THE FUTURE OF FAITH.
“Looking, then, at the Church of Rome from a strictly logical stand-point, it is hard to see how, if we believe in free will and morality in the face of these modern discoveries, which, as far as they go, show us all life as nothing but a vast machine—it is hard to see how we can consider the Church of Rome as logically in any way wounded, or crippled, or in a condition, should occasion offer, to be less active than she was in the days of her most undisputed ascendency. I conceive of her as a ship that seems now unable to go upon any voyage, or to carry men anywhere, but that this is not because, as was said not long since, that her ‘hull was riddled by logic,’ or that she is dismasted or has lost her sails, but merely because she has no wind to fill them. In other words, with regard to supernatural religion, and Catholicism as its one form that still survives unshattered, I conceive that the imagination of the world has been to a great measure paralyzed; but that it may be seen eventually that it never was in any way convinced; and that nothing is wanting to revive the Roman Church into stronger life than ever but a craving amongst men for the certainty, the guidance, and the consolation that she alone offers them.
“The only question is whether such an outburst of feeling is in any way probable. It is possible that the world may be outgrowing such a craving as that I speak of; or that it may find some new way of appeasing it.”
Such is the conclusion of an article on “The Future of Faith,” by W. H. Mallock, in the London Contemporary Review, March, 1878. It goes without saying that the writer is not a Catholic; his very phraseology sufficiently shows this. His testimony, therefore, to the truth, the strength, and the stability of the Catholic Church is the more important as being that of an outsider. He is a man, judging by such of his writings as we have seen, who in a time of intellectual doubt and questioning, almost of despair, is searching honestly and earnestly for some truth on which to rest, if truth there be. He examines all things, shirks nothing, shrinks from nothing. He is not terrified by phrases; he is not to be put off with jargon, scientific or otherwise. If a man descants to him on “the great Unknown and Unknowable,” he listens with calm politeness, and then asks quietly, What is the great Unknown or the great Unknowable? And so with any other term and real or alleged fact. He sifts and sifts until he gets at the bottom. If the bottom is emptiness he says so; if he finds something there he says so. He acknowledges established facts, whether or not those facts go against his natural inclinations, or his preconceived theories, or the prejudices that in the course of a lifetime grow up around even the broadest and most honest minds; for pure intelligence is a rare quality indeed in man. The testimony, then, of a man like Mr. Mallock, a man who in every line he writes shows a keen intelligence, a mind formed by careful study and stored with knowledge, a rare culture, and a thorough honesty of purpose—the testimony, we say, of such a man is of real value on any subject of which he treats, and worthy of all respect.
The article which we purpose examining, and presenting in great part to our readers, seems to us to be almost the closing link in a long chain of reasoning. It is closely connected with other writings by the same author, and, though complete and independent in itself, thanks to the writer’s skill and logical strength, it ought really to be read with them in order to grasp its full force and significance as intended by the author himself. It should be read in connection with The New Republic; or, Culture, Faith, and Philosophy in an English Country House (Scribner, Armstrong & Co., 1878); “Is Life Worth Living?” (the Nineteenth Century, September, 1877, and January, 1878); to which may be added “Positivism on an Island” (the Contemporary Review, April, 1878). All of these bear one upon another. In them the most brilliant and refined satire alternates with, may be said rather to lighten, illustrate, and render fascinating, the most eager and earnest and searching inquiry into the very foundations of all that constitutes human society, especially in its modern and unchristian form. Mr. Mallock does not laugh simply for the laugh’s sake. Indeed, there is a deep mournfulness in his satire, notwithstanding its brilliancy—an undertone of sadness that causes one to doubt sometimes whether it is a laugh or a wail that we hear. It seems to us that the highest satire should always leave this doubt on the mind—the satire that is only bitter with the healthy bitterness of truth cleverly presented. However, we will not discuss that matter now; and with the mere mention of Mr. Mallock’s other writings, and the recommendation of them as affording reading that is at once very pleasant while it is healthy and strong, we turn to the more immediate subject of our article.
