Chapter V (11)

After putting more wood in the stove, I took the cloak and mittens, drew Monsieur Goulden's bed-curtains, and went out, the bunch of keys in my pocket. The illness of Father Melchior grieved me very much for a while, but a thought came to console me, and I said to myself: "You can climb up the city clock-tower, and see the house of Catharine and Aunt Grédel." Thinking thus, I arrived at the house of Brainstein, the bell-ringer, who lived at the corner of the little court, in an old, tumble-down barrack. His two sons were weavers, and in their old home the noise of the loom and the whistle of the shuttle was heard from morning till night. The grand-mother, old and blind, slept in an arm-chair, on the back of which perched a magpie. Father Brainstein, when he did not have to ring the bells for a christening, a funeral, or a marriage, kept reading his almanac behind the small round panes of his window.

The old man, when he saw me, rose up, saying:

"It is you, Monsieur Joseph."

"Yes, Father Brainstein; I come in place of Monsieur Goulden, who is not well."

"Very well; it is all the same."

He took up his staff and put on his woollen cap, driving away the cat that was sleeping upon it; then he took the great key of the steeple from a drawer, and we went out together, I [was] glad to find myself again in the open air, despite the cold; for their miserable room was gray with vapor, and as hard to breathe in as a kettle; I could never understand how people could live in such a way.

{322}

At last we gained the street, and Father Brainstein said:

"You have heard of the great Russian disaster, Monsieur Joseph?"

"Yes, Father Brainstein; it is fearful

"Ah!" said he, "there will be many a Mass said in the churches; every one will weep and pray for their children, the more that they are dead in a heathen land."

We crossed the court, and in front of the tower-hall, opposite the guard-house, many peasants and city people were already standing, reading a placard. We went up the steps and entered the church, where more than twenty women, young and old, were kneeling on the pavement, in spite of the terrible cold.

"Is it not as I said?" said Brainstein. "They are coming already to pray, and half of them have been here since five o'clock."

He opened the little door of the steeple leading to the organ, and we began climbing up in the dark. Once in the organ-loft, we turned to the left of the bellows, and went up to the bells.

I was glad to see the blue sky and breathe the free air again, for the bad odor of the bats which inhabited the tower almost suffocated me, But how terrible the cold was in that cage, open to every wind, and how dazzlingly the snow shone over twenty leagues of country! All the little city of Phalsbourg, with its six bastions, three _demilunes_, two advanced works; its barracks, magazines, bridges, _glacis_, ramparts; its great parade-ground, and little, well-aligned houses, were beneath me, as if drawn on white paper. I was not yet accustomed to the height, and I held fast on the middle of the platform for fear I might jump off, for I had read of people having their heads turned by great heights. I did not dare go to the clock, and, if Brainstein had not set me the example, I would have remained there, pressed against the beam from which the bells hung; but he said:

"Come, Monsieur Joseph, and see if it is right."

Then I took out Monsieur Goulden's large watch which marked seconds, and I saw that the clock was considerably slow. Brainstein helped me to wind it up, and we regulated it.

"The clock is always slow in winter," said he, "because of the iron working."

After becoming somewhat accustomed to the elevation, I began to look around. There were the oak-wood barracks, the upper barracks, Bigelberg, and lastly, opposite me, Quatre-Vents, and the house of Aunt Grédel, from the chimney of which a thread of blue smoke rose toward the sky. And I saw the kitchen, and imagined Catharine, in sabots and woollen skirt, spinning at the corner of the hearth and thinking of me. I no longer felt the cold; I could not take my eyes from their cottage.

Father Brainstein, who did not know what I was looking at, said: "Yes, yes, Monsieur Joseph; now all the roads are covered with people in spite of the snow. The news has already spread, and every one wants to know the extent of his loss."

He was right; every road and path was covered with people coming to the city; and, looking in the court, I saw the crowd increasing every moment before the guard-house, and the mairie, and the post-office. A deep horror arose from the mass.

At length, after a last, long look at Catharine's house, I had to descend, and we went down the dark, winding stairs, as if descending into a well. Once in the organ-loft, we saw that the crowd had greatly increased in the church; all the mothers, the sisters, the old grandmothers, the rich, and the poor, were kneeling on the benches in the midst of the deepest silence; they prayed for the absent, offering all only to see them once again.

{323}

At first I did not realize all this; but suddenly the thought that, if I had gone the year before, Catharine would be there praying and asking me of God, fell like a bolt on my heart, and I felt all my body tremble.

"Let us go! let us go!" I exclaimed, "this is terrible."

"What is?" he asked.

"War."

We descended the stairs under the great gate, and I went across the court to the house of Monsieur the Commandant Meunier, while Brainstein took the way to his house.

At the corner of the Hotel de Ville, I saw a sight which I shall remember all my life. There, around a placard, were more than five hundred people, men and women crowded against each other, all pale and with necks outstretched, gazing at it as at some horrible apparition. They could not read it, and from time to time one would say in German or French:

"But they are not all dead! Some will return."

Others cried out:

"Let us see it! let us get near it."

