answers made her sure that I understood it, she used to kiss me and press me on her bosom as an expression of her joy.

One day, while I was reading the history of the sufferings of the Saviour, my young heart was so much impressed that I could hardly enunciate the words, and my voice trembled. My mother, perceiving my emotion, tried to say something on the love of Jesus for us, but she could not utter a word her voice was suffocated by her sobs. She leaned her head on my forehead, and I felt two streams of tears falling from her eyes on my cheeks. I could not contain myself any longer. I wept also; and my tears were mixed with hers. The holy book fell from my hands, and I threw myself into my dear mother’s arms.

No human words can express what was felt in her soul and in mine in that most blessed hour! No! I will never forget that solemn hour, when my mother’s heart was perfectly blended with mine at the feet of our dying Saviour. There was a real perfume from heaven in those my mother’s tears which were flowing on me. It seemed then, as it does seem to me today, that there was a celestial harmony in the sound of her voice and in her sobs. Though more than half a century has passed since that solemn hour when Jesus, for the first time, revealed to me something of His suffering and of His love, my heart leaps with joy every time I think of it.

We were some distance from the church, and the roads, in the rainy days, were very bad. On the Sabbath days the neighbouring farmers, unable to go to church, were accustomed to gather at our house in the evening. Then my parents used to put me up on a large table in the midst of the assembly, and I delivered to those good people the most beautiful parts of the Old and New Testaments. The breathless attention, the applause of our guests, and may I tell it often the tears of joy which my mother tried in vain to conceal, supported my strength and gave me the courage I wanted, to speak when so young before so many people. When my parents saw that I was growing tired, my mother, who had a fine voice, sang some of the beautiful French hymns with which her memory was filled.

Several times, when the fine weather allowed me to go to church with my parents, the farmers would take me into their caleches (buggies) at the door of the temple, and request me to give them some chapter of the Gospel. With a most perfect attention they listened to the voice of the child, whom the Good Master had chosen to give them the bread which comes from heaven. More than once, I remember, that when the bell called us to the church, they expressed their regret that they could not hear more.

On one of the beautiful spring days of 1818 my father was writing in his office, and my mother was working with her needle, singing one of her favourite hymns, and I was at the door, playing and talking to a fine robin which I had so perfectly trained that he followed me wherever I went. All of a sudden I saw the priest coming near the gate. The sight of him sent a thrill of uneasiness through my whole frame. It was his first visit to our home.

The priest was a person below the common stature, and had an unpleasant appearance his shoulders were large and he was very corpulent; his hair was long and uncombed, and his double chin seemed to groan under the weight of his flabby cheeks.

I hastily ran to the door and whispered to my parents, “M. le Cur’e arrive (“Mr. Curate is coming”). The last sound was hardly out of my lips when the Rev. Mr. Courtois was at the door, and my father, shaking hands with him, gave him a welcome.

That priest was born in France, where he had a narrow escape, having been condemned to death under the bloody administration of Robespierre. He had found a refuge, with many other French priests, in England, whence he came to Quebec, and the bishop of that place had given him the charge of the parish of Murray Bay.

His conversation was animated and interesting for the first quarter of an hour. It was a real pleasure to hear him. But of a sudden his countenance changed as if a dark cloud had come over his mind, and he stopped talking. My parents had kept themselves on a respectful reserve with the priest. They seemed to have no other mind than to listen to him. The silence which followed was exceedingly unpleasant for all the parties. It looked like the heavy hour which precedes a storm. At length the priest, addressing my faith, said, “Mr. Chiniquy, is it true that you and your child read the Bible?”

“Yes, sir,” was the quick reply, “my little boy and I read the Bible, and what is still better, he has learned by heart a great number of its most interesting chapters. If you will allow it, Mr. Curate, he will give you some of them.”

“I did not come for that purpose,” abruptly replied the priest; “but do you not know that you are forbidden by the holy Council of Trent to read the Bible in French.”

“It makes very little difference to me whether I read the Bible in French, Greek, or Latin,” answered my father, “for I understand these languages equally well.”

“But are you ignorant of the fact that you cannot allow your child to read the Bible?” replied the priest.

“My wife directs her own child in the reading of the Bible, and I cannot see that we commit any sin by continuing to do in future what we have done till now in that matter.”

“Mr. Chiniquy,” rejoined the priest, “you have gone through a whole course of theology; you know the duties of a curate; you know it is my painful duty to come here, get the Bible from you and burn it.”

My grandfather was a fearless Spanish sailor (our original name was Etchiniquia), and there was too much Spanish blood and pride in my father to hear such a sentence with patience in his own house. Quick as lightning he was on his feet. I pressed myself, trembling, near my mother, who trembled also.

At first I feared lest some very unfortunate and violent scene should occur; for my father’s anger in that moment was really terrible.

But there was another thing which affected me. I feared lest the priest should lay his hands on my dear Bible, which was just before him on the table; for it was mine, as it had been given me the last year as a Christmas gift.

Fortunately, my father had subdued himself after the first moment of his anger. He was pacing the room with a double-quick step; his lips were pale and trembling, and he was muttering between his teeth words which were unintelligible to any one of us.

The priest was closely watching all my father’s movements; his hands were convulsively pressing his heavy cane, and his face was giving the sure evidence of a too well-grounded terror. It was clear that the ambassador of Rome did not find himself infallibly sure of his position on the ground he had so foolishly chosen to take; since his last words he had remained as silent as a tomb.

At last, after having paced the room for a considerable time, my father suddenly stopped before the priest, and said, “Sir, is that all you have to say here.”

“Yes, sir,” said the trembling priest.

“Well, sir,” added my father, “you know the door by which you entered my house: please take the same door and go away quickly.”

The priest went out immediately. I felt an inexpressible joy when I saw that my Bible was safe. I ran to my father’s neck, kissed and thanked him for his victory. And to pay him, in my childish way, I jumped upon the large table and recited, in my best style, the fight between David and Goliath. Of course, in my mind, my father was David and the priest of Rome was the giant whom the little stone from the brook had stricken down.

Thou knowest, O God, that it is to that Bible, read on my mother’s knees, I owe, by thy infinite mercy, the knowledge of the truth to-day; that Bible had sent, to my young heart and intelligence, rays of light which all the sophisms and dark errors of Rome could never completely extinguish.

Charles Chiniquy

The excerpts below are from chapter 58 of Charles Chiniquy’s book, “Fifty Years in the Church of Rome.”

Abraham Lincoln had not only defended me with the zeal and talent of the ablest lawyer I have ever known, but as the most devoted and noblest friend I ever had. After giving more than a year of his precious time to my defense, when he had pleaded, during two long sessions of the Court of Urbana, without receiving a cent form me, I considered that I was owing him a great sum of money. My two other lawyers, who had not done the half of his work, asked me a thousand dollars each, and I had not thought that too much. After thanking him for the inappreciable services he had rendered me, I requested him to show me his bill, assuring him that, thought I would not be able to pay the whole cash, I would pay him to the last cent, if he had the kindness to wait a little for the balance.

He answered me with a smile and an air of inimitable kindness, which was peculiar to him: “My dear Mr. Chiniquy, I feel proud and honoured to have been called to defend you. But I have done it less as a lawyer than as a friend. The money I should receive from you would take away the pleasure I feel at having fought your battle. Your case is unique in my whole practice. I have never met a man so cruelly persecuted as you have been, and who deserves it so little. Your enemies are devils incarnate. The plot they had concocted against you is the most hellish one I ever knew. But the way you have been saved from their hands, the appearance of that young and intelligent Miss Moffat, who was really sent by God in the very hour of need, when, I confess it again, I thought everything was nearly lost, is one of the most extraordinary occurrences I ever saw. It makes me remember what I have too often forgotten, and what my mother often told me when young that our God is a prayer-hearing God. This good thought, sown into my young heart by that dear mother’s hand, was just in my mind when I told you, ‘Go and pray, God alone can save you.’ But I confess to you that I had not faith enough to believe that your prayer would be so quickly and so marvelously answered by the sudden appearance of that interesting young lady, last night. Now let us speak of what you owe me. Well! Well! how much do you owe me? You owe me nothing! for I suppose you are quite ruined. The expenses of such a suit, I know, must be enormous. Your enemies want to ruin you. Will I help them to finish your ruin, when I hope I have the right to be put among the most sincere and devoted of your friends?”

“You are right,” I answered him; “you are the most devoted and noblest friend God ever gave me, and I am nearly ruined by my enemies. But you are the father of a pretty large family; you must support them. Your traveling expenses in coming twice here for me from Springfield; your hotel bills during the two terms you have defended me, must be very considerable. It is not just that you should receive nothing in return for such work and expenses.”

“Well! well!” he answered, “I will give you a promissory note which you will sign.” Taking then a small piece of paper, he wrote:

.Urbana, May 23, 1853

Due A. Lincoln fifty dollars, for value received.

C. Chiniquy

[Above shown in handwriting]

He handed me the note, saying, “Can you sign that?”

After reading it, I said, “Dear Mr. Lincoln, this is a joke. It is not possible that you ask only fifty dollars for services which are worth at least two thousand dollars.”

He then tapped me with the right hand on the shoulders and said: “Sign that, it is enough. I will pinch some rich men for that, and make them pay the rest of the bill,” and he laughed outright.

When Abraham Lincoln was writing the due-bill, the relaxation of the great strain upon my mind, and the great kindness of my benefactor and defender in charging me so little for such a service, and the terrible presentiment that he would pay with his life what he had done for me caused me to break into sobs and tears.

As Mr. Lincoln had finished writing the due-bill, he turned round to me, and said, “Father Chiniquy, what are you crying for? Ought you not to be the most happy man alive? you have beaten your enemies and gained the most glorious victory, and you will come out of all your troubles in triumph.”

