Louvois, fearing that something of this kind would happen, was resolved to attach his memory to the Invalides by surer means. In one mansarde he got sculptured a barrel of powder in the act of explosion, signalizing the war he had originated; in another, a plume of ostrich feathers; and, in two others, an owl and a bat, all emblematic of his high dignity, his wisdom, and wakefulness. The masterpiece, however, was

a wolf, the upper part only seen, surmounted by a tuft of palm-leaves, holding the Eil de Bouf between his forepaws and looking intently into the court. Thus was a pun in marble executed: (le) Loup voit (the wolf is looking)-Louvois, both having the same sound, and the great man's name inseparably connected with the Invalides.

THERE was a fine specimen in Birmingham, the other day, of a style of theological disputation which we hoped had gone out of vogue. A poor wretch named Murphy, a paid agent of the Lon don Protestant Electoral Union, had been travelling for some months about the counties of Stafford and Warwick, circulating obscene tracts upon the confessional, ranting about priests and nuns, retailing all the absurd and wicked stories against the Catholic religion which have formed the stock in trade of a certain class of zealots and religious demagogues for the last three hundred years; and very naturally his disgusting tirades had stirred up a dangerous sort of public feeling. The lower classes of the Protestants were taught to look upon the Catholics as savage, wild beasts, given up to all manner of immoral practices, enemies to all human happiness, thirsting for blood, rapine, and revolution, and wedded to the stake, the faggot, and the thumb screw. The lower classes of the Catholics were compelled to bear the taunts and insults which were certain to be provoked by this rage of popular prejudice, and moreover to listen to the grossest attacks upon what they held in most affectionate reverence. Of course, sensible Protestants, as well as educated Catholics, felt nothing but

pity and contempt for the ravings of such a man as Murphy; but unfortunately it is not educated and sensible people who make all the trouble in the world, nor were they educated and sensible people who formed the bulk of Mr. Murphy's audiences. Wherever he went, he made a popular disturbance. Blows and brickbats followed in his train like dust behind rolling wheels. The magistrates in one town confiscated his books on account of their indecency. At last he came to Birmingham. The mayor and council refused him the use of a public hall, but his disciples built him an immense wooden tabernacle; and there, while an angry crowd raged and threatened about the doors, he began a five weeks' course of lectures on the atrocities of popery. What an instructive contrast was then presented! In the streets Catholic priests were going about among the mob, begging and commanding them to drop their menacing hands and withdraw peaceably to their homes. In the tabernacle this fiery ranter was declaring that every Catholic priest was "a murderer, a cannibal, a liar, and a pickpocket ;" that the papists were thirsting for his blood, but durst not take it; that they might pelt him with stones, but God would put forth his arm and prevent his being hurt; they

might raise their bludgeons against him, but God would ward off the blows. Need anybody ask what was the result of all this? A riot broke out and raged for two days; and, as always happens in riots, the greater part of the disorder and destruction was caused not by those who began the fray, but by professional thieves and rowdies who seized the opportunity to plunder. Now, of course, we have no desire to apologize for the unwarrantable mode taken by the Birmingham Catholics to silence this itinerant preacher. Rioting is both a great blunder and a great crime. But who was the more to blame? Was it the pulpit mountebank who pelted his audience with well-nigh intolerable insults, or the uneducated laborers who resented them? Our Lord tells us, when we are smitten upon one cheek, to turn the other; but we all know that the custom of human nature is to smite back. If you first stir up the angry passions of a croud of excitable Irishmen, and then dance into the midst of them, and dare them to come on, it will not be surprising if you dance out again with a bloody nose and a torn coat. If you shake your fist at a man, and assure him that he cannot hit you if he tries ever so hard, it is very probable that he will try; and if you are hurt, you will have yourself to blame. It is not safe to go near gunpowder with a lighted candle. All England seems to have thought as we do about the Birmingham affair, and Murphy has been unanimously awarded the responsibility for the outrage by the ministers in parliament, and by all the respectable newspapers, even by such prejudiced journals as The Times.

There have been many religious riots in Great Britain and America, but the story is nearly always the same. They have had them in Birmingham before; they have had them in Belfast and Dublin. Lord George Gordon got up a famous one in London, and Gavazzi was the cause of one in Montreal. The Native American movement in 1844 gave us two dreadful riots in Philadel

phia, and, but for the firmness and sagacity of Bishop Hughes, would have provoked another in New-York. In the train of the Know-Nothing excitement ten years later followed a long array of incendiary preachers, some of whom were proved to have been expressly hired to provoke disturbance; and what was the result? Churches were sacked. torn down, burned, or blown up with gunpowder in Manchester and Dorchester, New Hampshire, in Bath, Maine, and in Newark, New-Jersey. A church in Williamsburg was barely saved from the flames by the opportune arrival of the military. A street-preacher in New York named Parsons was very nearly the cause of a riot in December, 1853; but in this instance also Archbishop Hughes succeeded in keeping the Catholics quiet. All over the country, in fact, rapine and incendiarism seemed rampant; but The NewYork Tribune justly observed: “It is worthy of remark that, while five or six Catholic churches in this country have been destroyed or ruined by an excited populace, not a single Protestant church can be pointed out which Catholics have even thought of attacking."