A poor old woman in the rear lifted up her arms, and cried:

"Christopher! my poor Christopher!"

Others, angry at her clamor, called out to silence her.

Behind, the crowd continued to pour through the German gate.

At length, Harmautier, the _sergent-de-ville_, came out of the guard-house, and stood at the top of the steps, with another placard like the first; a few soldiers followed him. Then a rush was made toward him, but the soldiers kept off the crowd, and old Harmautier began to read the placard, which he called the twenty-ninth bulletin, and in which the emperor informed them that during the retreat the horses perished every night by thousands. He said nothing of the men!

The _sergent-de-ville_ read slowly; not a breath was heard in the crowd; even the old woman, who did not understand French, listened like the others. The buzz of a fly could have been heard. But when he came to this passage, "Our cavalry was dismounted to such an extent that we were forced to collect the officers who yet owned horses to form four companies of one hundred and fifty men each. Generals rated as captains, and colonels as under-officers"--when he read this passage, which told more of the misery of the grand army than all the rest, cries and groans arose on all sides; two or three women fell and were carried away.

It is true that the bulletin added, "The health of his majesty was never better," and that was a great consolation. Unfortunately it could not restore life to three hundred thousand men buried in the snow; and so the people went away very sad. Others came by dozens who had not heard the news read, and from time to time Harmautier came out to read the bulletin.

This lasted until night; still the same scene over again.

I ran from the place; I wanted to know nothing about it.

I went to Monsieur the Commandant's. Entering a parlor, I saw him at breakfast. He was an old man, but hale, with a red face and good appetite.

"Ah! it is you!" said he, "Monsieur Goulden is not coming, then?"

"No, Monsieur the Commandant, the bad news has made him ill."

{324}

"Ah! I understand," he said, emptying his glass, "yes, it is unfortunate."

And while I was regulating the clock, he added:

"Bah! tell Monsieur Goulden that we will have our revenge. We cannot always have the upper hand. For fifteen years we have kept the drums beating over them, and it is only right to let them have this little morsel of consolation. And then our honor is safe; we were not beaten fighting; without the cold and the snow, those poor Cossacks would have had a hard time of it. But patience; the skeletons of our regiments will soon be filled, and then let them beware."

I wound up the clock; he rose and came to look at it, for he was a great amateur in clock-making. He pinched my ear in a merry mood; and then, as I was going away, he cried as he buttoned up his overcoat, which he had opened before beginning breakfast:

"Tell Father Goulden to rest easy, the dance will begin again in the spring; the Kalmucks will not always have winter fighting for them. Tell him that."

"Yes, Monsieur the Commandant," I answered, shutting the door.

His burly figure and air of good humor comforted me a little; but in all the other houses I went to, at the Horwiches, the Frantz-Tonis, the Durlachs, everywhere I heard only lamentations. The women especially were in misery; the men said nothing, but walked about with heads hanging down, and without even looking to see what I was doing.

Toward ten o'clock there only remained two persons for me to see: Monsieur de la Vablerie-Chamberlin, one of the ancient nobility, who lived at the end of the main street, with Madame Chamberlin-d'Ecof and Mademoiselle Jeanne, their daughter, They were _émigrés_, and had returned about three or four years before. They saw no one in the city, and only three or four old priests in the environs. Monsieur de la Vablerie-Chamberlin loved only the chase. He had six dogs at the end of the yard, and a two-horse carriage; Father Robert, of the Rue des Capucins, served them as coachman, groom, footman, and huntsman. Monsieur de la Vablerie-Chamberlin always wore a hunting vest, a leathern cap, and boots and spurs. All the town called him the hunter, but they said nothing of Madame nor of Mademoiselle de Chamberlin.

I was very sad when I pushed open the heavy door, which closed with a pulley whose creaking echoed through the vestibule. What was then my surprise to hear, in the midst of general mourning, the tones of a song and harpsichord! Monsieur de la Vablerie was singing, and Mademoiselle Jeanne accompanying him. I knew not, in those days, that the misfortune of one was often the joy of others, and I said to myself, with my hand on the latch: "They have not heard the news from Russia."

But while I stood thus, the door of the kitchen opened, and Mademoiselle Louise, their servant, putting out her head, asked:

"Who is there?"

"It is I, Mademoiselle Louise."

"Ah! it is you, Monsieur Joseph. Come this way."

They had their clock in a large parlor which they rarely entered; the high windows, with blinds, remained closed; but there was light enough for what I had to do. I passed then through the kitchen and regulated the antique clock, which was a magnificent piece of work of white marble. Mademoiselle Louise looked on.

"You have company, Mademoiselle Louise?" I asked.

{325}

"No, but monsieur ordered me to let no one in."

"You are very cheerful here."

"Ah! yes," she said; "and it is for the first time in years; I don't know what is the matter."

My work done, I left the house, meditating on these occurrences, which seemed to me strange. The idea never entered my mind that they were rejoicing at our defeat.

Then I turned the corner of the street to go to Father Féral's, who was called the "Standard-Bearer," because, at the age of forty-five, he, a blacksmith, and for many years the father of a family, had carried the colors of the volunteers of Phalsbourg in '92, and only returned after the Zurich campaign. He had his three sons in the army of Russia, Jean, Louis, and George Féral. George was commandant of dragoons; the two others, officers of infantry.