“Dear Mr. Lincoln,” I answered, “allow me to tell you that the joy I should naturally feel for such a victory is destroyed in my mind by the fear of what it may cost you. There were then in the crowd not less than ten or twelve Jesuits from Chicago and St. Louis, who came to hear my sentence of condemnation to the penitentiary. But it was on their heads that you have brought the thunders of heaven and earth! nothing can be compared to the expression of their rage against you, when you not only wrenched me from their cruel hands, but you were making the walls of the court-house tremble under the awful and superhumanly eloquent denunciation of their infamy, diabolical malice, and total want of Christian and human principle, in the plot they had formed for my destruction. What troubles my soul just now and draws my tears, is that it seems to me that I have read your sentence of death in their fiendish eyes. How many other noble victims have already fallen at their feet!

He tried to divert my mind, at first, with a joke, “Sign this,” said he, “it will be my warrant of death.”

But after I had signed, he became more solemn, and said, “I know that Jesuits never forget nor forsake. But man must not care how and where he dies, provided he dies at the post of honour and duty,” and he left me.

Charles Chiniquy

This was taken from the first part of chapter 5 of Fifty Years in the Church of Rome
By Charles Chiniquy.

The day following that of the meeting at which Mr. Tache had given his reasons for boasting that he had whipped the priest, I wrote to my mother: “For God’s sake, come for me; I can stay here no longer. If you knew what my eyes have seen and my ears have heard for some time past, you would not delay your coming a single day.”

Indeed, such was the impression left upon me by that flagellation, and by the speeches which I had heard, that had it not been for the crossing of the St. Lawrence, I would have started for Murray Bay on the day after the secret meeting at which I had heard things that so terribly frightened me. How I regretted the happy and peaceful days spent with my mother in reading the beautiful chapters of the Bible, so well chosen by her to instruct and interest me! What a difference there was between our conversations after these readings, and the conversations I heard at St. Thomas!

Happily my parents’ desire to see me again was as great as mine to go back to them. So that a few weeks later my mother came for me. She pressed me to her heart, and brought me back to the arms of my father.

I arrived at home on the 17th of July, 1821, and spent the afternoon and evening till late by my father’s side. With what pleasure did he see me working difficult problems in algebra, and even in geometry! for under my teacher, Mr. Jones, I had really made rapid progress in those branches. More than once I noticed tears of joy in my father’s eyes when, taking my slate, he saw that my calculations were correct. He also examined me in grammar. “What an admirable teacher this Mr. Jones must be,” he would say, “to have advanced a child so much in the short space of fourteen months!”

How sweet to me, but how short, were those hours of happiness passed between my good mother and my father! We had family worship. I read the fifteenth chapter of Luke, the return of the prodigal son. My mother then sang a hymn of joy and gratitude, and I went to bed with my heart full of happiness to take the sweetest sleep of my life. But, O God! what an awful awakening Thou hadst prepared for me!

About four o’clock in the morning heartrending screams fell upon my ear. I recognized my mother’s voice.

“What is the matter, dear mother?”

“Oh, my dear child, you have no more a father! He is dead!”

In saying these words she lost consciousness and fell on the floor!

While a friend who had passed the night with us gave her proper care, I hastened to my father’s bed. I pressed him to my heart, I kissed him, I covered him with my tears, I moved his head, I pressed his hands, I tried to lift him up on his pillow: I could not believe that he was dead! It seemed to me that even if dead he would come back to life that God could not thus take my father away from me at the very moment when I had come back to him after so long an absence! I knelt to pray to God for the life of my father. But my tears and cries were useless. He was dead! He was already cold as ice!

Two days after he was buried. My mother was so overwhelmed with grief that she could not follow the funeral procession. I remained with her as her only earthly support. Poor mother! How many tears thou hast shed! What sobs came from thine afflicted heart in those days of supreme grief!

Though I was very young, I could understand the greatness of our loss, and I mingled my tears with those of my mother.

What pen can portray what takes place in the heart of a woman when God takes suddenly her husband away in the prime of his life, and leaves her alone, plunged in misery, with three small children, two of whom are even too young to know their loss! How long are the hours of the day for the poor widow who is left alone, and without means, among strangers! How painful the sleepless night to the heart which has lost everything! How empty a house is left by the eternal absence of him who was its master, support, and father! Every object in the house and every step she takes remind her of her loss and sinks the sword deeper which pierces her heart. Oh, how bitter are the tears which flow from her eyes when her youngest child, who as yet does not understand the mystery of death, throws himself into her arms and says: “Mamma, where is papa? Why does he not come back? I am lonely!”

My poor mother passed through those heartrending trials. I heard her sobs during the long hours of the day, and also during the longer hours of the night. Many times I have seen her fall upon her knees to implore God to be merciful to her and to her three unhappy orphans. I could do nothing then to comfort her, but love her, pray and weep with her!

Only a few days had elapsed after the burial of my father when I saw Mr. Courtois, the parish priest, coming to our house (he who had tried to take away our Bible from us). He had the reputation of being rich, and as we were poor and unhappy since my father’s death, my first thought was that he had come to comfort and to help us. I could see that my mother had the same hopes. She welcomed him as an angel from heaven. The least gleam of hope is so sweet to one who is unhappy!

From his very first words, however, I could see that our hopes were not to be realized. He tried to be sympathetic, and even said something about the confidence that we should have in God, especially in times of trial; but his words were cold and dry.

Turning to me, he said:

“Do you continue to read the Bible, my little boy?”

“Yes, sir,” answered I, with a voice trembling with anxiety, for I feared that he would make another effort to take away that treasure, and I had no longer a father to defend it.

Then, addressing my mother, he said:

“Madam, I told you that it was not right for you or your child to read that book.”

My mother cast down her eyes, and answered only by the tears which ran down her cheeks.

That question was followed by a long silence, and the priest then continued:

“Madam, there is something due for the prayers which have been sung, and the services which you requested to be offered for the repose of your husband’s soul. I will be very much obliged to you if you pay me that little debt.”

“Mr. Courtis,” answered my mother, “my husband left me nothing but debts. I have only the work of my own hands to procure a living for my three children, the eldest of whom is before you. For these little orphans’ sake, if not for mine, do not take from us the little that is left.”

“But, madam, you do not reflect. Your husband died suddenly and without any preparation; he is therefore in the flames of purgatory. If you want him to be delivered, you must necessarily unite your personal sacrifices to the prayers of the Church and the masses which we offer.”

“As I said, my husband has left me absolutely without means, and it is impossible for me to give you any money,” replied my mother.

“But, madam, your husband was for a long time the only notary of Mal Bay. He surely must have made much money. I can scarcely think that he has left you without any means to help him now that his desolation and sufferings are far greater than yours.”

“My husband did indeed coin much money, but he spent still more. Thanks to God, we have not been in want while he lived. But lately he got this house built, and what is still due on it makes me fear that I will lose it. He also bought a piece of land not long ago, only half of which is paid and I will, therefore, probably not be able to keep it. Hence I may soon, with my poor orphans, be deprived of everything that is left us. In the meantime I hope, sir, that you are not a man to take away from us our last piece of bread.”

“But, madam, the masses offered for the rest of your husband’s soul must be paid for,” answered the priest.

My mother covered her face with her handkerchief and wept.

As for me, I did not mingle my tears with hers this time. My feelings were not those of grief, but of anger and unspeakable horror. My eyes were fixed on the face of that man who tortured my mother’s heart. I looked with tearless eyes upon the man who added to my mother’s anguish, and made her weep more bitterly than ever. My hands were clenched, as if ready to strike. All my muscles trembled; my teeth chattered as if from intense cold. My greatest sorrow was my weakness in the presence of that big man, and my not being able to send him away from our house, and driving him far away from my mother.

I felt inclined to say to him: “Are you not ashamed, you who are so rich, to come to take away the last piece of bread from our mouths?” But my physical and moral strength were not sufficient to accomplish the task before me, and I was filled with regret and disappointment.

After a long silence, my mother raised her eyes, reddened with tears, towards the priest and said:

“Sir, you see that cow in the meadow, not far from our house? Her milk and the butter made from it form the principal part of my children’s food. I hope you will not take her away from us. If, however, such a sacrifice must be made to deliver my poor husband’s soul from purgatory, take her as payment of the masses to be offered to extinguish those devouring flames.”

The priest instantly arose, saying, “Very well, madam,” and went out.

Our eyes anxiously followed him; but instead of walking towards the little gate which was in front of the house, he directed his steps towards the meadow, and drove the cow before him in the direction of his home.

At that sight I screamed with despair: “Oh, my mother! he is taking our cow away! What will become of us?”

Lord Nairn had given us that splendid cow when it was three months old. Her mother had been brought from Scotland, and belonged to one of the best breeds of that country. I fed her with my own hands, and had often shared my bread with her. I loved her as a child always loves an animal which he has brought up himself. She seemed to understand and love me also. From whatever distance she could see me, she would run to me to receive my caresses, and whatever else I might have to give her. My mother herself milked her; and her rich milk was such delicious and substantial food for us.

My mother also cried out with grief as she saw the priest taking away the only means heaven had left her to feed her children.

Throwing myself into her arms, I asked her: “Why have you given away our cow? What will become of us? We shall surely die of hunger?”

“Dear child,” she answered. “I did not think the priest would be so cruel as to take away the last resource which God had left us. Ah! if I had believed him to be so unmerciful I would never have spoken to him as I did. As you say, my dear child, what will become of us? But have you not often read to me in your Bible that God is the Father of the widow and the orphan? We shall pray to that God who is willing to be your father and mine: He will listen to us, and see our tears. Let us kneel down and ask Him to be merciful to us, and to give us back the support which the priest deprived us.”

