relations and friends, who wish to attend and comfort them, and those who have been used to live in plenty, and even elegance, are reduced to deplorable distress.

The general, further emulating his ministerial masters, by a proclamation bearing date on the twelfth day of June, after venting the grossest falsehoods and calumnies against the good people of these colonies, proceeds to "declare them all, either by name or description, to be rebels and traitors, to supersede the course of common law, and instead thereof to publish and order the use and exercise of the law martial." His troops have butchered our countrymen; have wantonly burnt Charlestown, besides a considerable number of houses in other places; our ships and vessels are seized; the necessary supplies of provisions are intercepted; and he is exerting his utmost power to spread destruction and devastation around him.

We have received certain intelligence that General Carleton, the Governor of Canada, is instigating the people of that province, and the Indians, to fall upon us; and we have but too much reason to apprehend that schemes have been formed to excite domestic enemies against us. In brief, a part of these colonies now feel, and all of them are sure of feeling, as far as the vengeance of administration can inflict them, the complicated calamities of fire, sword, and famine. We are reduced to the alternative of choosing an unconditional submission to the tyranny of irritated ministers, or resistance by force. The latter is our choice. We have counted the cost of this contest, and find nothing so dreadful as voluntary slavery! Honor, justice, and humanity forbid us tamely to surrender that freedom which we received from our gallant ancestors, and which our innocent posterity have a right to receive from us. We cannot endure the infamy and guilt of resigning succeeding generations to that wretchedness which inevitably awaits them, if we basely entail hereditary bondage upon them.

Our cause is just. Our union is perfect. Our internal resources are great, and, if necessary, foreign assistance is undoubtedly attainable. We gratefully acknowledge, as signal instances of Divine favor towards us, that his providence would not permit us to be called into this severe controversy, until we were grown up to our present strength, had been previously exercised in warlike operations, and possessed the means of defending ourselves. With hearts fortified by these animating reflections, we

most solemnly, before God and the world, declare that, exerting the utmost energy of those powers which our beneficent Creator has graciously bestowed upon us, the arms we have been compelled by our enemies to assume, we will, in defiance of every hazard, with unabating firmness and perseverance, employ for the preservation of our liberties,- being with one mind resolved to die freemen rather than to live slaves.

Lest this declaration should disquiet the minds of our friends and fellow-subjects in any part of the empire, we assure them that we mean not to dissolve that union which has so long and so happily subsisted between us, and which we sincerely wish to see restored. Necessity has not yet driven us into that desperate measure, or induced us to excite any other nation to war against them. We have not raised armies with ambitious designs of separating from Great Britain and establishing independent States. We fight not for glory or for conquest. We exhibit to mankind the remarkable spectacle of a people attacked by unprovoked enemies, without any imputation or even suspicion of offense. They boast of their privileges and civilization, and yet proffer no milder conditions than servitude or death.

In our own native land, in defense of the freedom that is our birthright, and which we ever enjoyed till the late violation of it-for the protection of our property, acquired solely by the honest industry of our forefathers and ourselves, against violence actually offered, we have taken up arms. We shall lay them down when hostilities shall cease on the part of the aggressors, and all danger of their being renewed shall be removed, and not before.

With an humble confidence in the mercies of the Supreme and impartial Judge and Ruler of the universe, we most devoutly implore his divine goodness to protect us happily through this great conflict, to dispose our adversaries to reconciliation on reasonable terms, and thereby to relieve the empire from the calamities of civil war.

PÈRE DIDON

(1840-)

ENRI DIDON, one of the most celebrated thinkers and orators of contemporary France, stands distinctively for the axiom that between the different phases of truth there can be no real conflict. His lifework has been to align the Catholic Church in France with the modern spirit of experimentalism in science and of criticism in the investigation of religious records. He was born at Touvet, March 17th, 1840, and in 1862 identified himself with the Dominican order. He has described himself as "a spiritual son of Lacordaire." Holding that there is nothing in the creed of the Church opposed to true science, he has also attempted to demonstrate that the Democratic movement of modern times is the delayed fruit of Christian teachings. In 1879, he took grounds on the question of divorce, which his superiors condemned, and was temporarily "silenced," but after his return from Corsica, to which he was retired, he was restored to favor, and in 1890 became director of the college of Albert the Great at Arcueil.

JES

CHRIST AND HIGHER CRITICISM

ESUS CHRIST is the greatest name of history. There are others for which men have died. His is the only one worshiped among all peoples of all races in all ages.