I imagined the grief of Father Féral while I was going, but it was nothing to what I saw when I entered his room. The poor old man, blind and bald, was sitting in an arm-chair behind the stove, his head bowed upon his breast, and his sightless eyes open, and staring as if he saw his three sons stretched at his feet. He did not speak, but great drops of sweat rolled down his forehead on his long, thin cheeks, while his face was pale as that of a corpse. Four or five of his old comrades of the times of the republic--Father Demarets, Father Nivoi, old Paradis, and tall old Froissard--had come to console him. They sat around him in silence, smoking their pipes, and looking as if they themselves needed comfort.

From time to time one or the other would say:

"Come, come, Féral! are we no longer veterans of the army of the Sambre and Meuse?"

Or,

"Courage, Standard-Bearer! courage! Did we not carry the battery at Fleuries?"

But he did not reply; every minute he sighed, and the old friends made signs to each other, shaking their heads, as if to say:

"This looks bad."

I hastened to regulate the clock and depart, for to see the poor old man in such a plight made my heart bleed.

When I arrived at home, I found Monsieur Goulden at his work-bench.

"You are returned, Joseph," said he. "Well?"

"Well, Monsieur Goulden, you had reason to stay away; it is terrible."

And I told him all in detail.

He arose. I set the table, and, whilst we were dining in silence, the bells of the steeples began to ring.

"Some one is dead in the city," said Monsieur Goulden.

"Indeed? I did not hear of it."

Ten minutes after, the Rabbi Rose came in to have a glass put in his watch.

"Who is dead?" asked Monsieur Goulden.

"Poor old Standard-Bearer."

"What! Father Féral?"

"Yes, near an hour ago. Father Demarets and several others tried to comfort him; at last, he asked them to read to him the last letter of his son George, the commandant of dragoons, in which he says that next spring he hoped to embrace his father with a colonel's epaulettes. As the old man heard this, he tried to rise, but fell back with his head upon his knees. That letter had broken his heart."

Monsieur Goulden made no remark on the news.

"Here is your watch, Monsieur Rose," said he, handing it back to the rabbi; "it is twelve sous."

{326}

Monsieur Rose departed, and we finished our dinner in silence.

V.

On the eighth of January, a huge placard was posted on the town-hall, stating that the emperor would levy, after a _senatus-consultus_, as they said in those days, in the first place, one hundred and fifty thousand conscripts of 1813; then one hundred _cohortes_ of the first call of 1812, who thought they had already escaped; then one hundred thousand conscripts of from 1809 to 1812, and so on to the end; so that every loophole was closed, and we would have a larger army than before the Russian expedition.

When Father Fouze, the glazier, came to us with this news, one morning, I almost fell through faintness, for I thought:

"Now they will take all, even fathers of families. I am lost!"

Monsieur Goulden poured some water on my neck; my arms hung useless by my side; I was pale as a corpse.

But I was not the only one upon whom the placard had such an effect: that year many young men refused to go; some broke their teeth off, so as not to be able to tear the cartridge; others blew off their thumbs with pistols, so as not to be able to hold a musket; others, again, fled to the woods; they proclaimed them "refractories," but they had not _gens d'armes_ enough to capture them.

The mothers of families took courage to revolt after a manner, and to encourage their sons not to obey the _gens d'armes_. They aided them in every way; they cried out against the emperor, and the clergy of all denominations sustained them in so doing. The cup was at last full!

The very day of the proclamation I went to Quatre-Vents; but it was not now in the joy of my heart; it was as the most miserable of unhappy wretches, about to be bereft of love and life. I could scarcely walk, and when I reached there I did not know how to announce the evil tidings; but I saw at a glance that they knew all, for Catharine was weeping bitterly, and Aunt Grédel was pale with indignation.

"You shall not go," she cried. "What have we to do with wars? The priest himself told us it was at last too much, and that we ought to have peace! You shall not go! Do not cry, Catharine; I say he shall not go!"

"This carnage," she continued, "has lasted long enough. Our two poor cousins, Kasper and Yokel, are already going to lose their lives in Spain for this emperor, and now he comes to ask us for the younger ones. He is not satisfied to have slain three hundred thousand in Russia. Instead of thinking of peace, like a man of sense, he thinks only of massacring the few who remain. We will see! We will see!"

"In the name of Heaven! Aunt Grédel, be quiet; speak lower," said I, looking at the window. "If they hear you, we are lost."

"I speak for them to hear me," she replied. "Your Napoleon does not frighten me. He commenced by closing our mouths, so that he might do as he pleased; but the end approaches. Four young women are losing their husbands in our village alone, and ten poor young men are forced to abandon everything, despite father, mother, religion, justice, God! Is not this horrible?"

Then Aunt Grédel became silent. Instead of giving us an ordinary dinner, she gave us a better one than on Catharine's _fête_ day, and said, with the air of one who has taken a resolution:

"Eat, my children, and fear not; there will soon be a change!"

