Chapter IV (2)

“Well, perhaps you are right,” assented his companion. They walked on through the flower-beds for a few moments without speaking. Then Raymond broke the silence: “Why should you go away again, wandering about the Continent, and indulging in morbid memories, when you have such a noble mission before you at home! Youth, intelligence, and a splendid patrimony--what a field of usefulness lies before you! Is it permitted to leave any field untilled when the laborers are so few?” The same thought had occurred to Clide during the last twenty-four hours with a persistency that he was not very earnest in repelling. “Indulging in morbid memories!” That was what his step-mother was now constantly reproaching him with. He resented it from her; but Raymond did not excite his resentment. It was too much as if a father were expostulating with his son. The paternal tone of the remonstrance called, moreover, for fuller confidence on his part, and, yielding to the fascination of the sympathy that was drawing him on and on, he resolved there and then to give it. He told M. de la Bourbonais the history of his life from the beginning: his loveless childhood, his boyhood, starved of all spiritual food, his youth’s wild passion, the loneliness of his later years, and his present dissatisfied longings. He laid bare all that inner life he had never unfolded to any human being before. It was a touching and desolate picture enough, and one that called out Raymond’s tenderest interest and compassion. He listened to the story with that breathless, undivided attention that made Sir Simon so delight in him as a listener; answering by an inarticulate exclamation now and then, interrupting here and there to put in a question that showed how closely he was following every turn in the narrative, and how fully and completely he understood and entered into every phase of feeling the speaker described. When Clide had finished, he seemed to understand himself better than he had ever done before. Every question of the listener seemed to throw a new and stronger light on what he was telling him; it was like a key opening unexpected mysteries in the past and in his own mind, showing him how from the very starting his whole theory of life had been a mistake. Life was now for the first time put under the laws of truth, and through that transparent medium every act and circumstance showed altogether differently; hidden meanings came out of what had hitherto been mere blots, what he had called accidents and mischances; every detail had a form and color of its own, and fitted into the whole like the broken pieces of a puzzle. He had been learning and training all the time while he fancied he was only suffering; he had unawares been drinking in that moral strength that is only to be gained in wrestling with sorrow. The revelation was startling; but Clide frankly acknowledged it, and in so doing felt that he was tacitly committing himself to the new line of conduct which must logically follow on this admission, if it was worth anything. There must be an end of sentimental regrets and morbid despondings. He must, as Raymond said, begin to practise the lesson he had paid so dear to learn; he must begin to live and to work; he must, by faithfulness and courage in the future, atone for the folly and selfishness of the past.

It may appear strange, perhaps incredible, that a mere passing contact with a stranger should have so suddenly revealed all this to Clide, stirred him so deeply, and impelled him to a definite resolution that was to change the whole current of his life. But which of us cannot trace to some apparently chance meeting, some word heedlessly uttered, and perhaps not intended for us, a momentous epoch in our lives? We can never tell who may be the bearer of the burning message to us, nor in what unknown tongue it may be spoken. All that matters to us is that we hearken to it, and follow where the messenger beckons. M. de la Bourbonais had no idea that he was performing this office to Clide; nor did anything that he actually said justify the young man in looking upon him in the light of a herald or an interpreter. It was something rather in the man himself that did it; a voice that spoke unconsciously in his voice. There is a power in truth and simplicity more potent than any eloquence; and truth and simplicity radiated from Raymond like an atmosphere. His presence had a light in it that impressed you insensibly with the right view of things, and dissipated worldliness and selfishness and morbid delusions as the sun clears away the mists. Perhaps along with this immediate influence there was another one which acted unawares on Clide, adding to the pressure of Raymond’s pleading the softer incentive of an ideal yet possible reward.

TO BE CONTINUED.

DRAPER’S CONFLICT BETWEEN RELIGION AND SCIENCE.[54]

The author of this volume became known to the public of New York a little over twenty years ago through a hand-book of chemistry, written at a time when that science was emerging into its present maturity. Almost simultaneously appeared from his pen a treatise on _Human Physiology_, when it likewise was running a swift race to its splendid proportions of to-day, impelled by the labors of Claude Bernard, Beaumont, and Bichat. Those works were received at the time with much favor by American teachers of both named sciences as being clear and succinct compilations of the labors of European investigators, while containing some original observations of undoubted scientific merit. Thus, the perception of the influence of endosmosis and exosmosis on the functions of respiration and circulation, and the reference of pitch, quality, and intensity of sound to different portions of the anatomical structure of the ear, constitute a valid claim, on Draper’s part, as a contributor to modern physiology. As a chemist, though painstaking and observant, he failed to keep pace with European researches, and so his book has been superseded in our schools and colleges by later and more thorough productions. Indeed, it may be said that his work on physiology likewise is rapidly becoming obsolete, its popularity having ceded place to the excellent treatises of Dalton and Austin Flint, Jr.

