Chapter XXXIII: Prologue (9)

All this trash is beneath discussion; it only shows that the author is little acquainted with the men and the doctrines to which he refers. He seems never to have reflected that such “delicate consciences” as that of Martin Luther had as little scruple about falsifying history as they had about marrying nuns, rebelling against authority, or shedding blood. Even Protestants would now smile at the “thunder-storm of holy indignation” roused in the good soul of Luther at the thought of a gospel of salvation by works of penance. Well might even Lucifer’s “delicate conscience” have burst into a storm of “holy indignation,” as he could not work out his salvation without controlling his pride; and he might have protested against God’s orders, just as Luther did, by alleging that “the just liveth by faith.” How the reformers succeeded in “saving the world” by this doctrine of salvation without works, can be argued from the fact, attested by our author himself, that “anarchy and confusion, with the braying of a theological ass here, the cackling of a clerical goose there, and the raving of a sectarian madman in a third quarter, began to show face to such a degree that sensible and quietly-disposed men, like Erasmus, became seriously alarmed before the spirits they had conjured up, and retreated, with a devout timidity, into the sacred ark of the old Catholic Church.” This confession speaks volumes.

The author describes a sort of rampant orthodoxy which delights in doctrinal exaggeration of mysteries, and which is never so happy as when it can plant itself behind the broad shield of unintelligible formulas and traditionary shibboleths, to pluck Reason by the beard, and bid open defiance to the grand principle of the Scottish philosophy called common sense. And this, he says, excites an atheistical reaction. We really do not know of any orthodoxy which delights in “plucking Reason by the beard.” The Scotch Presbyterians may have done something of the kind, but they have no claim to orthodoxy. True orthodoxy is nowhere but in the church whose centre is Rome. But the Roman Church never used unintelligible formulas, never had shibboleths, and never plucked Reason by the beard, but on the contrary made use of the plainest language and the best cultivated reason to teach the revealed truth, and to defend it against heretics and unbelievers. Had the Protestant sects as much regard for Reason, and for the great principle of the Scottish philosophy called common sense, they would soon perceive that their claim to orthodoxy is nonsensical and their Christianity a delusion. And if they were logical, they would not, when their ministers pluck Reason by the beard, feel inclined to an “atheistical reaction,” but would only conclude that their ministers do not belong to God’s church, and have neither grace nor mission to teach Christianity.

The author admits the necessity of faith; but he scouts the doctrine that whoso believes not every dogma about the divine nature shall be eternally damned.

“The spirit,” he says, “from which damnatory declarations of this
kind proceed is a mingled spirit of ignorance, conceit, presumption,
insolence, and pedantry, and has more to answer for in the way of
creating atheism than any other fault of Christian preachers that
has come under my observation. Against declarations of this kind,
however solemnly made, and however traditionally hallowed, the moral
and intellectual nature of the most soundly-constituted minds rises
up in instinctive rebellion: the intellectual nature, because the
propounding of dogmas in a scholastic form about the nature of the
Supreme Being shows an utter ignorance of the proper functions and
limits of the human intellect; and the moral nature even more
emphatically, because to make fellowship in any religion conditional
on the merely intellectual acceptance of an abstract proposition
addressed to the understanding, is to remove religion altogether out
of its own region, where it can bear fruit, and to transplant it
into a soil where it can show only prickles that fret the skin, and
thorns that go deeply into the flesh.”

This is wisdom! Therefore, according to this writer, to believe in three divine Persons, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, is unnecessary for salvation, and to say the contrary is conceit, insolence, and pedantry. It is difficult to conceive how a Christian could fall into such absurdity. The mystery of the Holy Trinity is the very base of Christianity. It is in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost that we are baptized; it is by the Son of God that we are redeemed; it is by the Holy Spirit that we are sanctified. Without this faith there is no Christianity, and without Christianity there is no salvation. We need not be afraid that “the moral and intellectual nature of the most soundly-constituted minds should rise up in instinctive rebellion” against this doctrine; for the history of eighteen centuries proves very conclusively that soundly-constituted minds have never rebelled against dogma. Nor do we see why the intellectual nature should denounce the use of the scholastic form in the propounding of dogmas. Such a form is clear, precise, and full of meaning; it is therefore the best intellectual form. And as to the moral nature, we can only say that nowhere is it more cultivated than in the Catholic Church—a truth which no one disputes—whilst the assumption that “the _merely_ intellectual acceptance of an abstract proposition” suffices to qualify a man for religious fellowship, is a clear proof that the author has never read our Christian catechism.