We both knelt down. She took my right hand with her left, and, lifting the other hand towards heaven, she offered a prayer to the God of mercies for her poor children such as I have never since heard. Her words were often choked by her sobs. But when she could not speak with her voice, she spoke with her burning eyes raised to heaven, and with her hand uplifted. I also prayed to God with her, and repeated her words, which were broken by my sobs.

When her prayer was ended she remained for a long time pale and trembling. Cold sweat was flowing on her face, and she fell on the floor. I thought she was going to die. I ran for cold water, which I gave her, saying: “Dear mother! Oh, do not leave me alone upon earth!” After drinking a few drops she felt better, and taking my hand, she put it to her trembling lips; then drawing me near her, and pressing me to her bosom, she said: “Dear child, if ever you become a priest, I ask of you never to be so hard-hearted towards poor widows as are the priests of today.” When she said these words, I felt her burning tears falling upon my cheek.

The memory of these tears has never left me. I felt them constantly during the twenty-five years I spent in preaching the inconceivable superstitions of Rome.

Robert Lewis Dabney

I read the biography of Dorothy Day, (November 8, 1897 – November 29, 1980) an American journalist, social activist, and Catholic convert. (Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorothy_Day) I wondered, “Why would anybody who was raised a Protestant be attracted to the Roman Catholic Church to the point of embracing it and its doctrines?” I myself went the opposite direction, from Catholicism to Protestantism. But there have been other famous public figures throughout history who have converted to Catholicism. Examples are former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and former Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Newt Gingrich. I did a search and came up with a fantastic document written in the 19th century by Robert Lewis Dabney (March 5, 1820 – January 3, 1898) who was an American Christian theologian, Southern Presbyterian pastor, Confederate States Army chaplain, and architect. He was also chief of staff and biographer to Stonewall Jackson. (Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Lewis_Dabney ) I consider it a highly insightful read that shows how Rome has used carnal attractions to draw others to her.

I added definitions with the help of the Merriam-Webster and other dictionaries of words not commonly used today. All emphasis in bold are mine.

Dr. John H. Rice, with the intuition of a great mind, warned Presbyterians against a renewed prevalence of popery in our Protestant land. This was when it was so insignificant among us as to be almost unnoticed.

Many were surprised at his prophecy, and not a few mocked; but time has fulfilled it. Our leaders from 1830 to 1860 understood well the causes of this danger. They were diligent to inform and prepare the minds of their people against it. Hence General Assemblies and Synods appointed annual sermons upon popery, and our teachers did their best to arouse the minds of the people.

Now, all this has mainly passed away, and we are relaxing our resistance against the dreaded foe just in proportion as he grows more formidable. It has become the fashion to condemn controversy and to affect the widest charity for this and all other foes of Christ and of souls. High Presbyterian authority even is quoted as saying, that henceforth our concern with Romanism should be chiefly irenical (favoring, conducive to, or operating toward peace, moderation, or conciliation)! The figures presented by the census of 1890 are construed in opposite ways. This gives the papists more than fourteen millions of adherents in the United States, where ninety years ago there were but a few thousands. Such Protestant journals as think it their interest to play sycophants (servile self-seeking flatterers) to public opinion try to persuade us that these figures are very consoling; because, if Rome had kept all the natural increase of her immigrations the numbers would have been larger. But Rome points to them with insolent triumph as prognostics of an assured victory over Protestantism on this continent. Which will prove correct?

For Presbyterians of all others to discount the perpetual danger from Romanism is thoroughly thoughtless and rash. We believe that the Christianity left by the apostles to the primitive church was essentially what we now call Presbyterian and Protestant. Prelacy and popery speedily began to work in the bosom of that community and steadily wrought its corruption and almost its total extirpation. Why should not the same cause tend to work the same result again? Are we truer or wiser Presbyterians than those trained by the apostles? Have the enemies of truth become less skillful and dangerous by gaining the experience of centuries? The popish system of ritual and doctrine was a gradual growth, which, modifying true Christianity, first perverted and then extinguished it. Its destructive power has resulted from this: that it has not been the invention of any one cunning and hostile mind, but a gradual growth, modified by hundreds or thousands of its cultivators, who were the most acute, learned, selfish, and anti-Christian spirits of their generations, perpetually retouched and adapted to every weakness and every attribute of depraved human nature, until it became the most skillful and pernicious system of error which the world has ever known. As it has adjusted itself to every superstition, every sense of guilt, every foible and craving of the depraved human heart, so it has travestied with consummate skill every active principle of the Gospel. It is doubtless the ne plus ultra (the highest point capable of being attained) of religious delusion, the final and highest result of perverted human faculty guided by the sagacity (wisdom, (deep) insight, intelligence, understanding) of the great enemy.

This system has nearly conquered Christendom once. He who does not see that it is capable of conquering it again is blind to the simplest laws of thought. One may ask, Does it not retain sundry of the cardinal doctrines of the Gospel, monotheism, the trinity, the hypostatic (foundational) union, Christ’s sacrifice, the sacraments, the resurrection, the judgment, immortality? Yes; in form it retains them, and this because of its supreme cunning. It retains them while so wresting and enervating (lacking physical, mental, or moral vigor) as to rob them mainly of their sanctifying power, because it designs to spread its snares for all sorts of minds of every grade of opinion. The grand architect was too cunning to make it, like his earlier essays, mere atheism, or mere fetishism, or mere polytheism, or mere pagan idolatry; for in these forms the trap only ensnared the coarser and more ignorant natures. He has now perfected it and baited it for all types of humanity, the most refined as well as the most imbruted (a person degraded to the level of a brute).

I. Romanism now enjoys in our country (America) certain important advantages, which I may style legitimate, in this sense, that our decadent, half-corrupted Protestantism bestows these advantages upon our enemy, so that Rome, in employing them, only uses what we ourselves give her. In other words, there are plain points upon which Rome claims a favorable comparison as against Protestantism; and her claim is correct, in that the latter is blindly and criminally betraying her own interests and duties.

(1) A hundred years ago French atheism gave the world the Jacobin theory of political rights. The Bible had been teaching mankind for three thousand years the great doctrine of men’s moral equality before the universal Father, the great basis of all free, just, and truly republican forms of civil society. Atheism now travestied this true doctrine by her mortal heresy of the absolute equality of men, asserting that every human being is naturally and inalienably entitled to every right, power, and prerogative in civil society which is allowed to any man or any class. The Bible taught a liberty which consists in each man’s unhindered privilege of having and doing just those things, and no others, to which he is rationally and morally entitled. Jacobinism taught the liberty of license-every man’s natural right to indulge his own absolute will; and it set up this fiendish caricature as the object of sacred worship for mankind.

Now, democratic Protestantism in these United States has become so ignorant, so superficial and willful, that it confounds the true republicanism with this deadly heresy of Jacobinism. It has ceased to know a difference. Hence, when the atheistic doctrine begins to bear its natural fruits of license, insubordination, communism, and anarchy, this bastard democratic Protestantism does not know how to rebuke them. It has recognized the parents; how can it consistently condemn the children? Now, then, Rome proposes herself as the stable advocate of obedience, order, and permanent authority throughout the ages. She shows her practical power to govern men, as she says, through their consciences (truth would say, through their superstitions). Do we wonder that good citizens, beginning to stand aghast at these elements of confusion and ruin, the spawn of Jacobinism, which a Jacobinized Protestantism cannot control, should look around for some moral and religious system capable of supporting a firm social order? Need we be surprised that when Rome steps forward, saying, I have been through the centuries the upholder of order, rational men should be inclined to give her their hand? This high advantage a misguided Protestantism is now giving to its great adversary.

(2) The Reformation was an assertion of liberty of thought. It asserted for all mankind, and secured for the Protestant nations, each man’s right to think and decide for himself upon his religious creed and his duty toward his God, in the fear of God and the truth, unhindered by human power, political or ecclesiastical. Here, again, a part of our Protestantism perverted the precious truth until the manna bred worms, and stank.

Rationalistic and skeptical Protestantism now claims, instead of that righteous liberty, license to dogmatize at the bidding of every caprice, every impulse of vanity, every false philosophy, without any responsibility to either truth or moral obligation. The result has been a diversity and confusion of pretended creeds and theologies among nominal Protestants, which perplexes and frightens sincere, but timid, minds. Everything seems to them afloat upon this turbulent sea of licentious debate. They are fatigued and alarmed; they see no end of uncertainties. They look around anxiously for some safe and fixed foundation of credence. Rome comes forward and says to them, You see, then, that this Protestant liberty of thought is fatal license; the Protestants rational religion turns out to be but poisonous rationalism, infidelity wearing the mask of faith. Holy Mother Church offers you the foundation of her infallibility, guaranteed by the indwelling of the Holy Ghost. She shows you that faith must ground itself in implicit submission, and not in human inquiry. She pledges herself for the safety of your soul if you simply submit; come, then, trust and be at rest. Many are the weary souls who accept her invitations; and these not only the weak and cowardly, but sometimes the brilliant and gifted, like a Cardinal Newman (a priest in the Anglican Church who converted to Catholicism). For this result a perverted Protestantism is responsible. If all nominal Protestants were as honest in their exercise of mental liberty as the fear of God and the loyalty to truth should make them; if they were as humble and honest in construing and obeying God’s word in his Bible, as papists profess to be in submitting to the authority of the Holy Mother Church, honest inquirers would never be embarrassed, and would never be fooled into supposing that the words of a pope could furnish a more comfortable foundation for faith than the Word of God.

II. I now proceed to explain certain evil principles of human nature which are concurring powerfully in this country to give currency to popery. These may be called its illicit advantages. I mention:

(1) The constant tendency of American demagogues to pay court to popery and to purchase votes for themselves from it, at the cost of the people’s safety, rights, and money.