Had he in time recognized his exclusive fitness for experimental chemistry and physiology, his name might rank to-day with those of Liebig and Lehmann; but some disturbing idiosyncrasy or malevolent influence inspired him with the belief that he was destined for higher pursuits, and he burned to emulate Gibbon and Buckle. On the heels of the late civil war, accordingly, appeared from his ambitious pen a book with the pretentious title of _History of the American Civil War_, in which he strove to prove that the agencies which precipitated that sad quarrel dated back a thousand years; that thermal bands having separated the North from the South, the two sections could not agree; that the conflict is not yet over, and will be ended only when both sides recognize the East as the home of science, and make their salam to the rising sun. We speak not in jest; the book, we believe, is still extant, and may be consulted by the curious in such matters. Though the _History of the American Civil War_ did not meet with flattering success, the new apostle of Islamism was not discouraged. No more trustworthy as a historian than Macaulay, he lacked the _verve_ and eloquence of that brilliant essayist, and his bantling fell into an early decline.

But there still was Buckle, in another department of intellectual activity, whom it might be vouchsafed him to outsoar; and so, Dædalus-like, having readjusted his wings by means of a fresh supply of wax, he took a swoop into the _Intellectual Development of Europe_ with precisely the results which befell his classical prototype. Here indeed was a wide field for the display of that peculiar philosophy of his which anathematizes the _Pentateuch_ and the pope, and apotheosizes the locomotive and the loom. Accordingly, we find the _Development_ to be a bitter attack on the church and all ecclesiastical institutions, with alternate rhapsodical praises of material progress and scientific discoveries.

In the view taken by Dr. Draper the Papacy defeated the kindly intents of the mild-mannered Mahomet; but with the death of Pio Nono or some immediate successor the pleasant doctrines of Averroës and Buddha will reassert themselves, and we shall all finally be absorbed in the great mundane soul. As we have said, in alluding to the _History of the American Civil War_, these are not mere idle words; they carry their black and white attestation in every page of the work referred to.

But we must hasten to the volume under review. It is entitled _History of the Conflict between Religion and Science_. The title of the book is indeed the fittest key to its purpose. It predicates this conflict on the first page; it assumes it from the start, and, instead of proving its existence, interprets statements and misstatements by the light of that assumption. Of this the reader is made painfully aware from the very outset, and his sense of logic and fair play is constantly shocked by the distortion of very many historical facts and the truthful presentment of a few in support of what is a plain and palpable assumption. The book is therefore a farrago of falsehoods, with an occasional ray of truth, all held together by the slender thread of a spurious philosophy.

In the preface the author promises to be impartial, and scarcely has he proceeded eight short pages in his little volume before a cynical and sneering spirit betrays him into errors which a Catholic Sunday-school child would blush to commit. On page 8 he says: “Immaculate Conceptions and celestial descents were so currently received in those days that whoever had greatly distinguished himself in the affairs of men was thought to be of supernatural lineage.” And a little further on: “The Egyptian disciples of Plato would have looked with anger on those who rejected the legend that Perictione, the mother of that great philosopher, a pure virgin, had suffered an immaculate conception.” This is but a forestalment of the wrath held in store by our author for the dogma proclaimed in 1854, a derisive comparison of it with the gross myths of the superstitious Greeks. And yet how conspicuous does not the allusion render his ignorance of the Catholic doctrine! For evidently the reference to a pure virgin subjected to an immaculate conception through the agency of a God reveals Draper’s belief that the Catholic dogma of the Immaculate Conception consists in the conception of Christ in the womb of the Virgin Mary without human intervention. Surely some malign agent had warped his judgment when he assumed to expound Catholic doctrine; had

“Made the eye blind, and closed the passages
Through which the ear converses with the heart.”

But this is not the only point concerning which we would refer persons curious about Catholic doctrines to Dr. Draper, and those who would like to become acquainted with Catholic tenets never promulgated by any council from Nice to the Vatican. On two occasions, speaking of Papal Infallibility, he distinctly avers that it is the same as omniscience! On page 352 he says: “Notwithstanding his infallibility, which implies omniscience, His Holiness did not foresee the issue of the Franco-Prussian war.” And again on page 361: “He cannot claim infallibility in religious affairs, and decline it in scientific. Infallibility embraces all things. If it holds good for theology, it necessarily holds good for science.” Here is Catholic doctrine _à la_ Draper! Presumptuous reader, be not deluded by the belief that the Vatican Council expressly confines infallibility to purely doctrinal matters; it could not have done so! Does not Dr. Draper as explicitly affirm that the dogma of infallibility implies omniscience? His individual experience no doubt had much to do with his extension of the term; for, knowing himself to be a good chemist and physiologist, he doubted not that by the same title he was a sound philosopher and a keen-eyed observer of events. If it holds good in chemistry and physiology, it necessarily holds good in philosophy and history. It is a renewal of the old belief of the Stoics, as expounded by Horace, who says that the wise man is a capital shoemaker and barber, alone handsome and a king. But these are blemishes which assume even the appearance of bright spots shining out by contrast with the deeper darkness which they stud.