“But,” says he, “it is not only in their way of presenting faith generally, but in their rash and unreasoned statement of special points of Christian belief, that our theologians have greatly erred.” And he mentions the doctrine of predestination and reprobation, the doctrine of original sin, the doctrine of eternal punishment, the doctrine of creation out of nothing, and the doctrine of God’s providential intervention in human affairs. We do not deny that the doctrine of predestination and reprobation has been discussed rashly and in an irreverent manner so as to create scandal and discord; but it is on the Protestant, and especially on the Calvinistic, preachers and writers that lies the responsibility of such deplorable quarrels. It was their private judgment pushed to excess and their pride that roused the storm. Of course our Catholic theologians could not look silently on such a wanton perversion of truth; to defend human liberty on the one side and God’s justice on the other they had to take part in the difficult controversy. They often differed in matters of detail, but their conclusions as to the main point—that is, as to the dogma—were uniform and irreproachable. Mysteries, however, do not cease to be true because men cannot unravel them. Theologians do not claim the privilege of tearing asunder the veil through which mysteries are seen; but they claim the honor of defending the objective truth of mysteries against the attacks of heresy and unbelief. This is why theologians investigate and expound mysteries; and to contend that the result of their labors is to encourage atheism is to abandon “the great principle of the Scottish philosophy called common sense,” or, to use another phrase of the author’s, “to pluck Reason by the beard.”

The author says that he has brought forward this matter (of predestination and reprobation) specially because the Calvinistic view of it, as laid down in the catechism used in the elementary schools of Scotland, occasions “no small amount of misery and self-torture to young persons beginning seriously to look into the great truths of religion and morals.” We agree with him. The Calvinistic doctrine of reprobation makes man the helpless victim of a tyrannical and cruel God, destroys all the seeds of piety, and fosters despair. But if its adoption may lead to atheism, it is not the fault of theology; it is the fault of Calvin’s rebellion against the church.

The next good service done by theologians to the anti-Christian tendencies of some “respectable” (?) classes of the community has been, according to our author, their inculcation of the doctrine of original sin. “Original sin,” says he with Coleridge, “is not a doctrine but a _fact_”; by which he means, we suppose, that the first man sinned, but that from this fact we cannot conclude that his children are born in sin.

“Moral merit and demerit are in the very nature of things personal;
to imagine their transference is to destroy their definition. If
every baby when born, in virtue of an act of transgression committed
some six or eight thousand years ago by the father of the race, must
be confessed a ‘hell-deserving sinner,’ and lying on the brink of
eternal damnation as soon as it lies on its nurse’s lap, then every
man of sound moral feeling is entitled to protest against a doctrine
of which such a cruel absurdity is a necessary postulate.”

Here again the author is at fault. The dogma of the inheritance of guilt from our first parent is not an invention of theologians, but an explicit doctrine of the New and even of the Old Testament. To omit other quotations, St. Paul the apostle, whose authority is so frequently appealed to by our author, declares that Adam sinned, and that _in him all men have sinned_. Now, if St. Paul cannot be charged with doing a good service to anti-Christianity by preaching this doctrine, why should theologians be denounced for preaching it?

