Far more painful has been the recent history of the other great
branch of the Christian Church--a history developed where it might
have been least expected: the recent annals of the world hardly
present a more striking antithesis between Religion and Theology.
On the religious side few things in the history of the Roman
Church have been more beautiful than the conduct of its clergy in
Canada during the great outbreak of ship-fever among immigrants at
Montreal about the middle of the present century. Day and night
the Catholic priesthood of that city ministered fearlessly to
those victims of sanitary ignorance; fear of suffering and death
could not drive these ministers from their work; they laid down
their lives cheerfully while carrying comfort to the poorest and
most ignorant of our kind: such was the record of their religion.
But in 1885 a record was made by their theology. In that year the
smallpox broke out with great virulence in Montreal. The
Protestant population escaped almost entirely by vaccination; but
multitudes of their Catholic fellow-citizens, under some vague
survival of the old orthodox ideas, refused vaccination; and
suffered fearfully.
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