The radical error of the book is twofold. It first confounds with the Catholic Church a great number of singular subjects to which that universal predicate cannot be applied, loosely and vaguely referring to this incongruous chimera a great number of acts which cannot be imputed to the church at all in any proper sense. It next makes the mistake of applying the standard of estimation which is justly applicable only to the present time to epochs long past and in many respects diverse from it. For instance, the personal acts of prelates are referred to the church considered as an infallible tribunal. Only an ignoramus in theology needs to be informed that the infallible church is the body of the episcopate teaching or defining in union with the head, or the head of the episcopate teaching and defining, as the principal organ of the body, that which is explicitly or implicitly contained in the revealed deposit of faith. Administration of affairs, decisions of particular cases, private opinions and personal acts, even official acts which are not within the category above stated, do not pertain to the sphere of infallibility; therefore when Dr. Draper charges against the church acts which are worthy of censure, or which are by him so represented, and we detect in the case the absence of some one condition requisite to involve the church in the sense stated, we retort that he either knows not what he says or is guilty of wilful misrepresentation. Yet his book is an unbroken tissue of such charges. And not only are those charges improperly alleged, but they are for the most part substantially false.

At a time, for instance, when the placid influence of Christianity had not supplanted in men’s hearts the fierce passions which ages of paganism had nurtured there, a band of infuriated monks murdered and tore to pieces the celebrated Hypatia, in resentment of some real or fancied affront offered to S. Cyril The crime was indeed unpardonable, and perhaps S. Cyril was remiss in its punishment; but we might as well lay to the charge of the New York Academy of Medicine the revolting deeds perpetrated by individual members of the medical profession, as hold the church accountable for this crime. Both organizations have repeatedly expressed their abhorrence of what morality condemns, and it is only fair that the one as well as the other be judged by its authoritative teachings and practices. Yet Dr. Draper draws from his quiver on this occasion the sharpest of arrows to bury in the bosom of that church which could stain her escutcheon by this wanton attack on philosophy. “Hypatia and Cyril! Philosophy and bigotry! They cannot exist together.” Do not the melodramatic surroundings with which Draper’s graphic pen invests the murder of this woman readily suggest an episode in the history of a certain knight of rueful mien when he charged a flock of sheep, believing that he saw before him “the wealthy inhabitants of Mancha crowned with golden ears of corn; the ancient offspring of the Goths cased in iron; those who wanton in the lazy current of Pisverga, those who feed their numerous flocks in the ample plains where the Guadiana pursues its wandering course--in a word, half a world in arms”? He charges, and behold seven innocent sheep fall victims to his prowess. Flushed with this victory, and covetous of fresh laurels, our author whets his blade for another thrust at that most odious of doctrines--Papal Infallibility. The management of the attack will serve as a specimen of Dr. Draper’s mode of critical warfare; it will show how neatly he puts forward assertion for proof, and in what a spirit of calm and dignified philosophy he concludes the case against the church.

A compatriot of his, who had changed the homely name of Morgan for the more resonant one of Pelagius, feeling that the confines of the little isle which gave him birth were too narrow for a soul swelling with polemics, hied to Rome, where his theological fervor was speedily cooled by Pope Innocent I. Pelagius denied the Catholic doctrine of grace, asserting the sufficiency of nature to work out salvation. S. Augustine pointed out the errors of Pelagius and of his associate, Celestius, which were accordingly condemned by Pope Innocent. If we accept Dr. Draper as an authority in ecclesiastical history, a much-vexed question connected with this very intricate affair is readily solved, and we are taught to understand how indiscreet were the fathers of the Vatican Council in decreeing the infallibility of the pope. He says: “It happened that at this moment Innocent died, and his successor, Zosimus, annulled his judgment and declared the opinions of Pelagius to be orthodox. These contradictory decisions are still often referred to by the opponents of Papal Infallibility.”