The author argues that “merit and demerit are personal,” and that “to imagine their transference is to destroy their definition.” Yes; but the dogma of original sin does not imply any such transference. The original sin is _personal_ and _inherited_, not _transferred_. “Out of good seed,” as the author tells us, “a good plant will grow, and out of bad seed a bad plant.” Is the badness of the plant _transferred_? No; it is inherited. And so it is with the stain of original sin. We are born of a degraded father, and we are a degraded race—degraded not only physically but morally; that is, deprived of the supernatural grace which accompanied the original justice in which man had been created. This is what St. Paul expresses by saying that we are born “children of wrath.” It is not in virtue of an act committed six thousand years ago that every baby is _formally_ a sinner; he is a sinner owing to his own personal destitution of supernatural grace, just as the child of a redskin is _formally_ a redskin, not by the skin of his father but by his own. This doctrine has been taught and held from the origin of Christianity by the most learned, the most acute, and the most holy men, without their sound moral sense being hurt by it; it was reserved to our vicious and ignorant generation to take scandal at the pretended cruelty involved in such divine dispensation. What a pity that God, in shaping his decrees, forgot to consult our learned professor of Greek![104]

The doctrine of eternal punishment is, according to Mr. Blackie, another “stone of stumbling” set up by the Christian doctors. The ancient Greeks, he remarks, had also taught this doctrine; but they taught it in a very modified form. Only a few flaming offenders were condemned to a state of helpless reprobation and inexhaustible torture. But the Christian churches “committed themselves to a theology drawn up by scholastic persons in a series of formal propositions which challenge contradiction and refuse compromise. Therefore the doctrine of infinite torture for finite sins is still stoutly maintained as a point of Christian faith, and as stoutly disowned by a large class of benevolent and thoughtful persons, who look upon such a doctrine as utterly inconsistent with the conception of a wise and benevolent Being.” He then adds that if there were not a great deal of dogmatic obstinacy, a fair amount of hermeneutical ignorance, and a considerable vein of cowardice also in the ecclesiastical minds, this stumbling-block might easily be removed. For “it does not require any very profound scholarship to know that the word αἰώνιος, which we translate _everlasting_, does not signify eternity absolutely and metaphysically, but only popularly, as when we say that a man is an eternal fool, meaning only that he is a very great fool.”

This last argument is easily answered. In fact, it does not require any very profound scholarship to know that the word αἰώνιος here means _everlasting_ in the sense of perpetual duration. This is evident from collateral passages of Scripture, from which we know that the fire of hell “shall not be extinguished,” that, the smoke of the torments of the wicked “shall ascend for ever and ever,” that their worm “shall never die,” etc., all which expressions, according to our “hermeneutical ignorance,” more than suffice to annihilate the professor’s pretension. Besides, the ancient translators of the Bible were as good professors of Greek, to say the least, as Mr. Stuart Blackie; but they never suspected that there would come a time when such slang as “an eternal fool” would mean “a very great fool.” It is too late now for any professor to pretend that the ancient Greek had no correct interpretation till English slang made its appearance.

The other argument consists in saying that a finite sin cannot deserve an infinite punishment. This, too, is easily answered. The act of sin is finite, but it violates the infinite majesty and sanctity of God, and on this account it partakes of infinity. However, let us drop this consideration, which is too scholastic to be understood by certain modern professors of Protestant institutions. We have another answer. A man can dig out his eyes in less than a minute; the act is finite, but its result is perpetual blindness. In like manner a man loses, by sinning, his fitness to see God in his glory; the act is finite, but the consequent unfitness is, of its nature, everlasting. God alone can restore the sinner to his previous condition; but this he is not obliged to do. The rehabilitation of a sinner is a real miracle, just as the resuscitation of Lazarus, and miracles are not the rule but the exception. God warns us that “the hope of the sinner shall perish,” that “now is the acceptable time,” and that after death “there is no redemption.” And yet we are accused of “dogmatic obstinacy” because we do not renounce this doctrine of faith!

We are told that there is a large class of “benevolent and thoughtful persons” who look upon such a doctrine “as utterly inconsistent with the conception of a wise and benevolent Being.” But our “dogmatic obstinacy” compels us to remark that this wise and benevolent Being knows much better than those “benevolent and thoughtful persons” what his wisdom and benevolence require; and therefore it is from his word, not from those “thoughtful persons,” that we must accept the solution of the problem. It may be that in doing so, we exhibit “a considerable vein of cowardice”; but it is wise to fear God. We are weak and he is almighty.