{327}

I returned about four in the evening to Phalsbourg, somewhat more calm than when I set out. But as I went up the Rue de la Munitionnaire, I heard at the corner of the college the drum of the _sergent-de-ville_, Harmautier, and I saw a throng gathered around him. I ran to hear what was going on, and I arrived just as he began reading a proclamation.

Harmautier read that, by the _senatus-consultus_ of the 3d, the drawing for the conscription would take place on the 15th.

It was already the 8th, and only seven days remained. This upset me completely.

The crowd dispersed in the deepest silence. I went home sad enough, and said to Monsieur Goulden:

"The drawing takes place next Thursday."

"Ah!" he exclaimed, "they are losing no time; things are pressing."

It is easy to imagine my grief that day and the days following. I could scarcely stand; I constantly saw myself on the point of leaving home. I saw myself flying to the woods, the _gens d'armes_ at my heels, crying, "Halt! halt!" Then I thought of the misery of Catharine, of Aunt Grédel, of Monsieur Goulden. Then I imagined myself marching in the ranks with a number of other wretches, to whom they were crying out, "Forward! charge bayonets!" while whole files were being swept away. I heard bullets whistle and shells shriek; in a word, I was in a pitiable state.

"Be calm, Joseph," said Monsieur Goulden; "do not torment yourself thus. I think that of all who may be drawn there are probably not ten who can give as good reasons as you for staying at home. The surgeon must be blind to receive you. Besides, I will see Monsieur the Commandant. Calm yourself."

But these kind words could not reassure me.

Thus I passed an entire week almost in a trance, and when the day of the drawing arrived, Thursday morning, I was so pale, so sick-looking, that the parents of conscripts envied, so to speak, my appearance for their sons. "That fellow," they said, "has a chance; he would drop the first mile. Some people are born under a lucky star!"

To Be Continued.

--------

{328}

"Per Liquidum AEthera Vates."

Oh! to chant the grander story,
And to muse the melting tale!
Oh! to rouse the soul of glory,
And to charm the happy vale!

I should love to make the nations
Bow before my lofty song,
While my fancy's fair creations
Endless pleasures should prolong.

I should love to have my pages
Eager sought by wise and old,
While throughout the countless ages
Fair and young my numbers told.

II.

Ever thus gay Hope will wander
Up the shining mount of fame;
Ere you follow, pause and ponder,
While she waves her luring flame.

Souls are blest that dwell more lowly,
Braving not the gaze of earth,
Where they lead a life all holy,
And the gentler joys have birth.

You may guide your kindred kindly
Through the rosy ways of life,
While the world shall trample blindly
Down the thorny paths of strife.

You may seek the 'feast of reason,'
And enjoy the 'flow of soul,'
Dearest friends in every season,
Peaceful age the blessed goal.

Nature spreads her rich attractions
On the earth, and sea, and sky;
Art, religion, man's great actions
Food for mind and soul supply.

God in heaven giveth vision
Of the better land beyond:
Good on earth, and joys elysian,
These shall sate thy yearnings fond.

{329}

III.

But to wake the hills and valleys
With the poet's sounding lyre!
Glory yet my spirit rallies,
I would breathe the sacred fire.

Nature, art, and holy friendship,
Books and men shall give me aid;
Even Heaven will grant me kinship,
I would tell what God hath made.

I will dwell apart with heroes,
I will mate with saintly men;
God and nature ever near us,
I shall be more blessed then.

Humbled, chaste, my soul shall listen
To the chiming of the spheres,
Where, on high, His glories glisten,
As His throne the spirit nears.

IV.

Yes, ye bands of bright immortals,
Free throughout all earth and time,
I would ope the grand old portals
Leading to your realms sublime;

Suns and starry worlds beneath you,
Lords of wisdom, light, and air,
I would sip rare nectar with you,
I would taste ambrosia there;

There to feel exultant powers
Lift me up the ethereal tide,
O'er your bright and airy towers,
Where the boldest plume is tried.

V.

Holiest helpers, lend assistance,
That I fail not in the flight!
Pride, away! in that grand distance
Thou art black as shades of night.

Faithful, pure, and single-hearted,
I may soar on tireless wing,
Till the folds of light are parted
Where the heavenly muses sing.

Whitmore.

--------

{330}

Faith and the Sciences.

In the last half of the seventeenth century and the first half of the eighteenth, the so-called free-thinkers defended their rejection of the Christian mysteries on the alleged ground that the mathematicians had exploded them. Thus Dr. Garth, in his last illness, resisted the efforts of Addison to persuade him to die as a Christian, by saying, "Surely, Mr. Addison, I have good reason not to believe those trifles, since my friend, Dr. Halley, who has dealt much in demonstration, has assured me that the doctrines of Christianity are incomprehensible, and the religion itself an imposture."