Nearly two generations ago (the men of this day seem to have forgotten the infamy) William H. Seward, of New York, began this dangerous and dishonest game. He wished to be Governor of New York. He came to an understanding with Archbishop Hughes, then the head of the popish hierarchy in that state, to give him the Irish vote in return for certain sectarian advantages in the disbursement of the state revenues. Neither Rome nor the demagogues have since forgotten their lesson, nor will they ever forget it. It would be as unreasonable to expect it as to expect that hawks will forget the poultry yard.

It is the nature of the demagogue to trade off anything for votes; they are the breath in the nostrils of his ambition. The popish hierarchy differs essentially from the ministry of any other religion, in having votes to trade. The traditional claim of Rome is that she has the right to control both spheres, the ecclesiastical and the political, the political for the sake of the ecclesiastical. The votes of her masses are more or less manageable, as the votes of Protestants are not, because Rome is a system of authority as opposed to free thought. Rome instructs the conscience of every one of her members that it is his religious duty to subordinate all other duties and interests to hers. And this is a spiritual duty enforceable by the most awful spiritual sanctions. How can a thinking man afford to disobey the hierarchy which holds his eternal destiny in its secret fist; so that even if they gave him in form the essential sacraments, such as the mass, absolution, and extreme unction, they are able clandestinely to make them worthless to him, by withholding the sacramental intention? Hence it is that the majority of American papists can be voted in blocs; and it is virtually the hierarchy which votes them. The goods are ready bound up in parcels for traffic with demagogues.

We are well aware that numerous papists will indignantly deny this, declaring that there is a Romanist vote in this country which is just as independent of their priesthood and as free as any other. Of course there is. The hierarchy is a very experienced and dexterous driver. It does not whip in the restive colts, but humors them awhile until she gets them well harnessed and broken. But the team as a whole must yet travel her road, because they have to believe it infallible. We assure these independent Romanist voters that they are not good Catholics; they must unlearn this heresy of independent thought before they are meet for the Romanist paradise.

Men of secular ambition have always sought to use the hierarchy to influence others for their political advantage; the example is as old as history. Just as soon as prelacy was developed in the patristic church, Roman emperors began to purchase its influence to sustain their thrones. Throughout the Middle Ages, German kaisers and French, Spanish, and English kings habitually traded with Rome, paying her dignities and endowments for her ghostly support to their ambitions. Even in this century we have seen the two Napoleons playing the same game-purchasing for their imperialism the support of a priesthood in whose religion they did not believe. If any suppose that because America is nominally democratic the same thing will not happen here, they are thoroughly silly. Some Yankee ingenuity will be invoked to modify the forms of the traffic, so as to suit American names; that is all.

Intelligent students of church history know that one main agency for converting primitive Christianity first into prelacy and then into popery was unlimited church endowments. As soon as Constantine established Christianity as the religion of the State, ecclesiastical persons and bodies began to assume the virtual (and before long the formal) rights of corporations. They could receive bequests and gifts of property, and hold them by a tenure as firm as that of the fee-simple. These spiritual corporations were deathless. Thus the property they acquired was all held by the tenure of mortmain (an inalienable possession of lands or buildings by an ecclesiastical or other corporation). When a corporation is thus empowered to absorb continually, and never to disgorge, there is no limit to its possible wealth.

The laws of the empire in the Middle Ages imposed no limitations upon bequests; thus, most naturally, monasteries, cathedrals, chapters, and archbishoprics became inordinately rich. At the Reformation they had grasped one-third of the property of Europe. But Scripture saith, Where the carcass is, thither the eagles are gathered together. Wealth is power, and ambitious men crave it. Thus this endowed hierarchy came to be filled by the men of the greediest ambition in Europe, instead of by humble, self-denying pastors; and thus it was that this tremendous money power, arming itself first with a spiritual despotism of the popish theology over consciences, and then allying itself with political power, wielded the whole to enforce the absolute domination of that religion which gave them their wealth. No wonder human liberty, free thought, and the Bible were together trampled out of Europe.

When the Reformation came, the men who could think saw that this tenure in mortmain had been the fatal thing. Knox, the wisest of them, saw clearly that if a religious reformation was to succeed in Scotland the ecclesiastical corporations must be destroyed. They were destroyed, their whole property alienated to the secular nobles or to the State (the remnant which Knox secured for religious education); and therefore it was that Scotland remained Presbyterian. When our American commonwealths were founded, statesmen and divines understood this great principle of jurisprudence, that no corporate tenure in mortmain, either spiritual or secular, is compatible with the liberty of the people and the continuance of constitutional government.

But it would appear that our legislators now know nothing about that great principle, or care nothing about it. Church institutions, Protestant and Romanist, are virtually perpetual corporations. Whatever the pious choose to give them is held in mortmain, and they grow continually richer and richer; they do not even pay taxes, and there seems no limit upon their acquisitions.

And last comes the Supreme Court of the United States, and under the pretext of construing the law, legislates a new law in the famous Walnut-Street Church case, as though they desired to ensure both the corruption of religion and the destruction of free government by a second gigantic incubus of endowed ecclesiasticism. The new law is virtually this: That in case any free citizen deems that the gifts of himself or his ancestors are usurped for some use alien to the designed trust, it shall be the usurper who shall decide the issue. This is, of course, essentially popish, yet a great Protestant denomination has been seen hastening to enroll it in its digest of spiritual laws. The working of this tendency of overgrown ecclesiastical wealth will certainly be two-fold: First, to Romanize partially or wholly the Protestant churches thus enriched; and, secondly, to incline, enable, and equip the religion thus Romanized for its alliance with political ambition and for the subjugation of the people and the government. When church bodies began, under Constantine, to acquire endowments, these bodies were Episcopal, at most, or even still Presbyterian. The increase of endowment helped to make them popish. Then popery and feudalism stamped out the Bible and enslaved Europe. If time permitted, I could trace out the lines of causation into perfect clearness. Will men ever learn that like causes must produce like effects?

(2) The democratic theory of human society may be the most rational and equitable; but human nature is not equitable; it is fallen and perverted. Lust of applause, pride, vain-glory, and love of power are as natural to it as hunger to the body. Next to Adam, the most representative man upon earth was Diotrephes, who loves to have the pre-eminence. Every man is an aristocrat in his heart. Now, prelacy and popery are aristocratic religions. Consequently, as long as human nature is natural, they will present more or less of attraction to human minds. Quite a number of Methodist, Presbyterian, or Independent ministers have gone over to prelacy or popery, and thus become bishops. Was there ever one of them, however conscientious his new faith, and however devout his temper, who did not find some elation and pleasure in his spiritual dignity? Is there a democrat in democratic America who would not be flattered in his heart by being addressed as my lord? Distinction and power are gratifying to all men. Prelacy and popery offer this sweet morsel to aspirants by promising to make some of them lords of their brethren. This is enough to entice all of them, as the crown entices all the racers on the race-course. It is true that while many run, one obtains the crown; but all may flatter themselves with the hope of winning.

Especially does the pretension of sacramental grace offer the most splendid bait to human ambition which can be conceived of on this Earth. To be the vicar of the Almighty in dispensing eternal life and heavenly crowns at will is a more magnificent power than the prerogative of any emperor on Earth. Let a man once be persuaded that he really grasps this power by getting a place in the apostolic succession, and the more sincere he is, the more splendid the prerogative will appear to him; for the more clearly his faith appreciates the thing that he proposes to do in the sacraments, the more illustrious that thing must appear. The greatest boon ever inherited by an emperor was finite. The greatest boon of redemption is infinite; to be able to dispense it at will to one sinner is a much grander thing than to conquer the world and establish a universal secular empire. The humblest hedge-priest would be a far grander man than that emperor if he could really work the miracle and confer the grace of redemption which Rome says he does every time he consecrates a mass.

How shall we estimate, then, the greatness of that pope or prelate who can manufacture such miracle workers at will? The greatest being on Earth should hardly think himself worthy to loose his sandals from his feet. The Turkish ambassador to Paris was certainly right when, upon accompanying the King of France to high mass in Notre Dame, and seeing the king, courtiers, and multitude all prostrate themselves when the priest elevated the host, he wondered that the king should allow anybody but himself to perform that magnificent function. He is reported to have said: Sire, if I was king, and believed in your religion, nobody should do that in France except me. It is a vastly greater thing than anything else that you do in your royal functions.

As long as man is man, therefore, popery will possess this unhallowed advantage of enticing, and even entrancing, the ambition of the keenest aspirants. The stronger their faith in their doctrine, the more will they sanctify to themselves this dreadful ambition. In this respect, as in so many others, the tendency of the whole current of human nature is to make papists. It is converting grace only which can check that current and turn men sincerely back toward Protestantism. I am well aware that the functions of the Protestant minister may be so wrested as to present an appeal to unhallowed ambition. But popery professes to confer upon her clergy every didactic (intended to convey instruction and information as well as pleasure and entertainment) and presbyterial function which Protestantism has to bestow; while the former offers, in addition, this splendid bait of prelatic power (the power of the superior rank of a bishop or abbot) and sacramental miracle-working…

(3) In sundry respects I perceive a sort of hallucination prevailing in people’s minds concerning old historical errors and abuses, which I see to have been the regular results of human nature. Men will not understand history; they flatter themselves that, because the modes of civilization are much changed and advanced, therefore the essential laws of man’s nature are going to cease acting; which is just as unreasonable as to expect that sinful human beings must entirely cease to be untruthful, sensual, dishonest, and selfish, because they have gotten to wear fine clothes.

