Surely a member of a so-called Protestant communion may say amen! to the foregoing quotation. Surely, any American stands for freedom of religious belief, as well as that private property shall not be taken for public use, without just compensation. Think of the millions in value sequestrated under the French law of 1905, aside from other considerations! What a beautiful and dignified protest has the world recently heard from Archbishop Ireland, not only intellectually the foremost churchman of his faith, but almost unparalleled among orators of this or any other land. Of the rape of the French church, among other things, he says: “For the moment the situation is, undoubtedly, serious—and serious for the one as for the other of the contestants. Yet, seen more near, it reveals no coloring of despair, either for France, or for the Church of France. A bright morning, I dare predict, will at a not distant time dawn over the field of battle, dropping from the skies sunshine and peace and begetting both in the Church and in France, joy and exultation that the passage-at-arms, angry as it once was, has opened the way to a clearer understanding of mutual interests, to a warmer glow of olden mutual love. “The Catholic Church,—of course I love her, and I champion her _cause_ with delight. And France, too, I love. While I shall blame her, I shall not forget all that she has been, during her storied centuries, to mankind and the Church, and I now bid my hearers to nurture no rancor against her, and if I beckon her to defeat, it is that she rise from defeat greater and more glorious than victory could have made her.” Those who have followed with discerning eyes this oldest of human institutions among the works of the ages, will look forward with hope to a speedy and healthy reconciliation between the government of France and a religious institution which for longer than a thousand years has been part and parcel of it; which has conserved in great degree its morals, contended for the peace of its citizens, and especially, during the monarchies, added glory and renown, wherever opportunity offered. The Roman Church has ever been an hierarchy, believing in hallowed or consecrated authority, in what concerns religious order or government, and too often, doubtlessly, extending this idea to secular or state affairs—yet, on the whole, who is so wise as to declare what better results had been to us now had other influences dominated at the many great and appalling crises in history which that ancient organization has had to face? This aside, however, will the Christian governments of the world lie by without a protest to this wholesale confiscation, and avowed determination to uproot religion in the very heart of Europe, when it is their custom to make formidable protests against the action of Turkey in Armenia, and against atrocities of every nature repellant to civilization?