The future of faith is of course a question that deeply concerns all the world, more especially in these days, perhaps, when faith in its honest old meaning is dying according to some, dead according to others, an effete and pitiable superstition according to very many more. Delightful and quaint and chivalrous old Kenelm Digby would seem half inclined to restrict the Ages of Faith to days when Christian knights went forth to battle for the Holy Sepulchre, when there was in all Christendom but one Christian faith held by all, and when Europe was forming and emerging out of paganism and barbarism under the beneficent hand of the Catholic Church. Those old days have passed away, and with them, according to many modern and enlightened thinkers, has passed the old faith. Christendom itself has passed away, too. Those were the days of the infancy of Christian nations, and an infantine belief akin to, where it was not wholly, superstition befitted them, according to what claims to be modern enlightenment. One religion was very natural then, and did much good, perhaps, in softening and checking barbarism and saving the very life of Europe. But as the infants grew into youth, and the youth developed into manhood, it was only natural that they should cut aloose from their leading-strings, tire of the mother who had watched so tenderly over their birth and growth and development, and discover that she was a shrewish old termagant, who wanted to keep them in leading-strings all their lives. So they cut their leading-strings and emancipated themselves, and believed as they liked and did as they liked, and left their mother to live or die as she might. Mother-like she refused to die; she lived for them. Though grown to man’s estate, they were still her children. Though they would disown her, she was still their mother. And her eyes went out wistfully after them; her heart yearned always for their return; her prayers went up unceasingly to heaven for them. Will the “Ages of Faith” ever come back, the old unity, the old simplicity? Is such a thing as the old faith ever dreamed of in this faithless age? Is there a desire anywhere among men for Christian unity, or is the tendency not rather the other way, towards still greater disintegration, until the very name of faith be banished from the world, and all mankind shall have attained to the supreme scientific beatitude of placid disbelief in a God whom they cannot see with their earthly eyes, touch with their earthly hands, set under their microscopes, examine and analyze and measure and weigh? This is really the question to which Mr. Mallock applies himself.
To those who note the signs of the times there is observable a strong centripetal as well as an equally strong, and perhaps more pronounced, centrifugal moral force working among men to-day. The centre from which the one party seeks to fly, and to which the other party seeks to turn, is Rome, the centre of Catholic unity. Take the Anglican Church as an instance. More than once in its history of three centuries has there been an attempt among some of its members to turn backwards to Rome. Never was that attempt more open and avowed than it is to-day, and, on the other hand, never was that attempt more bitterly resented by an opposing and more numerous party in the same church than it is to-day. There were at one time, under Alexander I., strong hopes of Russia becoming reconciled to the mother church. The sudden death of the emperor effectually quenched those hopes for the time being. The very large and ever-increasing number of conversions to the Catholic faith within the last half-century, of men of every form of belief or of no belief, very many of whom have been conspicuous for their learning and ability, some of them for their genius, is another indication of the real existence and strength of what we have termed this centripetal moral force. We only note these facts now, without stopping to inquire into their cause. But whether we be right or wrong in our belief that there is a strong and growing tendency towards reunion in Christendom, there is no denying that outside of the Catholic Church there never did exist so open and pronounced a feeling of religious unrest and disquietude as exists to-day among all bodies of professed Christians. What they have of religion, and what their fathers professed, no longer satisfies them. What were once held to be indisputable articles of faith are so no longer. Deep mistrust of the old ways, disbelief in the old tenets, have set in, and men who wish to be Christians find themselves without any fixed ground of faith. Thus infidelity is reaping a rich harvest, for the reason that Christianity in the minds of non-Catholics was identified with Protestantism in its various forms. But Protestantism now is found insufficient and wanting. It has fallen to pieces under the attacks of its own children, who to-day find themselves without a faith, and without any positive moral guide save such fragments of the truth as are still left to them, and to which the best of them adhere as a matter of necessity without exactly knowing why. They feel that Christianity is right, is the best; but they have not quite made up their minds as to what Christianity is or where it is. In fact, they shrink from the painful inquiry, and naturally enough; for the very fact of such an inquiry is an admission that there is something very wrong in their system, and that the wrong is an old growth.
This general feeling of unrest and disquietude shows itself in a thousand ways, and in no way more conspicuously than in the literature of the day, even in its lighter forms. What newspaper is without its “theologian”? We keep a theologian, say the newspapers, as the lady of the nouveaux riches said: “We keep a poet.” In days when religion is by many advanced minds supposed to be altogether out of date we find no subject of more general and entrancing interest than religion. The first question asked when a respectable rascal is exposed is, To what church did he belong? And so seemingly advantageous is religion, at least in a social point of view, that it generally turns out, especially, we are sorry to confess, in our own country, that the rascal was “a leading member of the church” and “in good standing.” We know to our cost what the school of “Christian statesmen” means. Even these degrading and disgraceful spectacles show that Christianity cannot be so very dead when its profession is found to be so very profitable a moral investment and so strong a guarantee of good character and sound morals. The evidence is that, whatever may be said, people still cling to it as something sacred and above suspicion, and their sense is undoubtedly right, however often and however sadly they may find themselves mistaken. It is not yet a reproach to a man that he is a professed Christian. On the contrary, it is the greatest stigma, as it ought to be, on his character when he falls. If he avowedly believed in nothing, in no moral law, men could easily understand why he should refuse to be bound by any moral law. But when he professes to be a follower of Christ and betrays his trust, even the infidel is shocked and turns with special loathing from the hypocrite.