“Another stumbling-block which theologians have laid in the way of
the devotee of physical sciences is _the creation out of nothing_.
This dogma, which, as every scholar knows, is not necessarily
contained in any place, whether of the Old or New Testament, arose
in the Jewish Church, and has been stamped with orthodox authority
in Christendom, partly from a pious desire to magnify the divine
Omnipotence; partly from the timid stupidity of clinging to the
letter instead of breaching the spirit of Scripture; and partly also
from the evil trick which we have just mentioned of importing
metaphysics and scholastic definitions into the Bible, from which
all the Scriptures are the furthest possible removed. Now, the
objection to this doctrine on the part of modern thinkers I conceive
to be this: that, though not perhaps absolutely impossible, it is
contrary to all known experience, and highly improbable if we are to
judge of the constitution of things from what we see, not from what
we choose to imagine. It is the vulgar imagination which delights to
represent the Supreme Being as a sort of omnipotent harlequin,
launching the _fiat_ of his volition, as the nimble gentleman in the
pantomime strikes the table with his wand, and out comes a man, or a
monkey, or something else, out of nothing. This is man’s crude
conception; but God’s ways are not as man’s ways, and his way is
_evolution_. Nothing is created out of nothing; and mere volition,
even of an omnipotent Being, cannot be conceived as bringing into
existence a thing of an absolutely opposite nature, called matter.”

To answer these reckless assertions in detail would take a volume. Fortunately, however, we may be dispensed from such a task, as there are hundreds of excellent books, both philosophical and theological, where the dogma of creation is fully established and victoriously vindicated. On the other hand, our professor does not give any proof of his infidel view; he merely asserts what has no possibility of proof. “Nothing is created out of nothing,” says he; but philosophy demonstrates that nothing is, or can be, created but out of nothing. “God’s way is evolution.” No; God’s way is creation. Evolution is man’s way, as Mr. Darwin and all his admirers know; and, since (as the author reminds us) God’s ways are not as man’s ways, it follows on his own showing that God’s way is not evolution. Evolution is impossible without antecedent creation. The subject of evolution is matter, and matter is a created being. To deny the creation of matter is to assume that matter is eternal and self-existent, or, in other terms, to make it an independent being or an appurtenance of Divinity; and this colossal absurdity even the author must reject, as he confesses that the nature of matter is “absolutely opposite” to the nature of Divinity.

The author imagines that the absolute opposition between God and matter makes it impossible for God to create matter, because “mere volition, even of an omnipotent Being, cannot be conceived as bringing into existence a thing of an absolutely opposite nature.” These words show the author’s philosophical ignorance of the law of causation. The law is that efficient causes must always be of a nature entirely different from that of their effects. The efficient cause of gravitation at the earth’s surface is the substance or matter of the earth itself; but gravitation is neither matter nor substance, but something entirely different. The soul is the efficient cause of the voluntary movements produced in our organism; and yet those movements have nothing common with the substance of the soul. And the same is to be said of all other effects as compared with their efficient causes.[105] Hence it is idle to argue that an omnipotent Being, owing to his spirituality, cannot create matter. The author will say that every effect must be contained in its cause, and that matter is not contained in God. To which it must be answered that effects are _eminently_ and _virtually_, not _formally_, contained in their efficient causes. If the effect existed formally in its cause its production by the cause would become a contradiction; for the effect would exist before its effection. Effects are said to be pre-contained in their causes only in this sense: that causes possess a power competent to produce their effects. Causation is action, and action is the production of an act. Every act produced is the formal principle of a new existence, or of a new mode of existence. To say that God cannot create matter is to say that God cannot produce an act giving formal existence to matter; which amounts to the denial of omnipotence. Still, the existence of matter must be accounted for. Matter undergoes modifications and is subject to natural agents; it is therefore essentially potential and contingent. How, then, did it come into existence? And how is it potential, if it is not created out of nothing, since nothingness is the only source of potentiality?