Of certain evils and abuses of ancient history men persuade themselves that they are no longer possible among us, because we have become civilized and nominally Christian. One of these evils is idolatry with its two branches, polytheism and image-worship. Oh! they say, mankind has outgrown all that; other evils may invade our Christian civilization, but that is too gross to come back again. They are blind at once to the teachings of historical facts and to common sense. They know that at one time idolatry nearly filled the ancient world. Well, what was the previous religious state of mankind upon which it supervened? Virtually a Christian state, that is to say, a worship of the one true God, under the light of revelation, with our same Gospel taught by promises and sacrifices. And it is very stupid to suppose that the social state upon which the early idolatry supervened was savage or barbaric. We rather conclude that the people who built Noah’s ark, the tower of Babel, and the pyramid of Cheops, and who enjoyed the light of God’s recent revelations to Adam, to Enoch, to Noah, were civilized. Men made a strange confusion here: They fancy that idolatry could be prevalent because mankind were not civilized. The historical fact is just the opposite: Mankind became uncivilized because idolatry first prevailed. In truth, the principles tending to idolatry are deeply laid in man’s fallen nature. Like a compressed spring, they are ever ready to act again, and will surely begin to act, whenever the opposing power of vital godliness is withdrawn.

First, the sensuous has become too prominent in man; reason, conscience, and faith, too feeble. Every sinful man’s experience witnesses this all day long, every day of his life. Why else is it that the objects of sense perception, which are comparatively trivial, dominate his attention, his sensibilities, and his desires so much more than the objects of faith, which he himself knows to be so much more important? Did not this sensuous tendency seek to invade man’s religious ideas and feelings, it would be strange indeed. Hence, man untaught and unchecked by the heavenly light always shows a craving for sensuous objects of worship. He is not likely, in our day, to satisfy this craving by setting up a brazen image of Dagon, the fish-god; or of Zeus, or the Roman Jupiter; or of the Aztec’s Huitzilopochtli [sun god]. But still he craves a visible, material object of worship. Rome meets him at a comfortable half-way station with her relics, crucifixes, and images of the saints. She adroitly smoothes the downhill road for him by connecting all these with the worship of the true God.

Again, man’s conscious weakness impels him almost irresistibly in his serious hours to seek some being of supernatural attributes to lean upon. His heart cries out, Lead me to the Rock that is higher than I. But when pure monotheism proposes to him the supreme, eternal God—infinite not only in his power to help, but in his omniscience, justice, and holiness—the sinful heart recoils. This object is too high, too holy, too dreadful for it. Sinful man craves a god, but, like his first father, shuns the infinite God; hence the powerful tendency to invent intermediate gods, whom he may persuade himself to be sufficiently gracious and powerful to be trusted, and yet not so infinite, immutable, and holy as inevitably to condemn sin. Here is the impulse which prompted all pagan nations to invent polytheism. This they did by filling the space between man and the supreme being with intermediate gods. Such, among the Greeks, were Bacchus, Hercules, Castor and Pollux, Theseus, Aesculapius, etc.

It is a great mistake to suppose that thoughtful pagans did not recognize the unity and eternity of a supreme god, Father of gods and of men. But sometimes they represent him as so exalted and sublimated as to be at once above the reach of human prayers and above all concernment in human affairs. Others thought of him as too awful to be directly approached, accessible only through the mediation of his own next progeny, the secondary gods. Here we have precisely the impulse for which Rome provides in her saint worship. Mary is the highest of the intermediate gods, next to the Trinity, the intercessor for Christ’s intercession. The apostles and saints are the secondary gods of this Christian pantheon. How strangely has God’s predestination led Rome in the development of her history to the unwitting admission of this indictment! Pagan Rome had her marble temple, the gift of Agrippa to the Commonwealth, the Pantheon, or sanctuary of all the gods. This very building stands now, rededicated by the popes as the temple of Christ and all the saints. So fateful has been the force of this analogy between the old polytheism and the new.

The attempt is made, indeed, to hide the likeness by the sophistical distinction between latria (a theological term used in Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic theology to mean adoration, a reverence directed only to the Holy Trinity) and dulia (adoration for the saints); but its worthlessness appears from this, that even dulia cannot be offered to redeemed creatures without ascribing to them, by an unavoidable implication, the attributes peculiar to God. In one word, fallen men of all ages have betrayed a powerful tendency to image-worship and polytheism. Rome provides for that tendency in a way the most adroit possible, for an age nominally Christian but practically unbelieving. To that tendency the religion of the Bible sternly refuses to concede anything, requiring not its gratification, but its extirpation.

This cunning policy of Rome had sweeping success in the early church. The same principle won almost universal success in the ancient world. It will succeed again here. Many will exclaim that this prognostic is wholly erroneous; that the great, bad tendency of our age and country is to agnosticism as against ill (or all?) religions. I am not mistaken. This drift will be as temporary as it is partial. M. Guizot says in his Meditations: One never need go far back in history to find atheism advancing half way to meet superstition. A wiser analyst of human nature says: Even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind. (Romans 1:28) Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things. (Romans 1:22,23) This is the exact pathology of superstition.

When the culture of the Augustan age taught the Romans to despise the religious faith of their fathers, there was an interval of agnosticism. But next, the most refined of the agnostics were seen studying the mysteries of Isis, and practicing the foulest rites of the paganism of the conquered provinces. Atheism is too freezing a blank for human souls to inhabit permanently. It outrages too many of the heart’s affections and of the reason’s first principles. A people who have cast away their God, when they discover this, turn to false gods. For all such wandering spirits Rome stands with open doors; there, finally, they will see their most convenient refuge of superstition in a catalogue of Christian saints transformed into a polytheism. Thus the cravings of superstition are satisfied, while the crime is veiled from the conscience by this pretence of scriptural origin.

(4) I proceed to unfold an attraction of Romanism far more seductive. This is its proposal to satisfy mans guilty heart by a ritual instead of a spiritual salvation. As all know who understand the popish theology, the proposed vehicle of this redemption by forms is the sacraments. Romanists are taught that the New Testament sacraments differ from those of the Old Testament in this: that they not only symbolize and seal, but effectuate grace ex opere operato (a Latin phrase meaning “from the work worked” referring to sacraments deriving their power from Christ’s work (ex opere operato Christi) rather than the role of humans) in the souls of the recipients. Rome teaches her children that her sacraments are actual charismatic power of direct supernatural efficiency wrought upon recipients by virtue of a portion of the Holy Spirits omnipotence conferred upon the priest in ordination from the apostolic succession.

The Bible teaches that in the case of all adults a gracious state must pre-exist in order for any beneficial participation in the sacrament, and that the only influence of the sacraments is to cherish and advance that pre-existing spiritual life by their didactic effect, as energized by God’s Spirit, through prayer, faith, watchfulness, and obedience, in precisely the same generic mode in which the Holy Spirit energizes the written and preached word. Hence, if watchfulness, prayer, obedience, and a life of faith are neglected, our sacraments become no sacraments. If thou be a breaker of the law, then circumcision is made uncircumcision. But Rome teaches that her sacraments, duly administered by a priest having apostolic succession, implant spiritual life in souls hitherto dead in sin, and that they maintain and foster this life by a direct power not dependent on the recipients diligent exercise of Gospel principles. Provided the recipient be not in mortal sin unabsolved, the sacrament does its spiritual work upon the sinful soul, whether it receives it in the exercise of saving grace or not.

Now let no Protestant mind exclaim: Surely this is too gross to be popular; surely people will have too much sense to think that they can get to Heaven by this species of consecrated jugglery! History shows that this scheme of redemption is almost universally acceptable and warmly popular with sinful mankind. Apprehend aright the ideas of paganism, ancient and modern. We perceive that this popish conception of sacraments is virtually the same with the pagan’s conception of their heathen rites. They claim to be just this species of saving ritual, working their benefit upon souls precisely by this opus operatum (literally “the work wrought,” a Latin phrase used to denote the spiritual effect in the performance of a religious rite which accrues from the virtue inherent in it, or by grace imparted to it) agency. What a commentary have we here upon this tendency of human nature to a ritual salvation. The evangelists and apostles reintroduced to the world the pure conception of a spiritual salvation wrought by the energy of divine truth, and not of church rites; received by an intelligent faith in the saved man’s soul, and not by manual ceremonial; and made effectual by the enlightening operation of the Holy Ghost upon heart and mind in rational accordance with truth, not by a priestly incantation working a physical miracle. The gospels and epistles defined and separated the two conceptions as plainly as words could do it. But no sooner were the apostles gone than the pagan conception of salvation by ritual, instead of by rational faith, began to creep back into the patristic church. In a few hundred years the wrong conception had triumphed completely over the correct one in nearly the whole of Christendom, and thenceforward sacramental grace has reigned supreme over the whole Roman and Greek communions, in spite of modern letters and culture. How startling this commentary upon that tendency of human nature! Surely there are deep-seated principles in man to account for it.

These are not far to seek. First, men are sensuous beings, and hence they naturally crave something concrete, material, and spectacular in their religion. Dominated as they are by a perpetual current of sensations, and having their animality exaggerated by their sinful nature, they are sluggish to think spiritual truths, to look by faith upon invisible objects; they crave to walk by sight rather than by faith. The material things in mammon, the sensual pleasures which they see with their eyes and handle with their fingers, although they perfectly know they perish with the using, obscure their view of all the infinite, eternal realities, notwithstanding their professed belief of them. Need we wonder that with such creatures the visible and manual ritual should prevail over the spiritual didactic? Does one exclaim, But this is so unreasonable-this notion that a ritual ceremonial can change the state and destiny of a rational and moral spirit! I reply, Yes, but not one whit more irrational than the preference which the whole natural world gives to the things which are seen and temporal, as it perfectly knows, over the things which are unseen and eternal; an insanity of which the educated and refined are found just as capable as the ignorant and brutish. But the other principle of human nature is still more keen and pronounced in its preference for a ritual salvation. This is its deep-seated, omnipotent preference for self-will and sin over spiritual holiness of life. The natural man has, indeed, his natural conscience and remorse, his fearful looking for of judgment, his natural fear of misery, which is but modified selfishness. These make everlasting punishment very terrible to his apprehension.