Emerson, who is avowedly no Christian, in these his late days—and, let us hope, his best—can find no subjects so interesting as morals, religion, ethics; and his tendency, allowing for his early training, his acquired habit of mind and expression, is unquestionably in the right direction. Some of Carlyle’s latest and noblest utterances are Christian in spite of himself. At least he can find nothing in the world, which he long ago consigned, to the devil, of such real worth as Christian faith. Bulwer Lytton’s last and, to our thinking, his best story presents a noble Catholic youth as the very beau ideal of excellence, and excellent because of his Catholicity. Thackeray sighed long ago for what to him seemed a hopeless reunion with Rome. George Eliot’s stories are a perpetual wail of despair for lack of fixed belief and a moral right which she cannot see. Others, the scientific minds more especially, are fiercer and bitterly attack anything that recognizes the supernatural. James Anthony Froude, while confessing that Protestantism as a whole has gone to the devil and allowed Protestants to go wholesale the same way, is startled at a “revival of Romanism.” We are only taking these few and varied instances as characteristic of the multitude of non-Catholics to-day who would fain believe in something and take refuge from the awful blank of infidelity. The magazines are full of them and of many like them. Mr. Disraeli moves England with a religious novel; and his political rival, Mr. Gladstone, has only lately deserted Rome to take up the Turk. Indeed, he seems to take even a more passionate interest in his theological than in his political discussions; and, facilis descensus, our own Secretary of the Navy shows his supreme fitness for his position by writing a remarkably bad and stupid book—remarkably bad and stupid even for him—against Rome.
We have not lost sight of our subject nor parted company with Mr. Mallock. All that has been said has only been intended to show how general is the interest to-day among all classes of minds in religious discussion. This of itself is an assurance that there is something to discuss; that there are disputed questions abroad which interest all men alike; and that these questions are not settled. And that is the point to which we wish to call special attention. Outside of the Catholic Church there is no body to-day claiming to be Christian which is fixed and steadfast in its belief; and this is only another way of saying that there is no belief which wholly commends itself to its professed followers, save the Catholic. Mr. Mallock does not write for Catholics. They are, as he acknowledges, and as all acknowledge, at least firm and steadfast. There is no shaking them. They may be wrong, utterly wrong, but at least men can see exactly what they believe and why they believe. Are they right in their belief, or are others right? Is there any such thing as faith in this world to-day, and is there any reasonable hope of its holding its ground and approving itself to the intelligence of mankind? These are the questions which Mr. Mallock puts in the calmest of tempers and with the thorough honesty of purpose we have already noticed.
In discussing “the future of faith” Mr. Mallock naturally turns his attention to those who profess to have and to hold Christian faith. The prospects of faith in the present order of the world he does not find very encouraging. What is called modern thought is against it; modern tone is against it—“a tone of confident and supercilious animosity that is gradually dying into triumph.” “It is true,” says Mr. Mallock, “that this leaven in its full bitterness is to be found only in a narrow circle; but flavors of it, more or less diluted, meet us far and wide. Indeed, it is difficult to find any place where they are not traceable.” This is undoubtedly true; it is equally true that “there is doubtless much definite religion left around us, and many firm believers. But the modern tone has its influence even on these. Religion must be changed in some ways by the neighborhood of irreligion.” This he explains by showing the amicable social relations that exist between religious and irreligious people in these days.
“They are united by habits, by blood, and by friendship; and they are each accustomed to ignore or to excuse what they hold to be the errors of the other. In a state of things like this it is plain that the convictions of believers can neither have the fierce intensity found in a minority under persecution, nor the placid confidence that belongs to an overwhelming majority. They can neither hate the unbelievers, for they daily live in amity with them; nor despise altogether their judgment, for the most eminent thinkers of the day belong to them. The believers are forced into a sort of compromise, which is a new feature in their history. They see that the age is against them; and they are obliged to make excuses for their enemy.”