Now, so far from this being the case, Zosimus, after a considerable time of charitable waiting, to give Celestius an opportunity of reconsidering his errors and being reconciled to the church, formally repeated the condemnation pronounced by his predecessor, and effectually stamped out Pelagianism as a formidable heresy. But since our weight and calibre are so much less than Dr. Draper’s as not to allow our assertion to pass for proof, we will dwell a moment on the historical details of the controversy. Before the death of Innocent, Celestius had entered a protest against his accuser, Paulinus, on the ground of misrepresentation, but did not follow up his protest by personally appearing at Rome. The succession of the kind-hearted Zosimus and the absence of Paulinus appeared to him a favorable opportunity for doing this, and he accordingly wrote to Zosimus for permission to present himself. Though the pope was engrossed at the time by the weighty cares of the universal church, his heart yearned to bring back the repentant Celestius to the fold of Christ, and he accorded to him a most patient hearing. Only a fragment of Celestius’ confession remains, but we have the testimony of three unsuspected witnesses, because determined anti-Pelagians, concerning the part taken in the matter by the pope. S. Augustine says: “The merciful pontiff, seeing at first Celestius carried away by the heat of passion and presumption, hoped to win him over by kindness, and forbore to fasten more firmly the bands placed on him by Innocent. He allowed him two months for deliberation.” Elsewhere S. Augustine says (_Epist. Paulin._, const. 693, _Labbé_, t. 2) that Celestius replied to the interrogatories of the pope in these terms: “I condemn in accordance with the sentence of your predecessor, Innocent of blessed memory.” Marius Mercator, who lived at the time of these occurrences, says that Celestius made the fairest promises and returned the most satisfactory answers, so that the pope was greatly prepossessed in his favor (_Labbé_, t. 2, coll. 1512). Zosimus at length saw through the devices of the wily Celestius, who, like all dangerous heretics, desired to maintain his errors while retaining communion with the church, and, in a letter written to the bishops of Africa, formally reiterated against Pelagius and his adherents the condemnation of the African Council. Only fragments of the letter remain, but we know that thereafter some of the most violent Pelagians submitted to the Holy See. With what imposing dignity Dr. Draper waves aside these facts, and coolly asserts that Zosimus annulled the judgment of his predecessor, and declared the opinions of Pelagius to be orthodox! But this is only a sample of similar flagrant misstatements in which the book abounds. For even immediately after, referring to Tertullian’s eloquent statement of the principles of Christianity, he says that it is marked by a complete absence of the doctrines of original sin, total depravity, predestination, grace, and atonement, and that therefore these doctrines had not been broached up to this time. Certainly not all of them, for the church does not teach the doctrine of total depravity; but the statement, being of the nature of a negative proof, possesses no value, and only shows on how slender a peg our author is ready to hang a damaging assertion against the church. Having thus triumphantly demonstrated that Tertullian is not the author of the doctrine of the fall of man, he recklessly lays it at the door of the illustrious Bishop of Hippo. He says: “It is to S. Augustine, a Carthaginian, that we are indebted for the precision of our views on these important points.” We wonder did Dr. Draper ever read these words of S. Paul to the Romans: “Wherefore as by one man sin entered into this world and by sin death: and so death passed upon all men, in whom all have sinned” (Epist. Rom. v. 12). Yet S. Paul lived before Tertullian or S. Augustine. Draper next sententiously adds: “The doctrine declared to be orthodox by ecclesiastical authority is overthrown by the unquestionable discoveries of modern science. Long before a human being had appeared upon the earth, millions of individuals--nay, more, thousands of species, and even genera--had died; those which remain with us are an insignificant fraction of the vast hosts that have passed away.” Admirably reasoned! A million or more megatheria and megalosauri floundered for a while in the marshes of an infant world, and died; therefore Adam was not the first man to die, for through him death did not enter into the world. Had S. Paul anticipated the honor of a dissection at the hands of so eminent a wielder of the scalpel, he no doubt would have stated in his Epistle that when he spoke of death entering into the world through the sin of one man, he meant, not death to frogs and snakes, or bats and mice, but death to human beings alone. He would thus have helped Dr. Draper to the avoidance of one exegetical error at least. Another assertion of illimitable reaches rapidly follows: “Astronomy, geology, geography, anthropology, chronology, and indeed all the various departments of human knowledge, were made to conform to the Book of Genesis”; that is to say, ecclesiastical authority prohibits us from seeking elsewhere than in the pages of Holy Writ such knowledge as is contained in Gray’s _Anatomy_ or Draper’s _Chemistry_ and _Physiology_. Where are your _pièces justificatives_ for this monstrous assertion, Dr. Draper? Did not the church, in the heyday of her temporal power, warn Galileo not to invoke the authority of the Scriptures in support of his doctrine for the reason that they were not intended to serve as a guide in purely scientific matters? And here indeed is the true key to the conflict between that philosopher and the church. Has not the same sentiment, moreover, been explicitly affirmed by every commentator from S. Augustine himself down to Maldonatus and Cornelius à Lapide, when considering chapter x. verse 13 of the Book of Josue? Not a single document, extant or lost, can be referred to as justifying Draper’s extraordinary assertion that the Book of Genesis, “in a philosophical point of view, became the grand authority of patristic science.” Of course it is readily perceived that the term patristic science, as used by Dr. Draper, is not the science commonly known as patrology, but natural science, as understood and taught by the fathers. Chief among those whose officious intermeddling in scientific matters excites the spleen of Dr. Draper is, as before stated, S. Augustine, Bishop of Hippo. “No one,” he says, “did more than this father to bring science and religion into antagonism; it was mainly he who diverted the Bible from its true office, a guide to purity of life, and placed it in the perilous position of being the arbiter of human knowledge, an audacious tyranny over the mind of man.” The rash dogmatism of these words scarcely consists with the spirit Draper arrogates to himself--the spirit of calm impartiality. So far from having striven to make Scripture the arbiter of science, S. Augustine studied to bring both into harmony, and, with this end in view, put the most liberal interpretation on those passages of Holy Writ which might conflict with, as yet, unmade scientific discoveries. For this reason he hints at the possibility of the work of creation extending over indefinite periods of time, as may, he says, be maintained consistently with the meaning of the Syro-Chaldaic word which stands indifferently for day and indefinite duration. The saint’s chief anxiety is to uphold the integrity of the Book of Genesis against the numerous attacks of pagan philosophers and paganizing Christians. The necessity of doing this was paramount at the time, for the Jews and their doctrines were exceedingly obnoxious to Christian and Gentile; and since the church recognized the divine inspiration of the Hebrew Scriptures, the task of vindicating their genuineness devolved on her theologians. But Dr. Draper overlooks this essential fact, and places S. Augustine in the totally false light of wantonly belittling science by making it square with the letter of the Bible. But it is not as a censor alone of S. Augustine’s opinions that Dr. Draper means to figure; he follows him into the domain of dogmatic theology, and, having there erected a tribunal, cites him to its bar. He quotes at length the African bishop’s views on the fundamental dogmas of the Trinity and creation, having modestly substituted Dr. Pusey’s translation for his own. The saint expresses his awe and reverence in face of the wondrous power and incomprehensible works of the Creator, and Dr. Draper calls him rhetorical and rhapsodical. No wonder. The mind becomes subdued to the shape in which it works; and since the vigorous years of Dr. Draper’s life were spent in the laboratory, investigating secondary causes and the properties of matter, it is not to be supposed that he can enter at once into close sympathy with souls which have fed on spiritual truths.