In this assurance of Dr. Halley, we see a trace of Cartesianism which places certainty in clearness of ideas, and assumes that what is incomprehensible, or what cannot be clearly apprehended by the mind, is false; as if the human mind were the measure of the true, and as if there were not truths too large for it to comprehend! But since Berkeley, the Protestant Bishop of Cloyne, exposed in his _Analyst_, and Letters in its defence, the confused and false reasoning of mathematicians, especially in fluxions or the differential calculus, in which, though their conclusions are true, they are not obtained from their premises, the free-thinkers have abandoned the authority of mathematicians, and now seek to justify their infidelity by that of the so-called physicists. They appeal now to the natural sciences, chiefly to geology, zoology, and philology, and tell us that the progress made in these sciences has destroyed the authority of the Holy Scriptures and exploded the Christian dogmas. Geology, we are told, has disproved the chronology of the Bible, zoology has disproved the dogma of creation, and ethnology and philology have disproved the unity of the species; consequently the dogma of original sin, and all the dogmas that presuppose it. Hence our scientific chiefs, whom the age delights to honor, look down on us, poor, benighted Christian believers, with deep pity or supreme contempt, and despatch our faith by pronouncing the word "credulity" or "superstition" with an air that anticipates or admits no contradiction. It is true, here and there a man, not without scientific distinction, utters a feeble protest, and timidly attempts to show that there is no discrepancy between the Christian faith and the facts really discovered and classified by the sciences; but there is no denying that the predominant tendency of the modern scientific world is decidedly unchristian, even when not decidedly anti-christian.

The most learned men and profoundest thinkers of our age, as of every age, are, no doubt, believers, sincere and earnest Christians; but they are not the men who represent the age, and give tone to its literature and science. They are not the _popular_ men of their times, and their voice is drowned in the din of the multitude. There is nothing novel or _sensational_ in what they have to tell us, and there is no evidence of originality or independence of thought or character in following them. In following them we have no opportunity of separating ourselves from the past, breaking with tradition, and boldly defying both heaven and earth. {331} There is no chance for war against authority, of creating a revolution, or enjoying the excitement of a battle; so the multitude of little men go not with them. And they who would deem it gross intellectual weakness to rely on the authority of St. Paul, or even of our Lord himself, have followed blindly and with full confidence an Agassiz, a Huxley, a Lyell, or any other second or third-rate physicist, who is understood to defend theories that undermine the authority of the church and the Bible.

We are not, we frankly confess, learned in the sciences. They have changed so rapidly and so essentially since our younger days, when we did take some pains to master them, that we do not know what they are to-day any more than we do what they will be to-morrow. We have not, in our slowness, been able to keep pace with them, and we only know enough of them now to know that they are continually changing under the very eye of the spectator. But, if we do not know all the achievements of the sciences, we claim to know something of the science of sciences, the science which gives the law to them, and to which they must conform or cease to pretend to have any scientific character. If we know not what they have done, we know something which they have not done.

We said, in our article on the _Cartesian Doubt_, that the ideal formula does not give us the sciences; but we add now, what it did not comport with our purpose to add then, that, though it does not give them, it gives them their law and controls them. We do not deduce our physics from our metaphysics; but our metaphysics or philosophy gives the law to the inductive or empirical sciences, and prescribes the bounds beyond which they cannot pass without ceasing to be sciences. Knowing the ideal formula, we do not know all the sciences, but we do know what is not and cannot be science.

The ideal formula, being creates existences, which is only the first article of the creed, is indisputable, certain, and the principle alike of all the real and all the knowable, of all existence and of all science. This formula expresses the primitive intuition, and it is given us by God himself in creating us intelligent creatures, because without it our minds cannot exist, and, if it had not been given us in the very constitution of the mind, we never could have obtained it. It is the essential basis of the mind, the necessary condition of all thought, and we cannot even in thought deny it, or think at all without affirming it This we have heretofore amply shown; and we may add here that no one ever thinks without thinking something the contrary of which cannot be thought, as St. Anselm asserts.

As Berkeley says to the mathematicians, "Logic is logic, and the same to whatever subject it is applied." When, therefore, the cultivators of the inductive sciences allege a theory or hypothesis which contradicts in any respect the ideal formula, however firmly persuaded they may be that it is warranted by the facts observed and analyzed, we tell them at once, without any examination of their proofs or reasonings, that their hypothesis is unfounded, and their theory false, because it contradicts the first principle alike of the real and the knowable, and therefore cannot possibly be true. We deny no facts well ascertained to be facts, but no induction from any facts can be of as high authority as the ideal formula, for without it no induction is possible. Hence we have no need to examine details any more than we have to enter into proofs of the innocence or guilt of a man who confesses that he has openly, knowingly, and intentionally violated the law. {332} The case is one in which judgment _à priori_ may be safely pronounced. No induction that denies all science and the conditions of science can be scientific.