Mr. Mallock, it will be seen, does not here characterize his “believers.” We are not prepared to agree altogether with what he says in this. At the very least the influence resulting from a social truce between believers and unbelievers need not tell entirely on the side of unbelief. There is no reason why believers should not be as steadfast in a drawing-room as in a church or on a battle-field, and politeness to an opponent does not of necessity imply a concession of weakness. Religious fervor is by no means incompatible with civility; but doubtless Mr. Mallock has in view more particularly Protestant believers, though he would not seem to restrict himself to them, judging from the following passage:
“If the modern tone has thus affected even those who ye most opposed to it, what must not its effect be upon those who have, in part of their own free will, adopted it? And these form to-day a great mass of our educated public. A large number of these still call themselves Protestants; and were the matter to be treated lightly, they might afford countless studies for the humorist. The state to which they have reduced their religion is indeed a curious one. With a facile eclecticism that is based on no principle, and that changes from year to year, or more probably from mood to mood, they pick and choose their doctrines, saying: ‘I keep this and I reject this,’ in some such manner as the following: ‘Of course the Apostles’ Creed is true, and of course the Athanasian Creed is false. And then, after all, suppose neither is true, the meaning of the thing is the real heart of the matter.’ Such is the Protestant language of to-day. Nor is it the language of foolish or of ignorant people; it is the language of countless clever men who have much to do, and of countless clever women who have nothing to do.”
The author proceeds to test the actual value on a person’s life of such a faith as this—a faith that has nothing really fixed in it, and that varies with the mood of the holder. There come the great trials of life, when those who sorrow or those who suffer or are sorely tempted require all their fortitude, must trample on themselves and on their own feelings and natural instincts, or yield to despair and give way to wrong.
“A great sorrow comes, or a great temptation comes. At once the tone of to-day grows more pronounced, and a new set of arguments suggest themselves with singular readiness: ‘God is not good, or he would never have robbed me of so good a husband’; or, ‘God is not good, or he would never have let me marry such a bad one’; and then follows, as a corollary to these propositions, ‘God is nothing if not good, and therefore there is no God at all.’ Or the syllogism, especially in the feminine mind, takes not uncommonly some such form as this: ‘If there was a God he would put me into hell for being in love with so-and-so; but I am certain in my own mind that I do not deserve hell; therefore I am certain in my own mind that there can be no God to put me there.’”
The aptness and force with which Mr. Mallock brings the application of these vague speculations about religion and these loose principles of belief home to daily life is characteristic of the man. He is not content with wandering in the clouds. He brings everything down to solid earth, and tests and weighs it there. He does not ask, How will this appear to the philosopher? but How will this affect the lives of men and women? Religion is not for the philosophers only, but for every man born into this world. A recent trial in Brooklyn gives peculiar point to his remarks on this head. “In former times,” says Mr. Mallock, “when such thoughts occurred to men, the whole weight of the world’s opinion always was ready to condemn them as vain and wicked. But now the case is just reversed. However foolish may be the actual conduct of such reasoning, the opinion of the enlightened world is ready to corroborate the conclusion.”
He goes on to take another circle, “a probably far larger one.” This is made up of men who are in suspense altogether. “They see much to revere and to regret in Christianity, but they make no pretence of believing in its details. They do not even think them worth arguing against.” And, lastly, “there are the extreme destroyers, who would break altogether with the past; and who, though probably wishing to retain some of the emotions that were once directed to God and to heaven, would give them an entirely different object in the shape of humanity, and would never suffer them to wander from the earth’s surface.”
“Such are the various parties that the world of thought now shows to us,” says Mr. Mallock—a small body who cling heart and soul to the past; a small body that would utterly break with the past; and between them “a vast and varied crowd, tinged in various proportions with the colors of each extreme. And amongst them all there is a continual arguing, and anxiety, and perplexity.”
There is no denying the truth of this picture. Such is Christendom to-day, and what is to be the outcome of it all? The keen and truthful observer whom we are quoting thinks “it cannot be doubted that the modern tone is spreading,” and the tendency is therefore against faith. “To all except a small minority faith, in the old sense of the word, is growing a cold and shadowy thing.”
“The dogmas, the services, the ministers of the church are coming all of them to have a belated look for us. They seem out of place in the busy world around us. Ever and again we hear of a new Catholic miracle and the fame of some new pilgrimage. And the strange effect that these things have on us shows us how far our minds have travelled.
