PROTESTANTS awake! can be read in two ways: either as, Protestants are awake, or, Protestants should awake. Let our readers receive the words as descriptive or exhortative, as best suits each individual case.
Jesuit missions to Protestants are the order of the day. In Gardiner Street, Dublin, the headquarters of the Society have been busy of late. Three carefully prepared discourses were delivered by Doctor Delany, S. J. (Society of Jesus), on “Christian Reunion,” and efforts were made to induce Dublin Protestants to attend their delivery. As the Doctor had the command of the Romish press his sermons were reported in full.
In the first discourse the Doctor announced that the only hope for the Reunion of Christendom was absorption into the Romish system, which, he said, could boast an unbroken succession through all ages, back to the apostles. He added, that the presence of an infallible guide to teach, and a supreme head to govern and rule, would render the union permanent. The second sermon, as might be expected, was a plea for the infallibility of this guide, teacher, and ruler―the Pope. And, as a logical conclusion, the last sermon was devoted to persuading his hearers that the Bible is not a sufficient rule of faith.
The Reunion of Christendom, then, means submission to the guidance, teaching, and rule of the Pope, and the rejection of the Word of God as the rule for faith. In other words it means, Submit to the Pope’s word (or that of the Jesuits) and reject God’s Word.
These sermons caused some stir in Dublin, but amongst the many able men there, no one arose to answer them. We should think Dublin could give a regiment of speakers able to do so. Protestants need to awake! The way to save a man from drowning is hardly sitting down and calculating the injury the procedure might work upon us.
At length the Rev. P. B. Johnson, of the Irish Church Missions, announced in two Roman Catholic newspapers a course of sermons in reply. This called the Jesuits to arms, and promptly these newspapers were forbidden to insert any more of such advertisements; and a message was conveyed to the Irish Church Missions office that the advertisement had been stopped.
There was no means of reporting the reply sermons. But nine thousand of the first were printed, and were put by the mission workers in the letter boxes of the district surrounding the Jesuit chapel.
The numbers of the hearers of Mr. Johnson increased, till the partition which separates the mission church from the schoolroom had to be removed, and thus two hundred and fifty extra seats were added to the usual number. Romanists became enquirers, and many interesting conversations were recorded.
Protestants, awake! Take a page out of the book of the Irish Church Missions. Remember that the efforts to produce the Reunion of Christendom are efforts to deprive men of their liberty of conscience, and to make them spiritual slaves of the Pope―or, rather, the Jesuits at his back; to steal away the Scriptures of God and the right of reading them as they are written, and to force men to believe the new and strange doctrines of Rome; and efforts to deprive Christian people of their honorable right to obey God rather than men. There are ten thousand Christian men in England who are capable of instructing the rising generation in the truths of the gospel which Rome assails. Let them arise, and in their homes, in classes, and in public assembly, speak up boldly for the Faith. The progress of Rome in this country is due primarily to the indifference of Protestants.
We should be delighted to be the means of forwarding to the Irish Church Missions any sums, large or small, that may be entrusted to us. Its workers are brave and gracious men. They are taking the Scriptures to the peasants of Ireland, who accept them in a way unknown to living memory.