But we are told that creation out of nothing “is contrary to all known experience.” This shows what new kind of philosophers nowadays we have to deal with. They want to see God making a few acts of creation before they consent to believe, just as they want a lecturer to prove his theories by a series of visible experiments. God, of course, will not satisfy their curiosity; he has given them the light of reason and the light of revelation, which are quite enough. But were God to condescend to their yearning, would they believe even then? Would not these men, who have the impudence to speak of an “omnipotent Harlequin,” declare with equal profanity any visible fact of creation to be jugglery?

The author tells us also that “if we are to judge of the constitution of things from what we see, not from what we choose to imagine,” we shall find out that creation is improbable. At this we need not wonder; for the author is a great enemy of scholastic definitions and of metaphysics—that is, of intellectual light. He sees with the eyes of his body, but he shuts the eyes of his reason. Had he less horror of metaphysics, he might learn that “the constitution of things” proclaims in the loudest and most unmistakable language the fact of creation; and that every change or movement in the universe furnishes a peremptory demonstration of it. But what can a man see who discards definitions and disregards the principles of real philosophy?

And now let us see to what conclusions the author is led by his style of reasoning. He says:

“To us dependent ephemeral creatures all existence is a divine
miracle; and the continuity of that divine miracle in the shape of
what we call growth is, so far as we can see, the eternal form of
divine creativeness. The absolute dualism of mind and matter which
is implied in the received orthodoxy of the church is not warranted
by any fact that exact science can recognize; nowhere do we find
mind acting without a material instrument, nowhere matter absolutely
divorced from the action of inherent forces, inasmuch as even the
most motionless statical condition of things most solid is always
produced by a balance of forces in some way or other—forces which,
if they are not blind, but acting according to a calculated law, as
they manifestly do, are only another name for Mind. This view of the
constitution of the universe ... is generally disowned with a
certain pious horror as pantheism, a word to which a great chorus of
thoughtless and ill-informed people are straightway ready to echo
back atheism, with the feeling that the two terms, though
etymologically as opposed as white and black, are practically the
same.... Pantheism, scientifically understood, has nothing to do
either with materialism or with atheism. It ... simply denies the
existence of two opposite entities in the world of divine reality,
while it asserts the existence of only one. The world is essentially
one; and the All, though externally many, is, when traced to its
deepest roots, not different from the One; as the human body, for
instance, is both one and many.... The term pantheism, therefore, is
not opposed to unity, or to the principle of unity in the world,
which is God; and a pantheist, as Hegel well said of Spinoza, may
more properly be said to deny the world than to deny God.”

This is the quagmire into which the professor, as we said at the beginning of this article, has fallen. The view he takes of “the constitution of the universe,” the assertions he makes, and the arguments he employs are a mass of confusion to which no more appropriate name can be given than _nonsense_. We are “dependent ephemeral creatures.” Yes. But how could he call us “creatures,” he who denies creation? or “dependent,” he who makes us one with God? or “ephemeral,” he who includes us in the eternal All? Is not this a flagrant contradiction?

To us “all existence is a divine miracle.” If so, the author cannot consistently be a pantheist. Miracles are facts transcending the power and exigencies of nature. Pantheism divinizes nature, and admits of nothing transcending the power and exigencies of nature; and therefore pantheism can admit of no miracle.

“Growth is, so far as we can see, the eternal form of divine creativeness.” Growth implies change, whereas the eternal form of divine creativeness is altogether unchangeable. Hence, so far as we can see (and we see it most evidently), growth is _not_ what the professor imagines.

“The absolute dualism of mind and matter is not warranted by any fact that exact science can recognize.” If so, then exact science should find a way of reconciling the well-known inertia of matter with the equally well-known immanent and reflex self-activity of mind. For, as the latter excludes the former, their existence is the most incontrovertible evidence of the absolute dualism of matter and mind; and this evidence is quite scientific, too, for it is the result of universal and unexceptionable experience. But our men of science, who profess to deal with nothing but matter, are not the best judges about the attributes of mind. They are gross and material; they must see, and touch, and smell, and subject everything to chemical analysis; and spiritual substances refuse to be thus manipulated. Hence no wonder if these latter substances are not recognized in any fact of exact science so long as “exact science” is confined to the study of matter.