Do such things still exist? we ask in surprise and irritation, and we set them down as ‘the grimacings of a dead superstition’ galvanized into a ghastly imitation of life. And then from the modern miracles the mind goes back to the older ones, once held so sacred and so certain. And they, too, have undergone a change for us. Not only are Lourdes and Paray-le-Monial contemptible, but Calvary is disenchanted. There may have been a death there, but there was never a Sacrifice. Scales have fallen from our eyes. We see it all clearly. The creed we were brought up in is an earthly myth, not a heavenly revelation. We know exactly whence it came, and we see pretty certainly whither it is going. The signs of it still survive; but they signify nothing. They will soon be swept away, and will make place, we hope earnestly, for something better.”
Such is the modern tone, wonderfully well presented. Is it so universal as Mr. Mallock seems to think, or so deeply rooted in the minds and hearts of men? He himself is in doubt on this point, and proceeds to inquire with characteristic honesty and persistence. He takes up and classifies the various objections against Christianity that are popular to-day: the objections à priori, which are opposed to all religion, natural as well as revealed; and the objections à posteriori, which are opposed to revealed religion only. We must refer the reader to Mr. Mallock’s article for these objections, as space does not allow us to present them, nor is their presentation necessary to our immediate purpose. The conclusion at which he arrives is briefly this: “If Christianity relies for support on the external evidence of its truth, it can never again hope to convince men. These supports are seen to be utterly inadequate to the weight that is put upon them. They might possibly serve as props, but they crash and crumble instantly if they are used as pillars.”
We are not so much arguing with Mr. Mallock as allowing him free utterance, therefore we make no formal exception to what he here says. But, he goes on, “it is as pillars that the whole Protestant community uses them,” the “props” above mentioned, and he takes up Protestantism as the religion of the Bible.
“There,” it says, “is the word of God; there is my infallible guide. I listen to none but that. It is my first axiom that the Bible is infallible; and granting that, history teaches me that all other churches are fallible. On the Bible, and the Bible only, I rest myself. Out of its mouth shall you judge me. And for a long time this language had much force in it, for the Protestant axiom was received by all parties. It is true that it might be hard to decide what God’s word meant; but still every one admitted that God’s word was there, and it at any rate meant something. But now all this is changed. The great axiom is received no longer. Many, indeed, consider it not an axiom but an absurdity; at best it appears but as a very doubtful fact; and if external proof is to be what guides us, we shall need more proofs to convince us that the Bible is the word of God than that Protestantism is the religion of the Bible.”
We agree with Mr. Mallock that if this be Christianity, Christianity has lost its use and its place in this world. Reasonable men cannot be brought to understand how so stupendous and vast an edifice as Christianity can by any possibility rest on so very narrow and shaky a foundation as that presented by Protestantism. The whole thing is either a gigantic sham, which has enslaved and overshadowed men’s minds too long already and wrought infinite mischief in the world, or else we must seek some deeper and broader foundation for it than this. “In this country” (England), says Mr. Mallock, “nearly all the ablest attacks upon supernatural religion have been directed against it as embodied in the Protestant form; and they have widely, and not unnaturally, been regarded as quite victorious.” There is left then only one of two alternatives: either Christianity is false, or Protestantism is not Christianity.
Protestantism has fallen, as we said, under the hands of its own children. They have demolished it, and left only scattered fragments of what was a body with something like life in it. In destroying it have they destroyed what they identified with it—supernatural religion, or Christianity?
“It seems to escape the assailants,” observes Mr. Mallock, “that though they may have burnt the outworks, there is still a citadel inside, which, though it seems to them almost too contemptible to take account of, may yet not prove combustible, and, when the conflagration outside has subsided, may still remain to annoy them. They forget altogether, I mean, the Church of Rome; nor do they seem to consider that, though for other causes she may perhaps be dying, yet many of their logical darts can do nothing to hasten her end.”
Having found Protestantism so complete a failure, Mr. Mallock turns to the Catholic Church and examines it. He finds that “Catholics have one characteristic which fundamentally separates them from the Protestants” with respect to the chief points at which modern thought and science have assailed revealed religion. Protestantism, he says, offers itself to the world as a strange servant might—bringing with its number of written testimonials to character. It expressly begs us not to trust to its own word. The world examines the testimonials carefully; “it at last sees that they look suspicious, that they may very possibly be forgeries; it asks the Protestant Church to prove them genuine, and the Protestant Church cannot.”