“What’s Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba?”

But the crowding errors of the book warn us to hasten forward.

Having consigned S. Augustine to never-ending oblivion, our untiring athlete of the pen eloquently sketches step by step the progressive paganization of Christianity. The first thing to be done, he says, was to restore the worship of Isis by substituting for that _numen_ the Blessed Virgin Mary. This substitution was accomplished by the Council of Ephesus, which declared Mary to be the Mother of God, and condemned the contradicting proposition of Nestorius. Is it proper to treat this _niaiserie_ with irony or indignation? We will do neither, but will respectfully refer Dr. Draper either to Rohrbacher’s _History of the Church_, or Orsini’s _Devotion to the Blessed Virgin_, to convince him of the priority of this devotion to the times of S. Cyril and Nestorius. The matter is too elementary and well known to justify us in occupying more space with its consideration. Therefore, passing over frivolous charges of this sort, let us seize the underlying facts in this alleged paganization of Christianity. The church does not teach the doctrine of complete spiritual blindness, and is willing to admit on the part of pagans the knowledge of many religious truths in the natural order. Prominent among these is a belief in the existence of God, the immortality of the soul, and a system of rewards and punishments in the future life. The propositions of De Lamennais, refusing to pure reason the power of establishing these truths, were formally condemned by Gregory XVI. In addition, it is part of theological teaching that certain portions of the primitive revelation made to the patriarchs flowed down through succeeding generations, corrupted, it is true, and sadly disfigured, yet substantially identical, and tinged the various systems of belief in vogue among the nations of the earth. It is almost unnecessary to point out the numberless analogies which exist between the Hebrew doctrines and the myths of Grecian and Roman polytheism. The unity of God was universally symbolized by the admission of a supreme being, to whom the other deities were subject. The fall of man, a flooded earth and a rescued ark find their fitting counterparts in the traditions of most races. Here, then, we find one source of possible agreement between Christianity and the pagan system without resorting to Dr. Draper’s ingenious process of gradual paganization. If, before the Christian revelation, human reason could have partially lifted the veil which hides another life, and if a defiled current of tradition could have borne on its bosom fragments of a primitive revelation, surely it is not necessary to suppose a compromise between Christianity and paganism by virtue of which the former finds itself in accord on certain points with the latter. But a still stronger reason for the alleged resemblances and analogies between the two systems may be found in the common nature of those who accepted them. There is no sentiment in the human heart more potent than veneration, especially as its objects ascend in the scale of greatness. Man’s first impulse is to bow the head before the grandeur of nature’s mighty spectacles, before the rushing cataract and the sweeping storm, and to adore the Being whose voice is heard in the tempest, who dwells in a canopy of clouds and rides on the wings of the wind. Filled with this sentiment, he builds temples, he offers sacrifices, eucharistic and propitiatory, he consecrates his faculties to the service of his God, and applauds those of his fellows who, yielding to a still higher reverential influence, devote themselves in a special manner to the promotion of the divine glory and honor.