“Nowhere do we find mind acting without a material instrument.” Be it so; it does not follow that matter and mind are one and the same thing. The organ is not the organist, and the instrument is not the artist.

“Nowhere do we find matter divorced from the action of inherent forces.” Quite true; but these forces of matter are absolutely blind. The author pretends that they are not blind, because “they act according to a calculated law”; but this is a new blunder. It is not the forces of matter that have calculated the law, it is God that subjected them to the law; and their acting according to the law is a mechanical necessity. The very fact of their inviolable subjection to the law proves their utter blindness; for were they intelligent, they would have given before now some instances of proud rebellion at least in the hands of the torturing chemist.

“This view ... is generally disowned as pantheism.” Certainly. Let the author remember “the principle of the Scottish philosophy called _common sense_,” and let him ask himself if a view generally disowned deserves the honor of being adopted by a professor of a Scotch university.

“Pantheism, scientifically understood, has nothing to do with atheism.” May we ask how pantheism can be “scientifically understood”? Science is concerned only with material phenomena. God, mind, and spiritual things in general are beyond its reach. How, then, can what is above science be understood “scientifically”? And, again, how can pantheism be “understood” at all, since it is as contradictory as a changeable immutability, a compounded simplicity, or a sinful holiness? That the terms “pantheism” and “atheism” are etymologically opposed is quite clear; but our question is one of things, not of mere terms. The atheist says to God: “Thou hast no existence”; the pantheist says: “Thou art a compound of matter.” Which of them is better? Which is less irrational—the one who degrades his Creator, or the one who merely shuts his eyes that he may not see him? After all, neither the one nor the other has an object of worship—the atheist because he denies its existence, the pantheist because he denies its superiority; and thus the atheist and the pantheist are twin-brothers, with this only difference: that the latter wears a mask of hypocrisy, that he may the easier seduce those who would be disgusted with the impudence of the former.

“The world is essentially one.” No greater blunder could be uttered.

“The All, though externally many, is not different from the One.” The truth is that things cannot be “externally many” unless they be also intrinsically and substantially many. Thus in the human body, which the author brings forward as a fit illustration of his view, the limbs are many because each one substantially differs from each other. It is the negation of identity that makes things be many; and no such negation can be conceived without entities intrinsically distinct. Hence, if the All is “many,” it must intrinsically differ from the One.

“Pantheism is not opposed to the principle of unity in the world, which is God.” To this we say, first, that pantheism is opposed to the fact of plurality in the world. This fact is so manifest that no professor can plead ignorance of it. We say, secondly, that the world has unity of design, of composition, and of government, but no unity of substance. This, too, is as evident as noonday.

“Spinoza may more properly be said to deny the world than to deny God.” Were this granted, it would still be supremely foolish to trust and follow a leader who denies the world. But Spinoza denies God as well, if not explicitly, at least by implication. To set up a mass of contradictions, and to call it “God,” is to declare that there can be no God; and this is just what Spinoza did, through ignorance, we suppose, rather than malice, though not without a sovereign arrogance and presumption.

Before we end we must take notice of an attempt, on the part of Prof. Blackie, at answering the objection that pantheism destroys religion, “because it destroys human personality, and denies individual responsibility, on the foundation of which all human society, as well as all religious obligation, is constituted.” He answers thus: “Freedom, personality, and responsibility are facts which no theological or metaphysical theories can meddle with, any more than they can with generation, or appetite, or digestion.... The answer to all such speculative objections from transcendental theories, when brought into the world of practice, is a fact and a flogging.”