Catholicism comes in an exactly opposite way. It brings the very same testimonials, but sets itself above them. It speaks with its own authority. It speaks as Christ spoke, Who said openly and boldly: “Believe in me; I am the way, the truth, and the life; the Father and I are one.” He used the Scriptures also, but only as adjuncts to his own teaching. His credentials were exclusively his own. The Scriptures were his; he was not the Scriptures’. And so the church which he founded surely ought to speak—the church which is his living body, higher and greater than any Scriptures. “It” (the Catholic Church), says Mr. Mallock, “asks us to make some acquaintance with it; to look into its living eyes, to hear the words of its mouth, to watch its ways and works, and to feel its inner spirit; and then it says to the world, ‘Can you trust me? If so, you must trust me all in all, for the first thing I declare to you is that I have never lied. Can you trust me thus far? Then listen, and I will tell you my story. You have heard it told one way, I know; and that way often goes against me. I admit myself that it has many suspicious circumstances. But none of them positively condemn me. All are capable of a guiltless interpretation; and now you know me as I am, you will give me the benefit of every doubt.’ It is in this spirit that Catholicism offers us the Bible. ‘Believe the Bible for my sake,’ it says, ‘not me for the Bible’s.’ And the book, as thus offered us, changes its whole character.”
We have no fault to find with this presentation of the Catholic claims so far. Mr. Mallock has here fully grasped an essential difference between Catholics and Protestants which few non-Catholics are able to grasp. How clearly and well he elucidates this important point will be seen by those who care to read his article, of which we can only present the substance. His conclusion with regard to Catholicity and the Bible is: “As Catholicism stands at the present moment, it seems hard to say that, were we for any other reasons inclined to trust it, it makes any claim for the Bible that would absolutely prevent our doing so.” That being the case, it follows as a matter of course that all the “logical darts” aimed at the Bible fall harmless from the invincible armor of the Catholic Church.
He then goes on to consider the various doctrines of the Catholic Church, and herein he shows the same capability of appreciating the Catholic stand-point, an appreciation of which stand-point is, of course, necessary to any one who would honestly inquire into what Catholicity really is, and what Catholics actually do believe. These doctrines, he says, “though it is claimed that they are all implied in the Bible, are confessedly not expressed in it, and were confessedly not consciously assented to by the church till long after the sacred canon was closed.” We would here remark that this is true only of some Catholic doctrines. Well, says Mr. Mallock, “let us here grant the extreme position of the church’s most hostile critics. Let us grant that all the doctrines in question can be traced to external and often to non-Christian sources. And what is the result on Romanism? Does this go any way whatever towards logically discrediting its claims?” We will let him answer his own question in his own way:
“If we do but consider the matter fairly, we shall see that it does not even tend to do so. Here, as in the case of the Bible, the Roman doctrine of infallibility meets all objections. For the real question here is not in what store-house of opinions the church found its doctrines; but why it selected those it did, and why it rejected and condemned the rest. History cannot answer this. History can show us only who made the separate bricks; it cannot show us who made and designed the building.... And the doctrines of the church are but as the stones in a building, the letters of an alphabet, or the words of a language. Many are offered and few chosen. The supernatural action is to be detected in the choice. The whole history of the church, in fact, as she herself tells it, is a history of supernatural selection. It is quite possible that she may claim it to be more than that; but could she vindicate for herself but this one faculty of an infallible choice, she would vindicate to the full her claim to be under a superhuman guidance. The church may be conceived of as a living organism, for ever and on all sides putting forth feelers and tentacles, that seize, try, and seem to dally with all kinds of nutriment. A part of this she at length takes into herself. A large part she at length puts down again. Much that is thus rejected she seems for a long time on the point of choosing. But however slow may be the final decision in coming, however reluctant or hesitating it may seem to be, when it is once made it is claimed for it that it is infallible. And this claim, when we once understand its nature, will be seen, I think, to be one that neither our knowledge of ecclesiastical history nor of comparative mythology can invalidate now or even promise ever to do so.”
It will be seen that we are a long way from Protestantism already, and that we have here a very different kind of church, which, be it right or wrong, rests on a very deep and firm foundation. At least this must be said of it by all: Granting its truth, there is no stronger foundation conceivable. Granting it to be false even, it is hard to conceive a stronger foundation, or one that could commend itself with more force and assurance of safety to reasonable men. If there be a God living and moving in this world, this looks very like God’s handiwork.
Mr. Mallock concedes that “the Catholic Church can still claim, in the face of all the new lights thrown on her history, to be sprung from a supernatural root.” But it may be that she “will be found to be betrayed by her fruits” when these are inspected in detail. Her primary dogmas and her general sacred character may be conceded; but “numberless deductions from them and indirect consequences” may “revolt our common sense and our moral sense, though we have no exact means of disproving them.” Such difficulties, he finds, do exist; “but if we examine them carefully, many, at least, will be found to rest upon misconceptions.”
