SEEKING THE ANTIQUE 231 pleasure of marveling at that most colossal of structures, the Brooklyn Bridge. "But in the midst of the vastness, the bustle and activity that I encountered upon every hand, and in spite of my enthusiasm, there ever lurked in my mind a sense of something lacking. In my hours of rest I was always seeking the 'gusts of time,' something old, antique, and time-worn-something to call to mind that to which all my life I had been accustomed in the cities of Europe, the only one which I had hitherto known. Impossible not to be amazed at the striking evidences of physical and mental progress on every hand, visible to the same extent and degree in no other part of the globe; but, in spite of it all, I was ever seeking the antique ideal, the illusion and poesy of the past, the glamor of the olden time. For to me olden time has always seemed the most poetical. I perceived, however, that the practical advantages more than compensated; that, in America, Christianity was a practical reality-something I had never seen nor known in Rome nor elsewhere; that right was realized in practice; that liberty was fulfilled in practice; political ideals, which had been considered the grandest in theory, realized in practice in America; that things which would be considered the most radical and subversive in any other part of the world were, in America, the most advanced and the most matter of course, what in the Old World might appear the most 'unrealizable' was to be found in its most realizable perfection in the United States. "As I said to Emilio Castelar and friends in Spain, in 1880: "The history of the oceans is the history of civilization: as the waters of the Mediterranean Sea bear in their depths the reflection of the civilization of ancient Greece and Rome, as the great Atlantic Ocean has long typified the progress of modern times, so shall the still vaster Pacific witness and exemplify the irresistible onward and upward advance of the future. For on her waters shall meet the greatest nations of the earth and the most powerful engines of war; Russia, China, Japan, the United States, Great Britain and the continental powers; Filipinas is weak, but she is the key to the circumnavigation of the globe-a powerful factor in all the coming conflict.' "They termed me the 'child prophet,' but the prophet was not then in his own country. The Philippines are weak, I then told them, but they are the key to the coming kingdom. Shall you be found strong enough to hold that key? I did not believe so, and my belief at that time was that the eventual destiny of the Philippines was to lie between Great Britain and the United States with the greater chances in favor of the United States, the latter being the daughter growing up and Great Britain, the mother, already advancing in age." CHAPTER XXIII CATHOLICISM IN THE ISLANDS The Civil Commission Friendly-Calling for Armed THER HE attitude of the Civil Commission toward the Roman Catholic Church in the Philippines has been one of friendliness, as it should be. This does not mean that it has been partial toward that Church or its representatives in laws made or interpretations given. Aglipay, the sworn enemy of the hierarchy, has been protected in his legal rights in spite of the protests made by American, Spanish and Italian dignitaries. Protestants have found in the members of the Commission a willingness to see that their services were held without interference; if the Commissioners have not given the missionaries the support of their presence, it has apparently been due to personal and not official reasons. This principle concerning the Catholic Church early laid down by the Commission must commend itself to impartial readers: "As the Catholic Church is and ought to continue a prominent factor in the life, peace, contentment and progress of the Philippine people, it would seem the wisest course, wherever it is possible to do so without infring |