He who bears it is known of all the earth. Among savages of the most degenerate tribes of the human species, missionaries go incessantly to announce his death on the Cross and the sacrifice made for the human race which is saved by loving him. The most indifferent in the modern world have been obliged to admit that nothing has ever helped the weak and the suffering more than Christianity.

The most glorious geniuses of the past will be obscured. Whether in monuments, palaces, obelisks, or tombs; whether in written encomiums, papyrus or parchment, bricks or medallions,— only reminiscences of them have been preserved for us. will live forever in the conscience of his faithful people.

Jesus

Here

in this great manifestation of his power is his indestructible. monument.

The Church founded by him fills with his name all time and all places. The Church knows him, loves him, adores him! As he lives in her, so she lives in him. In a few simple words the Church teaches that the greatest event which ever occurred to humanity was the arrival of Christ, and that God loves man, since God saves him from the penalty of the law; that God would save him from harm by giving him aid; that charity is the supreme duty, since by his charity and goodness the Savior was brought to the Cross; that the Christian must be vigilant in the good because his Master will be the judge; that he need not fear death because his Master conquered it and because he himself is destined to eternal life.

The man who accepts these instructions and believes in Christ can walk uprightly in life. He is armed for defense and for growth. Nothing can arrest his progress. The disciple of Jesus Christ has become the conqueror of the world-not from the standpoint of materialism and brutality, for violence is not in the spirit, of the crucified Master, but in the sense of goodness, of abnegation, of sacrifice, and of moral dignity. In sowing these virtues as seeds of life, he prepares and enriches the human soil u til it is capable of all culture and of all harvests.

But since believers in their intelligence seek to find reasons for elementary dogmas, it is necessary that we explain to them, in the measure of our imperfect and always limited knowledge, the facts and details of the human and divine life of Jesus, the words he spoke, the laws he formulated, his manner of teaching, evangelizing, combating, suffering, and dying. The history of Jesus is the foundation of faith. Evangelical doctrine, moral Christianity, culture, hierarchy, Church dignities, all rest on him. Thanks to the work of educated teachers, the doctrine of Jesus, his moralities, his faith, and his Church, have become little by little the object of distinct science, perfected, organized, responding to the legitimate aspirations of believers who would be men of faith and men of science; equally, the life of Jesus Christ must in its detail meet the exigencies of history.

The partisans of those called the critical school will say: The Christ of dogma and of tradition, the Christ of the Apostles and the evangelists, interpreted according to the doctrines of the Church, is not and cannot be the Christ of history. This ideal

Christ, God in man, Spirit Incarnate, conceived by an unknown miracle, calling himself the only Son of God, in the absolute and metaphysical sense, multiplying miracles, speaking as the fourth Evangelist makes him speak, rising again three days after death, ascending to the heavens in the face of his Disciples, after forty days, such a man is not real! He exists only in the pious fancy of his believers who have created him piecemeal. The true Jesus, the Jesus of history, was born as are all other men; he lived like them; he did no more miracles than they! He taught a purer morality, and founded a religion less imperfect than others. Like all reformers, as a rule, he succumbed to the jealousies of his contemporaries. Becoming the victim of Jew. ish hatred and dying as we die, he has neither ascended to heaven nor is he living with God!

I revolted (pardon the phrase) not only in my Christian faith, but in my impartiality as a man, at this contradiction. Convinced that Jesus was the invisible God in a human form resembling our own, I, as a historian, regard him as still living, such as he was in this double nature.

The question of his Divinity has divided the greatest minds since the advent of Christ, and it will create division to the end. It is already a strange phenomenon that Jesus alone disposed of a problem that never sleeps in the consciousness of humanity,a problem that always excites the emotions. I shall permit myself here to make a simple historical reflection addressed to unprejudiced men, to true critics with open minds.

This violent contradiction and contention of which Jesus is the object was prophesied. It shall last as long as the world; it afflicts the Christian, but it does not astonish or trouble him; he sees the signs of his Master. It is the product of living the life of Christ.

While his Disciples in reply to the question said: "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God," the Jews said: "He is but a prophet"; others, blinder, called him a blasphemer and a conspirator.

After he had left the earth and while his Apostles preached in the Jewish synagogues, the Messiah, God and man, filled with the wisdom and goodness of God, the first sectaries, the Nazarenes and Ebionites, would see in him nothing but a man.

The contention on this point continued for centuries. A Pagan philosopher, Celsus, without denying the miracles of Christ,