For this reason not only the Vestal Virgins themselves deemed celibacy an honorable privilege which drew them nearer to the Deity, and gloried in its faithful practice, if history is at all truthful; but their self-sacrifice invested them with a special halo in the eyes of the multitude. Had Dr. Draper shared the ennobling sentiments of these pagan women, he would never have uttered the base slander on humanity--which puts his own manhood to the blush, and brands the warm-blooded days of his single life--that “public celibacy is private wickedness.”

Animated by the same sentiment of rendering all things subject to the Divinity, men consecrated to him the fruits of the earth, and invoked his blessing on the seedling buried in the soil. Familiar objects became typical of divine attributes, as water of the purity of Diana, and salt of the incorruptibility of Saturn; hence the sprinkling of the _aqua lustralis_ among the Romans on all solemn occasions, and the use of salt in their sacrifices. Even the scattering of a little dust on the forehead was to them expressive of the calm and tranquillity of death succeeding to the storms and passions of life. No doubt, had Dr. Draper recalled those lines of Virgil:

“Hi motus animorum atque hæc certamina tanta
Pulveris exigui jactu compressa quiescunt,”

he would, in accordance with his peculiar logic, have perceived in the ceremonies of Ash-Wednesday another instance of a return to paganism. Without entering at greater length into those spontaneous expressions of reverence towards the Deity which abound in every religious system, and which well up from the human heart as a necessary confession of its dependence on a higher cause, we will hasten to the conclusion, implied in them, that there is an identity of external worship in all religions which, so far, proclaims an identity of origin. What, therefore, Dr. Draper pronounces to be a paganization of Christianity is nothing more than acceptance by it of those features of older creeds which are founded on truth, and spring from the constitution of human nature.

What though the Romans did pay homage to Lares and Penates, to river gods and tutelary deities; should that fact stigmatize as idolatrous or heathenish the reverence exhibited by Christians towards the Blessed Virgin and the saints? Does not the fact rather indicate, by its very universality, that it is part of the divine economy, and that such worship best represents the wants of the human heart? Assuredly, this is not intended as a vindication of pagan practices, but aimed to show that, in the struggles of the human heart to satisfy its cravings, an undeserting instinct guides it along a path which, however tortuous and winding, leads in the end to truth. Draper’s charge of paganization in all respects resembles Voltaire’s assertion that Christianity is a counterfeit of Buddhism.

That noted infidel contended that celibacy, monasticism, mendicity, voluntary poverty, humility, and mortification of the senses, were so many features of Buddhism unblushingly borrowed by the Christian Church. But, like the other misstatements of Voltaire, made through pure love of mischief, this one has been refuted time and again. It has been shown that the ethics of Buddha flow from the dogma that ignorance, passion, and desire are the root of all evil, and, this principle granted, nothing could be more natural than the moral system thence resulting. In the Christian code, on the contrary, purity, voluntary poverty, and mortification of the senses are practised for their own sake; not for the purpose of enlightenment or the extirpation of ignorance, but that our natures may thereby become purified. No matter, therefore, how strong and striking analogies may be, the difference in principle destroys the theories of Voltaire and Draper; for similar consequences often proceed from widely differing premises. We see this fact impressively exhibited in the practice of auricular confession as it exists among the followers of Gautama. According to them, the evil tendencies of the human heart are manifold and varied, and, to be successfully combated, must be divided into classes. Thus the sin of sensuality admits of a division into excess at table and concupiscence of the flesh, the latter being in turn subdivided into lust of the eye and lust of the body, evil thoughts, evil practices, etc. We have here in reality a true system of casuistry. Faults should be confessed with sorrow and an accompanying determination not to repeat them; nay, even wrongs must be repaired as far as possible, and stolen property be restored. Such are the views which have been firmly held by the disciples of Buddha from time immemorial. Thus we find confession and its concomitant practices established among the Buddhists on grounds of pure reason; and surely the fact is no argument against the same practice in the Christian Church, nor does the existence of the practice among Christians necessarily denote a Buddhic origin. The explanation is still the same that practices and beliefs founded on the wants of human nature are universal, circumscribed neither by church nor creed. We believe, therefore, that Dr. Draper’s philosophy of gradual paganization is not tenable; and if we strip it of a certain veneer of elegant verbiage, we shall find a rather dull load of unsupported assertion beneath:

“Desinit in piscem mulier formosa superne.”

