ranks. Even religious teachers have abandoned all that their fathers understood by essential Christianity. Outside the Catholic Church, religious bodies, as Captain Mahan recently declared, come to stand for the idea that mere outward benevo lence is the Christian life itself, instead of being merely its visible fruit. Even Mr. Skinner shows some dim apprehension of the situation when he says that the former functions of the church and the home are now devolving upon the school. A writer in the Educational Review, February, 1898, asserted that more than one-half of the children of this country now receives no religious training. The bearing of most higher education upon religious faith is testified to by President Harper, who affirms that there is in the modern college a remarkable decrease in the teaching of Christian truth, and that a great many men and women in their college life grow careless about religion. Nobody who is awake to innumerable indications in the current of American life will venture to accuse the Honorable Amasa Thornton of indulging in exaggerated pessimism when, not long ago, in the North American he uttered a solemn warning against "the maelstrom of social and religious depravity which threatens to engulf the religion of the future."

Simultaneously with the decline of religion, there is going on a rapid and profound moral deterioration in public and in private life. The golden calf is set up on every high hill and under every green tree. Greed has so widely corrupted political life in national as well as in municipal affairs, that politics is now almost a synonym for systematic public robbery. In commercial life the standard of natural justice has been extensively supplanted by that of mere legality. In private life, to mention only one fact, the old characteristically Christian reverence for marriage,-the foundation of the family, which in its turn is the foundation of the state, is disappearing; and the institution of divorce is flourishing to an extent for which civilization affords no parallel since the Gospel stamped out the corruptions of decadent Roman paganism. It is not necessary, here, to examine whether there is any rigorous connection between the two facts-the simultaneous decline of religion and of morality. Are we not witnessing the confirmation, on a portentous scale, of Washington's prophetic warning? Nor is there

room, here, to consider whether the Reverend Washington Gladden is correct when he asserts that "there is a marked tendency in the public schools to lower the standard of education by eliminating God, and making us a sordid, money-loving race." One thing is obvious: the source of that influence upon which Mr. Skinner counts for the power to neutralize the pernicious ungodliness of his theoretical principles is steadily drying up, while the crying need for that power is just as steadily increasing. The doctrine that morality does not need religion is contributing to these conditions. Finally, principles and practice cannot permanently continue to be in conflict, for principles, in the long run, work out to their logical consequences. To expect. that a system which ignores religion, and thereby makes a deadly assault on it, will continue to draw from religion a saving grace, is neither more nor less than preposterous. We cannot live long upon a capital which we are rapidly eating up. The man engaged in sawing off the branch on which he is sitting is not accepted as a type of practical wisdom.

THE GIFT.

BY ROBERT COX STUMP.

'HE proudest princess will not answer "Nay," When her least subject would bestow some gift

In sign of loving fealty. Loath to lift His eyes to meet her gaze, if she but say A gracious word, and smile, she doth repay His largess thousandfold; albeit he drift Out of her thought for ever, that one swift, Sweet thanks is cherished till his dying day.

Would that my sin-soiled life might find as well
Acceptance, though unworthy Mary's hands,
-She, Lady of light and love ineffable,
And I the least and lowliest in her lands!
Surely her heart sees, pities, understands
My heart, that longs so much its love to tell.

ANY of the readers of THE CATHOLIC WORLD MAGAZINE may be familiar with the valley of the Ahr. Others who have never explored it, though they may have often passed Remagen on the Rhine, may be attracted by the illustrations which accompany this article to make its acquaintance.

The first photograph shows us the outside of the well-known church of St. Apollinaris, standing on a hill overlooking old Father Rhine, which sweeps rapidly along at its foot.

The body of the holy martyr St. Apollinaris, first Bishop of Ravenna, who received the crown of martyrdom under the Emperor Vespasian, was on its way to Cologne, but was buried on this Rhine side-hill. The legend runs that here the boat bearing the sacred relics stopped, as if to indicate that this was the appointed place of rest.

The present church is quite modern, built by the generosity of Count Fürstenberg-Stammheim, and is decorated within by

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frescoes of great beauty by Karl and Andreas Müller, who are brothers, and Steinle, all artists of the Düsseldorf school.

In a crypt under the church are the sacred remains of the holy bishop and martyr. At the foot of the hill, to the right when looking at the photograph, is the little Rhineside town of Remagen, where several sailing craft are generally moored to receive consignments of the "Queen of Table Waters," the Apollinaris water, which has made the name of the holy martyr known to many, especially of the Anglo-Saxon race, who have never read the Bollandists, or even Alban Butler.

The spring from which the water is derived bubbles up about six miles from Remagen, and over the door of the bottling establishment stands an image of St. Apollinaris.

On the left of the church stands a building with a small spire. It is a humble convent of Franciscan Fathers, who serve the church, and the little spire surmounts their domestic chapel. The fathers, who have another and larger convent at Bonn, about six miles down the Rhine, give many missions; their services as confessors in the Apollinaris church are much valued by the people, and English tourists can generally find an English-speaking confessor here.

In the woods that surround their house are found many chapels and statues; one of St. Francis preaching is especially prominent, though not in the field of this photograph. On the steep road leading from the town to the church the pilgrim sees the Stations of the Cross, inviting him to pray as well as

to rest.

In the distance, on the left of the picture, the high hills beyond the Rhine are the famous seven mountains, the best known of which is the Drachenfels, up which a railway now ascends. The view of the river from that spot is one of the most lovely that the Rhine affords.

Standing in the garden of the Franciscans a little above the church, a scene of enchanting beauty unfolds itself, whether you look up the river, to the right, or down it towards the seven mountains and Cologne. On the Feast of St. Apollinaris a pilgrimage is made to this church, and large numbers of epileptic patients are brought to ask the intercession of the holy martyr.

A little distance up the Rhine, about two miles from Remagen, the river Ahr flows into it, after passing the picturesque