Note 82 — JOURNAL. (continued 5)

I have heard it several times asserted, that Catholicism was gaining ground extremely in this country. Surely the Preacher sayeth well, "The thing which has been, it is that which shall be, and there is nothing new beneath the sun." Is it not a marvellous thing to think of, that that mighty tree which has overshadowed the whole of the Christian world, under whose branches all the European empires were cradled, and which we have with our own eyes beheld droop, and fade, and totter, as it does at this moment in the old soils,—is it not strange to think of the seed being carried, and the roots taking hold in this new earth, perhaps to send up another such giant shadow over this hemisphere? Its growth here appears to me almost impossible; for if ever there were two things more opposite in their nature than all other things, they are the spirit of the Roman Catholic religion and the spirit of the American people. It's true, that of the thousands who take refuge from poverty upon this plenteous land, the greater number bring with them that creed, but the very air they inhale here presently gives them a political faith, so utterly incompatible with the spirit of subjection, that I shall think the Catholic priesthood here workers of miracles, to retain any thing like the influence over their minds which they possessed in those countries, where all creeds, political and polemical, have but one watch-word—faith and submission.