Abram Herbert Lewis - Spiritual Sabbathism

1 88 SPIRITUAL SABBATHISM
her for help, and Protestantism is therefore, as
Cardinal Gibbons puts it, "no longer a foe to be
feared."
Catholicism is not noisy concerning its plans and
its purposes. But untiring persistence, adroit management,
and unlimited resources are an adequate
substitute for loud talk. Its experience in suppressing
heretics and in baptizing secularism is two
milleniums long. Its organization is the marvel of
history, and shows a power of adaptation to environment
which is constantly underestimated by dissenters.
It is not wanting in virility today. Its
claims to the ownership
of Sunday are substantiated
by history, and it can not be eliminated from the
future of sabbathism.
§26. How can we attain Spiritual Sahhathism?—
Some years ago the late M. Renan exclaimed,
"Christianity is dead; it has lost its Sunday!" The
remark had a certain significance, for It came from a
distinguished historian of the People of Israel,
and
from the author of what once passed for a Life of
Jesus. It should not, perhaps, be taken too seriously,
for it is the utterance of a man who, contemplating
the impurity of France, said that "perhaps
the gay people are in the right after all."
We
know very well who the gay people were in antiquity;
they were the worshipers of Baal; and it is not