No reasonable man will deny that the frantic sort of propagandism which stirred up all these acts of violence does more harm to its own cause than to that of its adversaries. No honest and rational Protestant wants to trust his defence to a Murphy or a Parsons. The street ranters are dangerous allies and despicable enemies. But the trouble is that after the fools have made the disturbance there are always knaves ready to keep it alive. No sooner had the excited Catholics begun to throw stones at the Birmingham tabernacle than the scourings of the jails, the pestiferous brood of the slums and alleys, began to sack the pawnbrokers' and jewellers shops. And then down came from London a member of Parliament -the notorious Mr. Whalley, whose incessant attacks upon popery in the House of Commons are a standing matter of laughter; and he and Murphy

made speeches side by side, one not much more sensible than the other. We shall, no doubt, see the Protestant Electoral Union, of which both these gentlemen are pillars and ornaments, trying to make political capital out of the affair. So, too, in the United States: there has always been a political organization at the back of the zealots who have stirred up religious riots, and there have always been politicians to scramble for the fruits of bigotry, if not to plant the seed

Is there any reason why we may not have in New-York a repetition of the outrages of Birmingham or Philadelphia? Heaven be praised! we have not, so far as we know, a Protestant Electoral Union; but we have Whalleys enough, and as for Murphies, the world is full of them. There is no need to build a tabernacle; with us they speak through the press. A lie shouted from a platform is not more dangerous than a lie sent flying over the country in the pages of a newspaper. If you want to produce a quick sensation with a good bouncing calumny, the best way perhaps is to speak it out by word of mouth; but for permanent effect commend us to print. There is an American journal which has been acting the part of a Murphy for a long time past, and has lately been flying at popery with more rage than ever. In a recent number of Harper's Weekly there was a horrible story of the confessional in Rome, which might rival the wildest romances of Mrs. Radcliffe. It showed us a sinner get ting absolution before he could summon courage to confess his sins, and a young girl murdered by monks and buried under the church pavement; "for in that wonderful but priest-ridden city," says the writer, "the papal clergy act almost with impunity." And the other day, in the same paper, there was a pic ture of a Roman confessional, a row of penitents kneeling before it, while a priest leaned over the door and absolved them by tapping each one on the head with a rod. This wonderful device, as our Catholic readers will at once perceive, was borrowed from the

symbolical wand of office borne by the penitentiaries at the Roman court; but Harper's Weekly puts the whole sacrament into the tap of the wand. “This,” says the editor, "is a faithful representation of the manner in which sins are forgiven in the confessionals of St. Peter's at Rome." And then follows a long article, in the true Murphy vein, about confession, and indulgences, and purgatory, and many other points of Catholic doctrine. The pope, we are told, claims the power of damning souls to hell, and admitting whom he pleases into heaven.

mer

The holiness which he rewards is not Christian holiness; the sins which he punishes with eternal fire are not the sins which Christ denounced. "Sincere penitence as a ground of forgiveness has been practically laid aside, and simple confession has taken its place." Indulgences are mere chandise, and money will at any time buy a soul out of purgatory, just as "the performance of certain arbitrary ceremonies which have no more connection with vital Christianity than had the rites of pagandom" will open the gates of heaven. Then the writer, after assuring us that the pope is afraid of America, passes on to the ridicule of relics, and of many pious practices, and winds up his article with a prediction that the Christian world will sooner or later be freed from all these mummeries and superstitions, and all mankind be sensible and enlightened Protestants.