But enmity to God, to his spiritual service, to the supremacy of his holy will, is as native to him as his selfish fear is. Next to perdition, there is no conception in the universe so repulsive to the sinful heart of man as that of genuine repentance and its fruits. The true Gospel comes to him and says: Here is, indeed, a blessed, glorious redemption, as free as air, as secure as the throne of God, but instrumentally it is conditional on the faith of the heart; which faith works by love, purifies the heart, and can only exist as it coexists with genuine repentance, which repentance turns honestly, unreservedly, here and now, without shuffling or procrastination, from sin unto God, with full purpose of and endeavor after new obedience; which is, in fact, a complete surrender of the sinful will to God’s holy will, and a hearty enlistment in an arduous work of watchfulness, self-denial, and self-discipline, for the sake of inward holiness, to be kept up as long as life lasts. Soul, embrace this task and this splendid salvation shall be yours; and the gracious Savior, who purchases it for you, shall sustain, comfort, and enable you in this arduous enlistment, so that even in the midst of the warfare you shall find rest, and at the end Heaven; but without this faith and this repentance no sacraments or rights will do a particle of good toward your salvation.

Now, this carnal soul has no faith; it is utterly mistrustful and skeptical as to the possibility of this peace of the heart in the spiritual warfare, this sustaining power of the invisible hand, of which it has had no experience. This complete subjugation of self-will to God, this life of self-denial and vital godliness, appears to this soul utterly repulsive, yea, terrible. This guilty soul dreads Hell; it abhors such a life only less than Hell. When told by Protestantism that it must thus turn or die, this carnal soul finds itself in an abhorrent dilemma; either term of the alternative is abominable to it.

But now comes the theory of sacramental grace and says to it with oily tongue: Oh! Protestantism exaggerates the dilemma! Your case is not near so bad! The sacraments of the church transfer you from the state of condemnation to that of reconciliation by their own direct but mysterious efficiency; they work real grace, though you do not bring to them this deep, thoroughgoing self-sacrifice and self-consecration. No matter how much you sin, or how often, repeated masses will make expiation for the guilt of all those sins ex opere operato. Thus, with her other sacraments of penance and extreme unction, Holy Mother Church will repair all your shortcomings and put you back into a salvable state, no matter how sinfully you live.

Need we wonder that this false doctrine is as sweet to that guilty soul as a reprieve to the felon at the foot of the gallows? He can draw his breath again; he can say to himself: Ah, then the abhorred dilemma does not urge me here and now; I can postpone this hated reformation; I can still tamper with cherished sins without embracing perdition. This is a pleasant doctrine; it suits so perfectly the sinful, selfish soul which does not wish to part with its sins, and also does not wish to lie down in everlasting burnings.

This deep-seated love of sin and self has also another result: The soul is conscious that, if it must do many things which it does not like in order to avoid perdition, it is much pleasanter to do a number of ceremonial things than to do any portion of spiritual heartwork.

After I stood my graduate examination in philosophy at the University of Virginia, my professor, the venerable George Tucker, showed me a cheating apparatus which had been prepared by a member of the class. He had unluckily dropped it upon the sidewalk, and it had found its way to the professor’s hands. It was a narrow blank-book, made to be hidden in the coat-sleeve. It contained, in exceedingly small penmanship, the whole course, in the form of questions from the professors recitations with their answers copied from the text-book. It was really a work of much labor.

I said, The strange thing to me is that this sorry fellow has expended upon this fraud much more hard labor than would have enabled him to prepare himself for passing honestly and honorably.

Mr. Tucker replied, Ah, my dear sir, you forget that a dunce finds it easier to do any amount of mere manual drudgery than the least bit of true thinking.

Here we have an exact illustration. It is less irksome to the carnal mind to do twelve dozen paternosters (praying the Our Father Lord’s prayer) by the beads than to do a few moments of real heart-work. Thoughtless people sometimes say that the rule of Romish piety is more exacting than that of the Protestant. This is the explanation, that Rome is more exacting as to form and ritual; Bible religion is more exacting as to spiritual piety and vital godliness. To the carnal mind the latter are almost insufferably irksome and laborious; the form and ritual, easy and tolerable. And when remorse, fear, and self-righteousness are gratified by the assurance that these observances really promote the soul’s salvation, the task is made light. Here Rome will always present an element of popularity as long as mankind are sensuous and carnal.

(5) To a shallow view, it might appear that the popish doctrine of purgatory should be quite a repulsive element of unpopularity with sinners; that doctrine is, that notwithstanding all the benefit of the church’s sacraments and the believers efforts, no Christian soul goes direct to Heaven when the body dies, except those of the martyrs, and a few eminent saints, who are, as it were, miracles of sanctification in this life. All the clergy, and even the popes, must go through purgatory in spite of the apostolic succession and the infallibility.

There the remains of carnality in all must be burned away, and the deficiencies of their penitential work in this life made good, by enduring penal fires and torments for a shorter or longer time. Then the Christian souls, finally purged from depravity and the reaum paenae (?), enter into their final rest with Christ. But the alms, prayers, and masses of survivors avail much to help these Christian souls in purgatory and shorten their sufferings. It might be supposed that the Protestant doctrine should be much more attractive and popular, viz.: that there is no purgatory or intermediate state for the spirits of dead men, but that the souls of believers, being at their death made perfect in holiness, do immediately enter into glory. This ought to be the more attractive doctrine, and to Bible believers it is such, but there is a feature about it which makes it intensely unpopular and repellent to carnal men, and gives a powerful advantage with them to the popish scheme. That feature is the sharpness and strictness of the alternative which the Bible doctrine presses upon sinners: turn or die.

The Bible offers the most blessed and glorious redemption conceivable by man, gracious and free, and bestowing a consummate blessedness the moment the body dies. But it is on these terms that the Gospel must be embraced by a penitent faith, working an honest and thorough revolution in the life. If the sinner refuses this until this life ends, he seals his fate; and that fate is final, unchangeable, and dreadful. Now, it is no consolation to the carnal heart that the Gospel assures him he need not run any risk of that horrible fate; that he has only to turn and live; that very turning is the thing which he abhors, if it is to be done in spirit and in truth. He intensely desires to retain his sin and self-will. He craves earnestly to put off the evil day of this sacrifice without incurring the irreparable penalty.

Now, Rome comes to him and tells him that this Protestant doctrine is unnecessarily harsh; that a sinner may continue in the indulgence of his sins until this life ends, and yet not seal himself up thereby to a hopeless Hell; that if he is in communion with the Holy Mother Church through her sacraments, he may indulge himself in this darling procrastination without ruining himself forever. Thus the hateful necessity of present repentance is postponed awhile; sweet, precious privilege to the sinner! True, he must expect to pay due penance for that self-indulgence in purgatory, but he need not perish for it. The Mother Church advises him not to make so bad a bargain and pay so dear for his whistle. But she assures him that, if he does, it need not ruin him, for she will pull him through after a little by her merits and sacraments. How consoling this is to the heart at once in love with sin and remorseful for its guilt!

The seductiveness of this theory of redemption to the natural heart is proved by this grand fact, that in principle and in its essence this scheme of purgatorial cleansing has had a prominent place in every religion in the world that is of human invention. The Bible, the one divine religion, is peculiar in rejecting the whole concept. Those hoary religions, Brahmanism and Buddhism, give their followers the virtual advantage of this conception in the transmigration of the souls. The guilt of the sinner’s human life may be expiated by the sorrows of the soul’s existence in a series of animal or reptile bodies, and then through another human existence, the penitent and purified soul may at last reach Heaven. Classic paganism promised the same escape for sinners, as all familiar with Virgil know. His hero, Aeneas, when visiting the under world, saw many sinners there preparing for their release into the Elysian fields. Ergo exercentur paenis, et veterum malorum supplicia expendunt. Mohammed extends the same hope to all his sinful followers. For those who entirely reject Islam there is nothing but Hell; but for all who profess There is no God but Allah, and Mohammed is his prophet, there is a purgatory after death, and its pains are shortened by his intercession. The Roman and Greek Churches flatter the sinful world with the same human invention. So strong is this craving of carnal men to postpone the issue of turning to God or perishing, we now see its effect upon the most cultured minds of this advanced nineteenth century in the New England doctrine of a ‘second probation.’ Rome has understood human nature skillfully, and has adapted her bait for it with consummate cunning. Her scheme is much more acute than that of the absolute universalist of the school of Hosea Ballou, for this outrages man’s moral intuitions too grossly by rejecting all distinction between guilt and righteousness. This bait for sin-loving men is too bald.

It must be added that the doctrine of a purgatory and of an application of redemption after death is intensely attractive to other principles of the human heart, much more excusable; to some affections, indeed, which are amiable. I allude to the solicitude and the affection of believers for the souls of those whom they loved in this life, “who died and made no sign.” The Bible doctrine is, indeed, a solemn, an awful one to Christians bereaved by the impenitent deaths of children and relatives. It is our duty to foresee this solemn result, and to provide against it by doing everything which intercessory prayer, holy example and loving instruction and entreaty can do to prevent such a catastrophe in the case of all those near to our hearts. But human self-indulgence is prone to be slack in employing this safeguard against this sorrow. Let us picture to ourselves such a bereaved Christian, sincere, yet partially self-condemned, and doubtful or fearful or hopeless concerning the thorough conversion of a child who has been cut down by death. Of all the elements of bereavement none is so bitter, so immedicable, as the fear that he whom he loved must suffer the wrath of God forever, and that now he is beyond reach of his prayers and help. To such a one comes the Romish priest with this species of discourse. See now how harsh and cruel is this heretical Protestant dogma! Instead of offering consolation to your Christian sorrow it embitters it as with a drop of Hell fire. But Holy Mother Church is a mild and loving comforter; she assures you that your loved one is not necessarily lost; he may have to endure keen penances in purgatory for a time, but there is a glorious hope to sustain him and you under them. Every minute of pain is bringing the final Heaven nearer, and the most blessed part of our teaching is that your love can still follow him and help him and bless, as it was wont to do under those earthly chastisements of his sins. It is your privilege still to pray for him, and your prayers avail to lighten his sufferings and to shorten them. Your love can still find that generous solace which was always so sweet to you midst your former sorrows for his sins and his earthly sufferings the solace of helping him and sharing his pains. Your aims also may avail for him; masses can be multiplied by your means, which will make merit to atone for his penitential guilt and hasten his blessed release. Who can doubt that a loving heart will be powerfully seduced by this promise, provided it can persuade itself of its certainty, or even of its probable truth? Here is the stronghold of Romanism on sincere, amiable, and affectionate souls.

