Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 40.djvu/724

704 the doctrine of infallibility, and your path, as a believer in Christianity, is beset with insuperable difficulties." Protestants, it appears, have very erroneous conceptions of the meaning of this doctrine, which if they were correct would rightfully condemn it. As defined by the author, its true meaning is that "the Pope, by virtue of a special supernatural assistance of the Holy Spirit of Truth promised to him, in and through St. Peter, is exempt from all liability to err when, in the discharge of his Apostolic Office of Supreme Teacher of the Universal Church, he defines or declares, in matters of or appertaining to Christian faith or morals, what is to be believed and held, or what is to be rejected and condemned by the faithful throughout the world." Besides the meaning of infallibility, which is thus summarized, the author considers the reasons why Catholics believe in the dogma of infallibility, the way they meet the objections to it, and—in the appendixes—The Happiness of Converts, Some Facts relating to the Vatican Council, and Pontifical Decrees and the Obedience due to them.

purpose of this book is to study the interrelationship of government and religion, in respect to which Rome and the United States are regarded as occupying the two extremes. "The principle of Rome in all its phases is that religion and government are inseparable; the principle of the Government of the United States is that religion is essentially distinct and totally separate from civil government, and entirely exempt from its cognizance. The principle of Rome is the abject slavery of the mind; the principle of the United States of America is the absolute freedom of the mind. As it was Christianity that first and always antagonized this governmental principle of Rome, and established the governmental principle of the United States of America, the fundamental idea, the one thread-thought of the book, is to develop the principles of Christianity with reference to civil government, and to portray the mischievous consequences of the least departure from those principles." All Sunday legislation is so strenuously opposed, that this may be regarded as the chief purpose of the book. The Rome that is treated of is that which was brought into relation with Christianity, the empire, and the papacy. The persecutions of the Christians, which are regarded as simply the legitimate outcome of the impartial enforcement of the laws when inflicted by good emperors, and as a part of their undiscriminating viciousness when inflicted by bad ones, arc considered the legitimate results of the union of Church and State. As Christianity became stronger, it is charged with having adopted heathen features as a means of making its way more rapidly—"the great apostasy"—and particularly those connected with the worship of the sun (which is supposed to be, of all pagan cults, the most abhorrent to Jehovah), and among them the consecration of Sunday. The growth of other features held to be in conflict with pure religion and freedom is traced through the lives of emperors and popes. The transplantation of some of them, even after the Reformation, to America, and their gradual elimination under the workings of our free institutions; and the efforts, in recent years, by the National Reform Union, the Sabbath Union, and other societies, to secure the incorporation in the Constitution of a recognition of the Christian religion, and the enforcement of Sabbath laws, are successively reviewed. "As surely," the author concludes, "as the movement to commit the Government of the United States to a course of religious legislation shall succeed, so surely will there be repeated the history of Rome in the fourth and fifth centuries," and our republic will "be led captive in the ruinous triumph of the papacy."

this volume Prof. Böhm-Bawerk deals with one of the vexed questions of economics—the economic basis of interest—with the question why the lender of a sum of money, for instance, should demand at the end of the period for which it is lent, not only the original sum, but a bonus as well. The different theories which have been