The whole account of this pretended paganization breathes a spirit of bitterness and malignity that makes one perforce smile at the title-page of the book, on which is inscribed the name of that sweet daughter of philosophy, Science. The reader is constantly startled by volleys of assertions, contemptuous, blasphemous, ironical, and derisive. Indeed, it may be said that hatred of Catholic doctrine and usages is the attendant demon of Dr. Draper’s life, the wraith that haunts him day and night. He says that it was for the gratification of the Empress Helena the Saviour’s cross was discovered; that when the people embraced the knees of S. Cyril after the Blessed Virgin was declared Mother of God, it was the old instinct peeping out--their ancestors would have done the same for Diana; that the festival of the Purification was invented to remove the uneasiness of heathen converts on account of the loss of their _Lupercalia_, or feasts of Pan; that quantities of dust were brought from the Holy Land, and sold at enormous prices as antidotes against devils, etc., _ad nauseam_. Through all this rodomontade we perceive not a single attempt at proof, only an unbroken tissue of unsupported assertion. It is said; it is openly stated; there is a belief that--these are Draper’s usual formularies whenever an obscure but impure and blasphemous tradition is related by him. When, however, he surpasses himself in obscenity, he drops even this thin disguise of reasoning, and boldly asserts. But with matter of this sort we will not stain our pages. Indeed, these vile and obscure traditions seem to have a special charm for our author. Worse, however, than this packing of silly and stupid fables into his book is the implied understanding that the church is answerable for them all. She it is who falsifies decretals, invents miracles, discovers fraudulent relics, beholds apparitions, sanctions the trial by fire, massacres a whole cityful, and perpetrates every crime in the calendar. Surely, she were a very monster of iniquity, the real scarlet lady, the beast with seven heads, were the half true of her which Dr. Draper lays at her door. There is in it, however, the manifest intent and outline of a crusade against the church and the institutions she fosters; the shadowing forth of a purpose to array against her, what is more formidable than Star Chamber or Inquisition--the feelings of unreflecting millions who are allured by the glamour of manner to the utter disregard of matter. But it must be remembered that Exeter Hall fanaticism has never found a genial home on this side of the Atlantic, and we are not afraid that the stupid conglomeration of silly charges brought against the church by Dr. Draper, more akin to fatuous drivel than to the dignified and scholarly arraignment of a philosopher, will do more than provoke a pitying smile. His feeble blows fall on adamantine sides which have oft resisted shafts aimed with deadlier intent than these:

“Telumque imbelle sine ictu
Conjecit.”

But there is another explanation of the successive accumulation of doctrines and practices in the church which will perhaps come more within the reach of Dr. Draper’s appreciation, as it throws light on the history of science itself, and underlies the growth of every system of philosophy. We speak of the doctrine of development. Draper unfolded, even pathetically, the impressive picture of science springing from very humble beginnings, and growing dauntlessly, despite bigotry and persecutions, into that colossal structure of to-day which, according to him, shelters the highest hopes and aspirations of men, and assures to them a glorious future of absorption into the universal spirit--viz., annihilation. “Ab exiguis profecta initiis, eo creverit ut jam magnitudine laboret sua.” This gradual development he proclaims to be the natural expansion and growth of science, on which theory he predicts for it an unending career of glory--“crescit occulto velut arbor ævo.” But he is indignant that the church did not spring into existence, like Minerva from the brain of Jupiter, armed cap-a-pie, in the full bloom of her maturity and charms. Because she did not do so, every advance on her part was retrogressive, and her growth was the addition of “a horse’s neck to a human head.” She borrowed, compromised, and substituted; so that, if we believe Dr. Draper, no _olla podrida_ could be composed of more heterogeneous elements than the Christian Church.

She placed under contribution not only paganism, but Mahometanism, and filched a few thoughts from Buddha, Lao-Tse, and Confucius. The least courtesy we might expect from Dr. Draper is that we may be allowed to attempt to prove that Christianity, like every system entrusted to the custody of men, is necessarily affected on its secular side by that wardship, and so far is subject to the same conditions. But no; he condemns in advance, and so fastens the gyves of his condemnation on the church as apparently not to leave even a loop-hole of escape, or a possible rational explanation of the successive events of her history.

But enough of this. Even to the most ordinary mind the thin veil of philosophy in which Dr. Draper wraps his balderdash of paganization is sufficiently easy of penetration. And what does he offer to the Christian who would range himself under the new banner? In what attractive forms does Draper present his science to win the sympathies and sentiments of men, and make them forego the hopes of eternal happiness whispered on the cross? Here is one: _Ex uno disce omnes_. When Newton succeeded in proving that the influence of the earth’s attraction extended as far as the moon, and caused her to revolve in her orbit around the earth, he was so overcome by the flooding of truth upon his mind that he was compelled to call in the assistance of another to complete the proof. A pretty picture, no doubt, and a fit canonization of science. But let us contrast it with a Xavier expiring on the arid plains of an eastern isle, far away from the last comforting words and soothing touch of a friend, yet happy beyond expression in the firmness of his faith, while clasping in his dying hands the crucifix, which to him had been no stumbling-block, but the incitement to labor through ten years of incomparable suffering among a degraded race. Or place it beside a Vincent de Paul, who from dawn to darkness traversed the slums of Paris, picking up waifs, the jetsam and flotsam of society, washing them, feeding them, dressing their sores, and nursing them more tenderly than a mother. Or contrast its flimsy sentimentality with the motives which sped missionaries across unknown oceans, over the Andes, the Himalayas, and the Rocky Mountains, and into the ice-bound wildernesses of Canada, to subdue the savage Iroquois by the mildness of the Gospel; to found a new golden age on the plains of Paraguay; to preach the evangel of peace and purity through the wide limits of the Flowery Kingdom; and to seal with their blood the ceaseless toil of their lives.