The difficulties in question are that Catholicity “makes salvation depend on our assenting to a number of obscure propositions”; that to many Catholic ritual seems to be an integral part of the church’s mystical body, and that thus salvation is made to hang “not only on an assent to occult propositions of philosophy, but upon altar-candles and the colored clothes of priests”; again, “the temper and intellectual tone which she seems to develop in her members” makes the church “a rock of offence to many”; there are “a number of miraculous legends and quaint beliefs which are or have been prevalent amongst Catholics.” Of all these difficulties Mr. Mallock himself very lucidly and effectively disposes, and shows that they “will be seen to be not really formidable.” There are other difficulties, however, which he finds “worse than these.” They consist of “certain moral objections to the Catholic Church’s scheme altogether, and objections of science and common sense to other necessary parts of it.”
“The moral objections consist principally of these: the exclusiveness of the church, which leaves the rest of mankind uncared for; the church’s doctrine of rewards and punishments, which are barbarous or ridiculous in their details, and which, besides that, make all virtue venal; and the doctrine of a vicarious satisfaction for sin, which to many minds carries its own condemnation on the face of it. Lastly, besides these, there is the entire question of miracles.”
Into all these matters Mr. Mallock goes with the same patient purpose and honest mind that distinguish him everywhere. His conclusion, as a whole, is given at the head of this article. Space forbids us to follow him any farther, but we cannot resist the temptation to quote for the benefit of our non-Catholic readers what he says on infallibility and on the “exclusiveness” of the Catholic Church:
“The doctrine of the church’s infallibility,” he says, “has a side that is just the opposite of that which is commonly thought to be its only one. It is supposed to have simply gendered bondage, not to have gendered liberty. But as a matter of fact it has done both; and if we view the matter fairly we shall see that it has done the latter at least as completely as the former. The doctrine of infallibility is undoubtedly a rope that tethers those that hold it to certain real or supposed facts of the past; but it is a rope that is capable of indefinite lengthening. It is not a fetter only; it is a support also, and those who cling to it can venture fearlessly, as explorers, into currents of speculation that would sweep away altogether men who did but trust to their own powers of swimming. Nor does, as is often supposed, the centralizing of this infallibility in the person of one man present any difficulty from the Catholic point of view. It is said that the pope might any day make a dogma of any absurdity that might happen to occur to him; and that the Catholic would be bound to accept these, however strongly his reason might repudiate them. And it is quite true that the pope might do this any day, in the sense that there is no external power to prevent him. But he who has assented to the central doctrine of Catholicism knows that he never will. And it is precisely the obvious absence of any restraint from without that brings home to the Catholic his faith in the guiding power from within.”
Of the “exclusiveness” of the Catholic Church, or, as it is more commonly put, of the doctrine that “out of the Catholic Church there is no salvation,” Mr. Mallock thus writes:
“As to the exclusiveness of the Catholic Church, it must be of course confessed that much perplexity is caused by any view of the world which obliges us to think of the most saving truths, and the most precious helps to a right life, being confined to a minority of the human race. But, supposing we attach to a knowledge of the truth any real importance, let us hold the supreme truths of life to be what we may, until the whole human race are unanimous about them we shall have to regard a part, probably through no fault of their own, as condemned to disastrous error. But of all creeds Catholicism is the one that does most to alleviate this perplexity. Of all religious bodies the Roman Church has the largest hope and charity for those outside her own pale. She condemns men, not for not accepting her teaching, but only for rejecting it; and they cannot reject it until they know it, what it is—know its inner spirit as well as its outward forms and formulas. Such a knowledge, in the opinion of many Catholics, it may be a very hard thing to convey to some men. Prejudices for which they themselves are not responsible may have blinded their eyes; and if they have been blind they will not have had sin. They will be able to plead invincible ignorance; and the judgments the church pronounces are not against those who have not known, but against those only who have known and hated. Nor is it too much to say that a zealous Catholic can afford to harbor more hope for an infidel than a zealous Protestant can afford to harbor for a Catholic.”
And now comes the final question, What is to be the future of faith? As we regard the matter, the answer to that, humanly speaking, rests mainly with those who have the faith. Faith is a sacred deposit, to be used, spread, and propagated over the world; to lead men to a right manner of living, to the true knowledge of God, and up to God. Thus the future of faith is in the hands of the faithful. Faith has two antagonists: the devil and, in a sense, man’s free-will. Of course modern thought scornfully dismisses the first antagonist as a myth. We cannot follow modern thought in this; we have a very profound belief in the existence of an ever-active and intelligent spirit of evil, who can and does tempt man into revolt against God, and who finds his readiest instrument, where he ought to find his chief resistance, in that highest prerogative of freedom which God confers on man. We take, then, first the devil, and, in a secondary sense, man’s free-will as the two great antagonists to faith. That is to say, if man will rebel, if he will not accept the faith, there is no power to hinder his rebellion.