Of course, the real question is, whether any pastor or priest is authorized by God to hold out these hopes to the bereaved. If they are unwarrantable, then this presentation is an artifice of unspeakable cruelty and profanity. Under the pretence of softening the pain of bereavement to God’s children, it is adding to wicked deception the most mischievous influences upon the living by contradicting those solemn incentives to immediate repentance which God has set up in his Word, and by tempting deluded souls with a false hope to neglect their real opportunity. If the hope is not grounded in the Word of God, then its cruelty is equal to its deceitfulness. But the suffering heart is often weak, and it is easier to yield to the temptation of accepting a deceitful consolation than to brace itself up to the plain but stern duty of ascertaining God’s truth.

I have thus set in array the influences which Rome is now wielding throughout our country for the seduction of human souls. Some of these weapons Protestants put into her hands by their own unfaithfulness and folly. God has a right to blame Rome for using this species of weapon in favor of the wrong cause, but these Protestants have not.

There is another class of weapons which Rome finds in the blindness and sinfulness of human nature. Her guilt may be justly summed up in this statement: That these are precisely the errors and crimes of humanity which the church of Christ should have labored to suppress and extirpate; whereas Rome caters to them and fosters them in order to use them for her aggrandizement. But none the less are these weapons potent. They are exactly adapted to the nature of fallen man. As they always have been successful, they will continue to succeed in this country. Our republican civil constitutions will prove no adequate shield against them. Our rationalistic culture, by weakening the authority of God’s Word, is only opening the way for their ulterior victory. Our scriptural ecclesiastical order will be no sufficient bulwark. The primitive churches had that bulwark in its strongest Presbyterian form, but popery steadily undermined it. What it did once it can do again. There will be no effectual check upon another spread of this error except the work of the Holy Ghost. True and powerful revivals will save American Protestantism; nothing else will.

My good friend Jim Gibson sent me his book, An Appeal to Reason. It’s a great read about examining the evidence of origins in the evolution versus creation debate.

Some of the topics:

• The complexity of living systems
• The testimony embedded within the fossil record
• The historical and cultural proofs of man and dinosaurs as being contemporaries
• The fallacies inherent in the interpretation of radiometric dating
• The complete shambles of supposed human evolution
• The faith-science required by the big bang.

You can order it from Amazon I will not have any financial gain if you buy this book. I’m advertising it because it gives you the tools to refute the pseudoscience of Darwin’s evolution.

By Susan Weeks

Yes, I am glad that Hillary was not elected. And yes, I will pray for Trump.

But if you think He was put in the presidency because He has God’s FAVOR, then I think you don’t know much about him.

Trump was not an unknown or a nobody. He was not ‘Joe Plumber’ before he ran for president. He was a very wealthy, connected man. He was not wealthy by virtue of being a godly man that God was blessing. He was wealthy because all his life he has served mammon. He is not a godly man–if I remember right, he abandoned his wife and married his mistress. He is a man who owned a casino and felt it needed a strip club too.

Now that he has been elected president, we need to stand behind him and pray for him. But what gets me is the number of ‘Christians’ who were supporting this man BEFORE he was elected. Examine the fruit, people!

All I’m looking for is a little honesty from his supporters. Rather than paint him as some great guy who is open to God, and open for God to use him–lets be honest about the kind of man he always has been. Has there been any repentance or remorse yet? Then lets not pretend there has been!

He’s a politician, doing what politician do: making promises, and most likely lying. He has paid speech writers and a campaign manager who helped him to say exactly what YOU wanted to hear, because he needed YOUR votes, because the evangelical voting block is enough to win, or lose, the election.

Lets be honest, and not pretend this man is something he isn’t. As with Obama, it’s going to take some time for him to show his true colors–but if we care to look, a lot of his history has already been written . . . and so far, it isn’t very good.

How ludicrous ‘Christians’ must seem right now. We tell people they are going to Hell because they haven’t said a ‘Sinner’s Prayer’ . . . yet the majority of (so-called) ‘evangelical Christians’ wanted to be unequally yoked with Mr. Trump, and promote his campaign–a man whose sexual immorality is common knowledge. No wonder they call us hypocrites!

Please, lets just be honest. This man really NEEDS our prayers, because spiritually he’s a mess. And now he’s the president. It’s totally fine to say we’re praying for him because he needs to repent and find God. But lets not pretend he’s leadership material for the godly nation Christians say they want, because he’s not. He’s really going to need prayer to do what’s right, because his past shows repeated moral failings. Most likely he’s going to disappoint Evangelical, Conservatives as much as he disappointed his first wife. Without God’s help, he’s just not going to be able to be the man you think he is.

On November 5, 2016, I boarded a train in Aomori City on my way to Misawa. There were two Caucasian looking young ladies sitting in the train car. I sat down next to them and asked where they are from. If I was in a metropolitan area like Tokyo, I probably wouldn’t have talked to them because foreigners abound and I’m naturally shy. But now I was deep in the Japanese countryside.

They were 19 and 20 years old, one from Carmel California and one close to Lancaster Pennsylvania. I told the girl from Carmel I’ve been to her town several times. I lived next to it in Monterey. Then they introduced themselves as Mormon missionaries. When I heard that, I knew they were probably just as interested to talk to me as I to them.

“I hear your god has a human body with flesh and blood living on the planet Kolob making babies and sending them to earth.”

“Who told you that?” asked the girl from Carmel, “a Mormon?” She may have pretended to not know what I was talking about, but the girl from Pennsylvania seemed to know. And they both acknowledged I was correct that Mormonism teaches that God the Father has a physical body.

“My God is infinitely greater than your god” I told them. “He is a Spirit Who not only wrote the extremely complex four base code of DNA, but also created the four forces of nature in just the right proportion of force to each other. How can a body of flesh and bones do that? God not only is everywhere in the universe, some say He had to be outside the universe in order to create it.”

To that they had no good answer, only Mormon theology to back up their views.

I asked them Who Jesus is. I shared John 1:1-3,14 with them and said Jesus is the Creator Who became flesh. But it seemed to me Mormonism doesn’t teach that from their responses.

On September 17th, 2016, I hitchhiked from the crossroads of Route 345 and Route 7 near Gatsugi Station in Murakami City in Niigata Prefecture all the way to Aomori City in a single car! This is a distance of about 400 kilometers or 250 miles. I am 66 years old at the time of this post.

The driver’s name is Hiroshi who lives and works in France as a chef of French cuisine. He once was the chef of the Emperor and Empress of Japan and actually met them! He bought me lunch and went way out of his way to take me exactly where I wanted to go, a 5 hour drive from his original destination. Unfortunately Hiroshi wouldn’t let me take a photo of him.

Hiroshi needed to go to Yokote City to buy some exotic Japanese cuisine. Normally I would have refused to go with him to Yokote, but he promised me he would take me the rest of the way to Aomori afterwards and I believed him. Yokote is the longer route to Aomori.

The scenes are in Akita Prefecture. The red and white striped pole is to mark the edge of the road after heavy snowfalls, a frequent winter occurrence in this part of northern Japan.

Akita Prefecture, Ani

Two days later my destination is now Sayama city in Saitama Prefecture. Saitama is one of the prefectures in the Kanto Plain area of Japan. Aomori City is the northern city of Honshu, and Saitama is just north of Tokyo which means I needed to travel 600 kilometers or 400 miles that day in order to make it. I nearly didn’t!

After waiting only 30 minutes, a couple going to Furukawa City in Miyagi picked me up. This was a good distance of 200 kilometers, a 1/3 of the distance I needed to go!

The couple who took-me over 200 kilometers-from Aomori City to Miyagi Prefecture

The second driver was on his way to Nagoya and would pass through Niigata. Normally I would have gone with him to Niigata which has been my home till date. But because today I’m going to Saitama, he took me to the Adatara Service Area in Fukushima Prefecture which is just before the Banetsu junction that goes to Niigata.

Masayuki who took me to Fukushima from Miyagi

The third car of my hitchhiking adventure from Aomori City to Sayama City in Saitama was a young couple I met at Adatara service area in Fukushima. They were on their way to Utsunomiya in Tochigi Prefecture and had also picked up a university student who was also hitchhiking from Aomori City! He was on his way to Matsumoto in Nagano which is 3 times further than my destination in Saitama. The couple offered to take us both to the Sano Service Area in Tochigi.

By the time we arrived to Sano, it was dark and raining heavily to the low atmospheric pressure influence of the typhoon in Okinawa. Because it was a holiday, “Senior Citizens Day,” the service area was crowded with vehicles and thronged with people. But from experience I knew that was not necessary a good thing. Too many people means the average Japanese thinks someone else will give the poor hitchhiker a ride!

I stood in front of the restrooms out of the rain and showed the paper sign of my destination to everyone. They all knew what I was doing but nearly everyone ignored me and avoided making eye contact. Often a person who makes eye contact is willing to help.