The ideal formula does not put any one in possession of the sciences, but it enables us to control them. We can entertain no doctrine, even for examination, that denies any one of the three terms of the formula. If existences are denied, there are no facts or materials of science; if the creative act is denied, there are no facts or existences; and finally, if God is denied, the creative act itself is denied. God and creature are all that is or exists, and creatures can exist only by the creative act of God. Do you come and tell me that you are no creature? What are you, then? Between God and creature there is no middle term. If, then, you are not creature, you must be God or nothing. Well, are you God? God, if God at all, is independent, necessary, self-existent, immutable, and eternal being. Are you that, you who depend on other than yourself for every breath you draw, for every motion you make, for every morsel of food you eat, whom the cold chills, the fire burns, the water drenches? No? do you say you are not God? What are you, then, I ask once more? If you are neither God nor creature, then you are nothing. But nothing you are not, for you live, think, speak, and act, and even reason, though not always wisely or well. If something and not God, then you are creature, and are a living assertion of the ideal formula. Do you deny it, and say there is no God? Then still again, what are you who make the denial? If there is no God, there is no real, necessary, and eternal being--no being at all; if no being, then no existence, for all existence is from being, and if no existence, then what are _you_ who deny God? Nothing? Then your denial is nothing, and worth nothing.

It is impossible to deny any one of the three terms of the formula, for every man, though he may believe himself an atheist or a pantheist, is a living assertion of each one of them, and in its real relation to the other two. We have the right, then, to assert the formula as the first principle in science, and oppose it as conclusive against any and every theory that denies creation, and asserts either atheism or pantheism. Do not think to divert attention from the intrinsic fallacy of such a theory by babbling about natural laws. Nature, no doubt, has her laws, according to which, or, if you please, by virtue of which, all natural phenomena or natural effects are produced, and it is the knowledge of these laws that constitutes natural science or the sciences. But these laws, whence come they? Are they superior to nature, or inferior? If inferior, how can they govern her operations? If superior, then they must have their origin in the supernatural, and a reality above nature must be admitted. Nature, then, is not the highest, is not ultimate, is not herself being, or has not her being in herself; is, therefore, contingent existence, and consequently creature, existing only by virtue of the creative act of real and necessary being, which brings us directly back to the ideal formula. God denied, nature and the laws of nature are denied.

The present tendency among naturalists is to deny creation and to assert development--to say with Topsy, in _Uncle Tom's Cabin_, only generalizing her doctrine, "Things didn't come; they _growed_." Things are not created; they are developed by virtue of natural laws. Developed from what? From nothing? _Ex nihilo nihil fit_. {333} From nothing nothing can be developed. A universe self-developed from nothing is somewhat more difficult to comprehend than the creation of the universe from nothing through the word of his power by One able to create and sustain it. You can develop a germ, but you cannot develop where there is nothing to be developed. Then the universe is not developed from nothing: then from something. What is that something? Whatever you assume it to be, it cannot be something created, for you deny all creation. Then it is eternal, self-existent being, being in itself, therefore being in its plenitude, independent, immutable, complete, perfect in itself, and therefore incapable of development. Development is possible only in that which is imperfect, incomplete, for it is simply the reduction of what in the thing developed is potential to act.

There is great lack of sound philosophy with our modern theorists. They seem not to be aware that the real must precede the possible, and that the possible is only the ability of the real. They assume the contrary, and place possible being before real being. Even Leibnitz says that St. Anselm's argument to prove the existence of God, drawn from the idea of the most perfect being, the contrary of which cannot be thought, is conclusive only on condition that most perfect being is first proved to be possible. Hegel makes the starting-point of all reality and all science to be naked being in the sense in which it and not-being are identical; that is, not real, but possible being, the _abyssus_ of the Gnostics, and the _void_ of the Buddhists, which Pierre Leroux labors hard, in his _L'Humanité_ and in the article _Le Ciel_ in his _Encyclopédie Nouvelle_, to prove is not nothing, though conceding it to be not something, as if there could be any medium between something and nothing. In itself, or as abstracted from the real, the possible is sheer nullity; nothing at all. The possibility of the universe is the ability of God to create it. If God were not himself real, no universe would be possible. The possibility of a creature may be understood either in relation to its creability on the part of God, or in relation to its own perfectibility. In relation to God every creature is complete the moment the Divine Mind has decreed its creation, and, therefore, incapable of development; but, in relation to itself, it has unrealized possibilities which can be only progressively fulfilled. Creatures, in this latter sense, can be developed because there are in them unrealized possibilities or capacities for becoming, by aid of the real, more than they actually are, that is, because they are created, in relation to themselves, not perfect, but perfectible. Hence, creatures, not the Creator, are progressive, or capable, each after its kind, of being progressively developed and completed according to the original design of the Creator.