And here we leave the devil aside and turn only to man. The future of faith is for him to say. What will he do with it? Why does he not accept it? Why should his free-will reject it, if it is good and approves itself so strongly to human intelligence, and if, moreover, God and all heaven are for ever standing on its side? There was at one time a united faith in Christendom; why was it ever broken?
Of course we can lay a great deal on the back of the devil and on the perversity of the human will. But it may be as well to remember also that those who have the faith may prove false to their trust. St. James tells us that even the devils believe and tremble. And so a man may possess the letter of the faith in full with very little of its spirit. A man may know St. Thomas from cover to cover, and assent to all his propositions, yet lead a bad life. Faith without works is dead. Christians must show forth in their lives whose disciples they are. If their lives are good; if the lives of a large body of believers are good; if they are chaste, charitable, honest in word and deed, and if such be the normal condition of their lives, men will not have far to go to look for faith. Virtue is the great preacher and converter. Even natural virtue—courage, sobriety, manliness, self-restraint—wins universal admiration. Supernatural virtue proclaims its godhead.
If the world is to be converted to faith, it will only be converted by the good lives and works of the faithful. The human intellect may carp at intellectual difficulties, but the human heart is overcome by goodness, by charity, by chastity. Faith is now what it always was; men are as they always were. But from a faithless and corrupt generation the inheritance is taken away. Thus the Jews lost it, thus Christian nations lose it. Had there been no corruption among the faithful there would have been no Protestant Reformation. Had there been no corruption in France, had the leaders of the people been true to the faith that was in them, infidelity would never have made such fearful havoc in a land of saints. And so with Germany, England, Scotland, Austria, Italy, and the other nations; when we examine closely we shall find that the revolt had its origin less in pride of intellect than in the concupiscence of the flesh and the pride of life. Intellectual assent to God’s teaching is not enough to lead a man to heaven. There must be a corresponding moral assent in his life. Why did Ireland, the weakest of the nations, not lose the faith? She was decimated, starved, made ignorant, brutalized as far as inhuman legislation can go to brutalize man, but she never lost the faith. Why? Because her sons and her daughters, whatever they may have known or not known of theology, of science, of philosophy, of literature, lived the faith, kept it stored up in their hearts, died for it, bequeathed it as a sacred legacy—their only legacy—to their children. Ah! it is on this that the future of faith hangs more than on intellectual discussion, articles in magazines, or theological writings. Shall we to-day doubt or hesitate about the future of faith—we the members of a church that numbers its millions by the hundred thousand? Are not we the children of Peter, of Paul, of Christ himself? Have not we the deposit that he confided to the twelve? Did they hesitate to face a world from which faith was almost blotted out, a world steeped in iniquity? They went out—twelve men; they preached Jesus, and him crucified; they lived what they preached, they suffered for what they preached, and, when nothing more was left for them to do, they died for it. We are not called upon to die for it to-day. The church is established. Its temples cover the world. Its children are in every land. From the rising of the sun to the going down thereof the living Sacrifice of Christ’s redeeming body and blood is daily offered up to God from the world and for the world. Can we tremble for the future of faith?
Of course sin and schism and infidelity will exist in the world till the end; but great multitudes may be saved and brought back if only the faithful are true. One great opposing element to the advance of faith is dissolving before our eyes—Protestantism. Shall all the children of Protestants perish and be given over to infidelity? Are there no earnest and well-inclined minds among them, no good people? There are multitudes of such, who are wavering and in doubt and sore perplexity because such support even as they had is slipping from under them, and beneath they see nothing but a blank and awful abyss. We do not anticipate that they will come back to us in multitudes. We scarcely look for that general “craving amongst men for the certainty, the guidance, and the consolation that the Catholic Church alone offers them,” as Mr. Mallock puts it. We do not rely upon “such an outburst of feeling”; and yet even that might come. Sensim sine sensu will the wanderers come back. What we Catholics have to consider is our duty in the matter. We can indeed hasten that coming. If we would do so effectually we must be brothers to them in charity, examples to them in our lives, above them in intelligence as in that faith which is the highest intelligence.