Protestant Saints

The suggestion that Protestants, after the manner of Roman Catholics, should get them a Calendar of Saints, whereby they may remember their great dead, has often been mooted. The suggestion was revived recently by one A. S. Collins in The New York Times.

General discussion of hagiology has appeared of late in every section of the religious press. It is, of course, apropos of the announcement that 252 new saints may shortly be added to the Catholic calendar as a result of investigations into Roman Catholic martyrs during the English Reformation--investigations originally begun by Henry Cardina Manning, ecclesiastical genius of the 19th Century* (TIME, July 21).

It is contended by some that the veneration of saints is a noble and excellent means for bringing the Christian nearer to that communion of saints towards which Christendom presses. By others, beatification is denounced as a "survival of the pagan apotheosis of the departed" and as heretical, since there is only One who is holy, even God. Here tradition and temperament divide.

Remains, however, the practical consideration that a Protestant Church is always in danger of becoming like a country without heroes, or, at least, without local heroes such as may be found in Catholic parishes.

* "Manning was now an old man. . . . The spare and stately form, the head, massive, emaciated, terrible, with the great nose, the glittering eyes, and the mouth drawn back and compressed into the grim rigidities of age, self-mortification, authority. . . ."LYTTON STRACHEY.