Aristotle, whom it is the fashion just now to sneer at, avoided the error of our modern sophists; he did not place the possible before the real, for he knew that without the real there is no possible. The _principium_, or beginning, must be real being, and, therefore, he asserted God, not as possible, but real, most real, and called him _actus purissimus_, most pure act, which excludes all unactualized potentialities or unrealized possibilities, and implies that he is most pure, that is, most perfect being, being in its plenitude. God being eternally being in himself, being in its plenitude, as he must be if self-existent, and self-existent he must be if not created, he is incapable of development, because in him there are no possibilities not reduced to act. {334} The developmentists must, then, either admit the fact of creation, or deny the development they assert and attempt to maintain; for, if there is no creation, nothing distinguishable from the uncreated, nothing exists to be developed, and the uncreated, being either nothing, and therefore incapable of development, or self-existent, eternal, and immutable being, being in its plenitude, and therefore from the very fulness and perfection of its being also incapable of development. If the developmentists had a little philosophy or a little logic, they would see that, so far from being able to substitute development for creation, they must assert creation in order to be able to assert even the possibility of development. Is it on the authority of such sciolists, sophists, and sad blunderers as these developmentists that we are expected to reject the Holy Scriptures, and to abandon our faith in Christianity? We have a profound reverence for the sciences, and for all really scientific men; but really it is too much to expect us to listen, with the slightest respect, to such absurdities as most of our _savans_ are in the habit of venting, when they leave their own proper sphere and attempt to enter the domain of philosophy or theology. In the investigation of the laws of nature and the observation and accumulation of facts they are respectable, and often render valuable service to mankind; but, when they undertake to determine by their inductions from facts of a secondary order what is true or false in philosophy or theology, they mistake their vocation and their aptitudes, and, if they do not render themselves ridiculous, it is because their speculations are too gravely injurious to permit us to feel toward them anything but grief or indignation.

None of the sciences are apodictic; they are all as special sciences empirical, and are simply formed by inductions from facts observed and classified. To their absolute certainty two things are necessary: First, that the observation of the facts of the natural world should be complete, leaving no class or order of facts unobserved and unanalyzed; and, second, that the inductions from them should be infallible, excluding all error, and all possibility of error. But we say only what every one knows, when we say that neither of these conditions is possible to any mortal man. Even Newton, it is said, compared himself to a child picking up shells on the beach; and after all the explorations that have been made it is but a small part of nature that is known. The inductive method, ignorantly supposed to be an invention of my Lord Bacon, but which is as old as the human mind itself, and was always adopted by philosophers in their investigations of nature, is the proper method in the sciences, and all we need to advance them is to follow it honestly and strictly. But, every day, facts not before analyzed or observed come under the observation of the investigator, and force new inductions, which necessarily modify more or less those previously made. Hence it is that the natural sciences are continually undergoing more or less important changes. Certain principles, indeed, remain the same; but set aside, if we must set aside, mathematics and mechanics, there is not a single one of the sciences that is now what it was in the youth of men not yet old. Some of them are almost the creations of yesterday. {335} Take chemistry, electricity, magnetism, geology, zoology, biology, physiology, philology, ethnology, to mention no more; they are no longer what they were in our own youth, and the treatises in which we studied them are now obsolete.

It is not likely that these sciences have even as yet reached perfection, that no new facts will be discovered, and no further changes and modifications be called for. We by no means complain of this, and are far from asking that investigation in any field should be arrested, and these sciences remain unchanged, as they now are. No: let the investigations go on, let all be discovered that is discoverable, and the sciences be rendered as complete as possible. But, then, is it not a little presumptuous, illogical even, to set up any one of these incomplete, inchoate sciences against the primitive intuitions of reason or the profound mysteries of the Christian faith? Your inductions to-day militate against the ideal formula and the Christian creed; but how know you that your inductions of to-morrow will not be essentially modified by a fuller or closer observation of facts? Your conclusions must be certain before we can on their authority reject any received dogma of faith or any alleged dictamen of reason.

We know _á priori_ that investigation can disclose no fact or facts that can be incompatible with the ideal formula. No possible induction can overthrow any one of its three terms. It is madness to pretend that from the study of nature one can disprove the reality of necessary and eternal being, the fact of creation, or of contingent existences. The most that any one, not mad, does or can pretend is, that they cannot be proved by way of deduction or induction from facts of the natural world. The atheist Lalande went no further than to say, "I have never seen God at the end of my telescope." Be it so, what then? Because you have never seen God at the end of your telescope, can you logically conclude that there is no God? For ourselves, we do not pretend that God is, or can be asserted by way of deduction or induction from the facts of nature, though we hold that what he is, even his eternal power and divinity, may be clearly seen from them; but the fact that God cannot be proved in one way to be does not warrant the conclusion that he cannot in some other way be proved, far less that there is no God.

We do not deduce the dogmas of faith from the ideal formula, for that is in the domain of science; but they all accord with it, and presuppose it as the necessary preamble to faith. We have not the same kind of certainty for faith that we have for the scientific formula; but we have a certainty equally high and equally infallible. Consequently, the inductions or theories of naturalists are as impotent against it as against the formula itself. The authority of faith is superior, we say not to science, but to any logical inductions drawn from the facts of the natural world, or theories framed by natural philosophers, and those then, however plausible, can never override it. No doubt the evidences of our faith are drawn in part from history, and therefore from inductive science; but even as to that part the certainty is of the same kind with that of any of the sciences, rests on the analysis of facts and induction from them, and is at the very lowest equal to theirs at the highest.