At the service area there were 3 other hitchhikers. One was the university student who came with me from Fukushima, and the other two were highschool students on their way to Hannyu city in Saitama. We were all in the same boat. Nobody was offering them rides either.

After about 45 minutes, a man approached me and gave me a can of hot coffee and a pet bottle of green tea! He couldn’t help me but wanted to encourage me.

After an hour I decided to call it quits. I consigned myself to an uncomfortable night camping out in the service area rest facility. There were only hard chairs to lay down on.
I sat down at a crowded table in the midst of other travelers. After a few minutes a young lady sitting on my right started talking to me in English. She was interested in what I was doing but I could tell her male partner wasn’t interested in helping me.

After she and and her partner left a man sitting at my left started speaking to me in perfect English! He lived in Germany for 4 years and went to an international school in Frankfurt and all that time schooled in a total English environment. He was on his way with his family to an area in Saitama which is relatively close to my final destination! I told him I am facing an unpleasant night unless I can leave the service area and get to a train station and go by train where I needed to go, Sayama City. He talked to his family and they agreed to take me with them! And what a family! It was his parents, his wife and children, and his brother’s and sister’s spouses and children, at least 20 people in all! And because they all lived in Germany before, most of them speak English! They were traveling in the huge bus you see in the photo.

The bus that took me from Tochigi to Saitama.

In the beginning I spoke to them in English but later switched to Japanese as I shared my faith in the Creator God and true history from the Bible. They listened with interest and one of the men became my Facebook friend.

I am facing a crossroads in my life at this time. Rather than hitchhike several times a month to Aomori just to earn money, I am thinking and praying about moving there. Any financial help or encouragement you can send me is appreciated.

This is the story of when Japan rescued Polish orphans from Siberia at the end of World War One. I translated it from Japanese to English from the YouTube with the help of my Japanese friend Yoko Ishikawa:

The untold story of why Poland is friends with Japan!

Praise to the non-discriminatory Japanese nurse for her help and support.

This is a heart moving true story.

In 1989, Poland changed significantly due to democratization from the former communist bloc which resulted in its rapid economic growth. In 21 consecutive years, Poland’s GNP has the only positive growth in Europe. It has maintained this growth in spite of the euro crisis and the collapse of Lehman Brothers.

Poland has a surprisingly warm friendly relationship with Japan.
A popular department of the prestigious University of Warsaw is the Japan Department of Japanese martial arts boom such as kendo.

In 1920, after the First World War, during the civil war of the Russian Revolution, many Polish citizens were detained in Siberia. They could not use the land route of the Trans-Siberian Railway during the war to escape from Russia, and even if they did manage to return to Poland, their house was gone.

The Polish people were dying one after another in a land of extreme cold. Poland in an effort to save just the children who lost their parents, issued a letter, a life-saving petition to the United States and the United Kingdom. The petition asked for transportation and the assistance of orphans, but due to the tension of international relations, the reaction of the nations to Poland’s request was indifferent and callous.

Poland then turned to Japan for help as its last hope.

The Japan Ministry of Foreign Affairs made a prompt decision toward the relief of the orphans.
In late July, 1920, 56 orphans from Vladivostok arrived in Tokyo via Tsuruga, and were housed in a dormitory. At the time Japan had no formal diplomatic relations with Poland, and moreover, to comply with a request that was a costly and effort-consuming attempt to aid civilians in Siberia who were separated from their homeland was unusual.

And, from 1920 to 1922, a total of 5 times, 765 orphans from one year old to 16 years old were brought to Japan by ship, and they received a surprisingly warm hospitality. Orphans with lice on their heads or those who suffered from typhus and other bad health conditions and those who were staving were treated immediately after arrival by hard working Japanese Red Cross nurses.

News of the orphans was broadcast throughout Japan. As a result donations, toys, candy etc. were sent to the orphans. Volunteers provided dental treatment, hairdressing, entertainment, and consolation.

Entertaining and comforting the orphans was offered one after another. Also, Japanese children who were brought by adults to visit the Polish orphans, without hesitation gave them the clothes they were wearing and their hair ornaments. In addition, there was also the following episode.

A young Japanese nurse, Ms. Fumi Matsuzawa, who cared for a child with typhoid fever, said she wanted at the very least, for the child to die while holding the child in her arms. She continued to nurse the child without leaving him even for a moment.

Her effort was worth it and the child miraculously recovered, but Ms. Fumi herself was infected with typhoid fever, and eventually died from it. In addition, there is also a similar recollection of another child. “I had been suffering from a terrible skin disease, and medicine was applied all over my body. Then I was wrapped in a white cloth as mummy, and was taken to bed by the nurse.

When the nurse put me on the bed, she smiled and kissed my nose which was the only part of my face out of the cloth. I got the courage to live because of this kiss, and burst into tears.

The orphan children were thus touched by the warm hearts of the Japanese. They were pale skinned and skinny children when they first came to Japan, but by the time they left they were all healthy and became like a different person.

This was of course a wonderful thing, but it also meant that the day was approaching when the children would go back to their homeland.

Everyone was hoping that they would stay in Japan, the nation where the sun is pretty, a nation with beautiful summers, with a sea, where flowers are always in bloom.

When the orphans departed Japan, bananas and sweets were given to them. With sadness of heart, the Japanese who cared for them said goodbye, and the children’s eyes were full of tears.

The orphans yelled out from the deck of the ship, “arigato” (thank you) to the Japanese on shore. They also sang Japanese songs and showed much gratitude for the care they received.

The Japanese captain of the ship went to the orphans’ quarters every night, and went to each bed, each child, and made sure the child was covered with a blanket up to his neck. He stroked the child’s forehead to make sure the child did not have a fever.

Father’s hand was surely so big, and warm, the child thought. They waited with half closed eyes for the captain to come around and see them.

After the children returned to Poland, they were housed in an orphanage. They grew up and went about their individual lives, but they knew it was the affection that was poured out to them in a foreign country that gave them the power to live.

This story has been buried in the vortex of history in Japan, and most of the Japanese have forgotten the event with the orphans from Poland. However, the Polish people themselves did not forget.

In 1980, a movement of democratization began in Poland. Mr. Lech Walensa who became the driving force behind it selected Japan for his first foreign visit destination. He visited Japan in May 1981. He found Japan to be a nation of peace and full of great potential. When Mr. Walensa returned home, he made a slogan calling Poland to become the second Japan.

In 1989, Poland was liberated from Communism and became the Republic of Poland.

Mr. Nagao Hyodo who served as the Polish ambassador from 1993, began to wonder why Poland is so pro-Japanese. He decided to determine the cause and spread the reason why.

In October 1995, eight of the Siberia orphans officially visited Japan.

Though the orphans were all older than 80 years old, their memories were still vivid, and they shared their feelings of gratitude. And, Mr. Nagao Hyodo until the last year of his term of office, piled up information of the exchanges with the orphans.

The Vice Chairman of the Far Eastern Commission, Mr Jozef, Yakubukebitchi, sent a thank-you letter to the Japanese government.

Polish nationals are a noble people, a nation that does not forget the kindness showed it. I would like the Japanese people to know that fact about Poland.

The Polish people have the deepest respect, the most warm friendship and affection for Japan. I want to tell the world about this.

An event to prove this took place in 1995. When the people of Poland heard news of the Great Hanshin Earthquake, they moved toward the relief of the affected area as soon as the very next day.

And, children who became orphans after the earthquake were invited to Poland where they received comfort and compassion.

Poland’s local governments, companies, wealthy individuals, and artists, sent donations and gave support and aid.

At the end of the second visit, the earthquake orphans had a face-to-face meeting with the original Siberia orphans. They talked about the past and deepened their friendship. In 2006, the last of the Polish orphans, Ms. Antonina Lilo, died at the age of 90.

Before she had her last breath, she left a kind word. “Japan was like heaven on earth.”

I hope many people will see this video.

If you wish to support this message, it would be greatly appreciated if you would click the like button.

Thank you for viewing this till the end.

The following section is from my good friend David Nikao’s website.

1st Seal – The white horse represents the conquering Roman Empire, from 96 – 180 A.D., as it was a time of its greatest expansion and their military conquests were celebrated by riding white horses in their victory parades. Cretan Roman Emperors Trajan, Hadrian, Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius, each had a bow as their symbol. The crown represents the laurel wreathes of victory that were worn by the Caesars after their armies had won a military battle.

2nd Seal – The Red horse represents a bloody time in the Roman Empire from 185-284 A.D., as it went into a phase of revolution and civil war for 90 years, during which there were 32 emperors and 27 contenders for the throne.

3rd Seal – The Black horse represents a period gloom and despair, as the Romans suffered under excessive taxes that were needed to pay for wars. The prices for wheat and barley that the Lord decreed were the exact prices from 222-235 A.D.

4th Seal – The Pale horse represents 1/4th of Romans dying from famine, plague, pestilence and violence, from 250-300 A.D. The word ‘earth‘ means land, not the whole Earth. The Roman Empire is the land/earth of prophecy.

5th Seal – It represents the millions of martyrs who were killed by the Roman Empire, especially the Smyrna church martyrs who Emperor Diocletian persecuted for 10 years, from 303-312 A.D. Their blood is crying out for the Lord to avenge their deaths.

6th Seal – Earthquakes in the prophecy represent great political upheavals. Eastern Emperor Constantine defeated Diocletian’s army in 312 A.D., which ended the persecutions. Diocletian (the Sun) was so panic stricken, he died insane. Constantine defeated emperors Maxentius and Licinius to become sole ruler of both west and east by 324 A.D. The Roman leaders (stars) fell and their power receded as a scroll. The mountains and islands that were moved out of place, were the countries and people that were affected by this political change.

7th Seal – It represents the Lord sealing His servants before He sounds the 7 trumpets of judgment against the Pagan Roman Empire.