“Quæ regio in terris nostri non plena laboris?
Quæ caret ora cruore nostro?”

Dr. Draper, evidently, has not read the _Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_ in vain. Not only does the same anti-Christian spirit breathe through his pages, but he has seized the stilted style of Gibbon, deemed philosophical, which is never at home but when soaring amid the clouds. There is a pomp and parade of philosophy, an assumption of dignified tranquillity, a tone of mock impartiality, which vividly recall the defective qualities of Gibbon’s work. But in studying these features of style, which necessitate a deal of dogmatism, Draper has allowed himself to be betrayed into numberless errors in philosophy. Perhaps an illustration or two will help to give point to our remarks. On page 243 he writes: “If there be a multiplicity of worlds in infinite space, there is also a succession of worlds in infinite time. As one after another cloud replaces cloud in the skies, so this starry system, the universe, is the successor of countless others that have preceded it, the predecessor of countless others that will follow. There is an unceasing metamorphosis, a sequence of events, without beginning or end.”

Is not this

“A pithless branch beneath a fungous rind”?

Is Dr. Draper aware that Gassendi, Newton, Descartes, and Leibnitz devoted the highest efforts of their noble intellects to the consideration of time and space, and would long have hesitated before thus flippantly affixing the epithet “infinite” to either? What is space apart from the contained bodies? If it contains nothing, or rather if there is nothing in space, space itself is nothing; it merely represents to us the possibility of extended bodies. And if it is nothing, how can it be infinite? The application of the word infinite to time is still more inappropriate. There can be no such thing as infinite time. Let us take Dr. Draper’s own successive periods, though embracing millions of years, and we contend that there must be some beginning to them. For if there is no beginning to them, they are already infinite in number--that is, they are already a number without beginning or end. But this cannot be. For we can consider either the past series of periods capable of augmentation by periods to come; and what then becomes of Draper’s infinity? For surely that is not infinite which is susceptible of increase. Or we can consider the past series minus one or two of its periods--a supposition equally fatal to the notion of infinity. Time, then, is of a purely finite character, and is nothing else than the successive changes which finite beings undergo. More nonsensical still is the notion of “a sequence of events without beginning or end.” We must discriminate here between an actual series and a potential series of events, which Dr. Draper forgets to do; for on the distinction a great deal depends. An actual series can never be infinite, for we can take it at any given stage of its progress, whether at the present moment or in the past, and consider it increased by one; but any number susceptible of increase can be represented by figures, since it is finite, that is, determinate. It cannot be said that it extends into the past without beginning, for the dilemma always recurs that it is either finite or infinite; if finite, it must be represented by figures, and that destroys the idea of a non-beginning; and if it is infinite, it cannot be increased, which is absurd. And if we ask for a cause for any one event in the reputed unending series, we are referred to the event immediately preceding, which in turn has for its cause another prior event. If, however, we inquire for the cause of the whole series, we are told that there is none such; there is naught but an eternal succession of events. Is not this, as some author says, as if we were to ask what upholds the last link in a chain suspended from an unknown height, and should receive the answer that the link next to the last supports it, and the third supports the two beneath, and so on, each higher link supports a weightier burden? If then we should ask, What is it that supports the whole? we are told that it supports itself. Therefore a finite weight cannot support itself in opposition to the laws of gravitation; much less can another finite weight twice as heavy as the first, and less and less can it do so as the weight increases; but when the weight becomes infinite, nothing is required to uphold it. The reasoning is entirely analogous to Draper’s, who speaks of cloud replacing cloud in the skies without beginning, without end. “Quos Deus vult perdere prius dementat.” Bacon has well said that the exclusive consideration of secondary causes leads to the exclusion of God from the economy of the universe, while a deeper insight reveals of necessity a First Cause on which all others depend. This is exactly the trouble with Dr. Draper. He will not lift his purblind gaze from the mere phenomena of nature to their cause, but is satisfied to revolve for ever in the vicious circle of countless effects without a cause. If we are to judge by the additional glow which pervades what he has written concerning the nebular hypothesis, he unquestionably considers that theory a conclusive proof of the non-interference of the Deity in the affairs of the universe.