{336}

But let us descend to matters of fact. We will take geology, which seems just now to be regarded as the most formidable weapon against the Christian religion. Well, what has geology done? It has by its researches proved an antiquity of the earth and of man on the earth which is far greater than is admissible by the chronology of the Holy Scriptures. It has thus disproved the chronology of the Bible; therefore it has disproved the divine inspiration of the Bible, and therefore, again, the truth of the Christian dogmas, which have no other authority than that inspiration. But have you, geologists, really proved what you pretend? You have discovered certain facts, fossils, etc., which, if some half a dozen possible suppositions are true, not one of which you have proved or in the nature of the case can prove, render it highly probable that the earth is somewhat more than six thousand years old, and that it is more than five thousand eight hundred and sixty-seven years since the creation of man. As to the antiquity of man, at least, you have not proved what you pretend. Your proofs, to be worth anything, must destroy all possible suppositions except the one you adopt, which they do not do, for we can suppose many other explanations of the undisputed facts besides the one you insist on our accepting. Moreover, the facts on which you rely, if fairly given by Sir Charles Lyell in his _Antiquity of Man_, by no means warrant his inductions. Suppose there is no mistake as to facts, which is more than we are willing to concede, especially as to the stone axes and knives, which, according to the drawings given of them, are exactly similar to hundreds which we have seen when a boy strewing the surface of the ground, the logic, by which the conclusion is obtained is puerile, and discreditable to any man who has had the slightest intellectual training.

But suppose you have proved the antiquity of the earth and of man on it to be as you pretend, what then? In the first place, you have not proved that the earth and man on it were not created, that God did not in the beginning create the heavens and the earth, and all things therein. You leave, then, intact both the formula and the dogma which presupposes and reasserts it as a truth of revelation as well as of science. But we have disproved the chronology of the Bible. Is it the chronology of the Bible or chronology as arranged by learned men that you have disproved? Say the chronology as it actually is in the Bible, though all learned men know that that chronology is exceedingly difficult if not impossible to make out, and we for ourselves have never been able to settle it at all to our entire satisfaction, is it certain that the Scriptures themselves even pretend that the date assigned to the creation of the world is given by divine revelation and is to be received as an article of faith? There is an important difference between the chronology given in the Hebrew Bible and that given in the Septuagint used by the apostles and Greek fathers, and still used by the united as well as by the non-united Greeks, and we are not aware that there has ever been an authoritative decision as to which or either of the two chronologies must be followed. The commonly received chronology certainly ought not to be departed from without strong and urgent reasons; but, if such reasons are adduced, we do not understand that it cannot be departed from without impairing the authority of either the Scriptures or the church. We know no Christian doctrine or dogma that could be affected by carrying the date of the creation of the world a few or even many centuries further back, if we recognize the fact of creation itself. {337} Our faith does not depend on a question of arithmetic, as seems to have been assumed by the Anglican Bishop Colenso. Numbers are easily changed in transcription, and no commentator has yet been able to reconcile all the numbers as we now have them in our Hebrew Bibles, or even in the Greek translation of the Seventy.

Supposing, then, that geologists and historians of civilization have found facts, not to be denied, which seem to require for the existence of the globe, and man on its face, a longer period than is allowed by the commonly received chronology, we do not see that this warrants any induction against any point of Christian faith or doctrine. We could, we confess, more easily explain some of the facts which we meet in the study of history, the political and social changes which have evidently taken place, if more time were allowed us between Noah and Moses than is admitted by Usher's chronology; it would enable us to account for many things which now embarrass our historical science; yet whether we are allowed more time or not, or whether we can account for the historical facts or not, our faith remains the same; for we have long since learned that, in the subjects with which science proposes to deal, as well as in revelation itself, there are many things which will be inexplicable even to the greatest, wisest, and holiest of men, and that the greatest folly which any man can entertain is that of expecting to explain everything, unless concluding a thing must needs be false because we know not its explanation is a still greater folly. True science as well as true virtue is modest, humble indeed, and always more depressed by what it sees that it cannot do than elated by what it may have done.

Science, it is further said, has exploded the Christian doctrine of the unity and the Adamic origin of the species, and therefore the doctrines of Original Sin, the Incarnation, the Redemption, indeed the whole of Christianity so far as it is a supernatural system, and not a system of bald and meagre rationalism. Some people perhaps believe it. But science is knowledge, either intuitive or discursive; and who dares say that he _knows_ the dogma of the unity of the human species is false, or that all the kindreds and nations of men have _not_ sprung from one and the same original pair? The most that can be said is that the sciences have not as yet proved it, and it must be taken, if at all, from, revelation.

Take the unity of the species. The naturalists have undoubtedly proved the existence of races or varieties of men, like the Caucasian, the Mongolian, the Malayan, the American, and the African, more or less distinctly marked, and separated from one another by greater or less distances; but have they proved that these several races or varieties are distinct species, or that they could not all have sprung from the same original pair? Physiologists, we are told, detect some structural differences between the negro and the white man. The black differs from the white in the greater length of the spine, in the shape of the head, leg, and foot and heel, in the facial angles, the size and convolutions of the brain. Be it so; but do these differences prove diversity of species, or, at most, only a distinct variety in the same species? May they not all be owing to accidental causes? The type of the physical structure of the African is undeniably the same with that of the Caucasian, and all that can be said is, that in the negro it is less perfectly realized, constituting a difference in degree, indeed, but not in kind.

{338}