Now, to what does all this tend? We dare say the writer of this tirade supposed he was telling the truth, but what was his purpose in telling it? Did he expect to make converts by it? When we seek to be reconciled with an enemy, do we begin by insulting him? Will it dispose an adversary to listen to your arguments with a favoring ear if you open the discussion by spitting in his face, and calling him a fool, and reviling all that he holds in highest respect? Billingsgate is not gospel. When the Holy Ghost came down upon the apostles on the day of Pentecost, those chosen preachers of divine truth did not straightway begin to

blackguard the Jews. When St. Paul preached at Antioch, he did not call the pagan pontiffs "ragamuffins," as Mr. Murphy called the Catholic clergy, nor did he try to convert the Jews by saying of their high priest what the Birmingham Boanerges said of the pope, that he was "the greatest old rag and bone grubber in the universe." And does the Journal of Civilization expect to convert Catholics by caricaturing the pope, and telling scandalous stories about the church, and burlesquing her doctrines? As we said before, we feel bound to presume that the writer believed all he said; but it was so easy for him to know better. The doctrine which he ascribes to Catholics we so earnestly repudiate in all our books, in all our pulpits, and in all our practical life, that we have a good right to complain indignantly, and to charge him with a carelessness hardly more pardonable than dishonesty.

We say this carelessness is a very grave offence, because such calumnies against religious bodies never have but one effect-exasperation, and possibly riot. There is just the same material for a riot in New-York that there was in Birmingham. There are ignorant and hot headed men, both Protestants and Catholics, who are ready enough to come to blows if you once charge them full of religious ire, and then bring them in contact; and there are thieves and street brigands enough in any large city to push on the work of destruction when once it has been started. We know very well that a hundred such

stories and pictures would never make a riot by themselves. We know very well that there are not a half dozen Catholics in New-York who would be wicked and silly enough to resent such insults with violence. What we complain of is, that vituperation and calumny can hardly fail to create a dangerous antagonism of feeling which, at any unforeseen provocation may ripen into bloodshed. Once teach opposing classes of the people to loathe each other, and how long will the public peace be safe? Let papers like Harper's Journal of Civilization (bless the mark!) keep on stirring up the bad old blood, reviving the dead old lies, reawakening dormant prejudices, and filling the two denominations with mutual hatred, and the least little spark may suddenly kindle the whole hateful mass into a sweeping conflagration. Argue with us, if you will, and we will meet you in the calm, gentle. Christian spirit without which all controversy must be worse than useless. Tell us that we are wrong, if you think so, and we will show you wherein we are right. Surely a Christian minister can discuss mooted questions of theology without flinging his Bible at his adversary's head. Civilized gentlemen can talk over their differences without loading each other with vile epithets. There is only one way in which religious disputation can be profitable or even tolerable; let us come to that way at once; but, above all, no more lies; no more playing with fire.

THE title of this work indicates that its scope is very comprehensive, and that its execution involves a great deal of practical labor and research. The author says in his preface that he has aimed to display Christianity as it was established by Jesus, as it has been developed and perpetuated by the apostles and their successors, and to correct the erroneous impressions which so generally exist respecting it, and also endeavored to exhibit a general outline of the various conflicting elements which have been arrayed against the Christian system up to the present time."

He has been as good as his word, for he has given us an instructive and able sketch of the heathen philosophers and religions, and of the corrupt social conditions which opposed themselves to the introduction of Christianity; of the struggle for so many ages with the barbarism of Europe; and, finally, in what we consider by far the most vivid and interesting portions of his work, he has laid bare the character, effects, and tendencies of what is called the Reformation, and the present condition of Christendom, religious, social, and political.

To judge his work correctly, we must bear in mind that the author is a layman, the business of whose life has not been the study of theology. A man of liberal education, a physician, and of eminence in his profession, his attention has been drawn to the consideration of the grand problems of man's destiny; he has studied and reflected

Christianity and its Conflicts, Ancient and Mo

dern.
ton & Co., Broadway. 1567. Pp. 480.

By E. E. Marcy, A. M. New-York: D. Apple

upon them, realized their importance, and given us the result, as he says, "for the sole purpose of vindicating truth and the religion of Christ."

The testimony of an intelligent and cultivated layman on the subject of religious truths has a peculiar value; for, although it may not be so accurate and full in a theological sense, it often presents the arguments in a more popular form, and with a personal conviction which impresses the minds of many with a peculiar force. The author evidently feels deeply on the subjects on which he writes. A citizen of the world, he feels a deep interest in both the temporal and spiritual well-being of his fellows. As he contemplates either false principles or the evil conduct of individuals, the sentiment of indignation rises within him, and he expresses himself frequently in animated and glowing language, and with a sort of passionate energy which will be considered, no doubt, by those who do not sympathize with him, as a blemish. We wish he had toned down some of his expressions to avoid giving needless offence, and that appearance of exaggeration which to the minds of some might cast suspicion upon the solid merit of his conclusions. We regret particularly his political allusions. Without entering at all into the merits of party politics, we wish they had been kept out of this book altogether; or, if the author must pay off one political party, we wish he had executed an equal and impartial justice upon the other. There is enough of political selfishness, corruption, and bribery in either political party to excite the indignation of every honest