Bravo! Freedom, personality, and responsibility are facts. The pantheistic theory contradicts them, but cannot interfere with them any more than with generation, appetite, and digestion. Hence when any one argues from the pantheistic theory against freedom, personality, and responsibility, he must be answered with “a fact and a flogging.” And, _vice versa_, if any one from freedom, personality, and responsibility argues against the pantheistic theory which makes these things inexplicable and impossible, he, too, must be answered with “a fact and a flogging.” Does the reader understand the excellence of this liberalistic logic? Yes, with a fact and a flogging; for the eloquence of the scourge sometimes replaces with advantage the doubtful efforts of a hesitating tongue: _Si non prosunt verba, prederunt verbera_. What a candid confession of pantheistic impotence! But then, if flogging is to be resorted to, who shall be found more worthy of it than the pantheist himself, who wantonly contradicts by his theory what his common sense recognizes to be a fact?

The book we have thus far examined contains many other errors on important points of religion; but our readers need not be detained any longer in their refutation. The author admits a general providence, but a providence which imparts particular favors in reward of prayer he does not admit. Answers to prayers he considers to be “as ridiculous as interpretations of judgments are presumptuous.” For him “the idea of a God, constantly interfering in answer to prayer, or otherwise, is one of the most anthropomorphic of theological conceptions.” “Asceticism and monkery form a very sad and lamentable chapter in the history of the church.” Abstinence and mortification are “a pedantic and ridiculous sort of virtue,” and they are “abnormal, monstrous, inhuman, and absurd.” Then “there is, and can be, no such thing as a priesthood in Christianity.” It would take too long to enumerate all his theological, philosophical, and historical blunders, for his book is full of them; so we must give up the task.

In the last pages of the work we find a fairly good refutation of atheism, as maintained by Miss Martineau, Mr. Atkinson, and Prof. Tyndall. But what is the use of such a refutation, if it is intended merely as a first step towards pantheism? A pantheist has no right to refute atheism. Whatever he may say against it can always, in one manner or another, be retorted against himself; and when the retorsion is pushed on to its last consequences, his defeat takes the aspect of an atheistic victory. Thus nothing is gained, and discussions become interminable, to the great satisfaction of the sceptics. It is for this reason that most of the Protestant controversies on religious topics cannot be settled. Truth, if mixed with error, has little, if any, chance of victory; and books in which truth is compelled to minister to error are all the more pernicious because their poison is less recognizable. If this _Natural History of Atheism_ is what we assume it to be—a Masonic work—then we must confess that the Scottish Masons could not be served better than by such a baneful mixture of Calvinistic dogmatism and pantheistic dreams.

Footnote 103:

_The Natural History of Atheism._ By John Stuart Blackie, Professor of
Greek at the University of Edinburgh. New York: Scribner, Armstrong &
Co. 1878.

Footnote 104:

Children dying in original sin, though children of wrath, are not
necessarily “hell-deserving sinners,” as the author objects. Most
Catholic theologians maintain with good reasons that they will be in a
state of _natural_ happiness, though debarred from the vision of God.

Footnote 105:

See THE CATHOLIC WORLD for February, 1874, where we have proved that
_all efficient cause is infinitely more perfect and of an infinitely
better nature than any of its effects_ (“The Principles of Real
Being,” p. 584).

THE CREATED WISDOM.[106]
BY AUBREY DE VERE.
I.

Created Wisdom at the gate
Of Heaven, ere Time began, I played;
The Eternal Wisdom Uncreate
Beheld me ere the worlds were made.

I danced the void abyss above:
Of lore unwrit the characters
I traced with wingèd feet, and wove
The orbits of the unshaped stars.

When first the sun and moon had birth,
When seas rushed back, and hills up sprang,
Before God’s eyes in sacred mirth
Once more I circled, and I sang.

I flashed—a Thought in light arrayed—
Beneath the Eternal Wisdom’s ken:
When came mine hour I lived, and played
Among the peopled fields of men.

Blessed is he that keeps my ways,
That stands in reverence on my floor,
That seeks my praise, my word obeys,
That waits and watches by my door.

Footnote 106:

Proverbs, cap. viii.

CONRAD AND WALBURGA.