Father Riley smiled affably, and begged Whittaker to finish the letter.
"Your fish is fresh, dear man, but your news may be stale before we reach it—so hasten now—I've a presentiment that our friend goes still farther afield."
Whittaker abandoned his fish with a last thoughtful look, and resumed the reading.
"May I conclude by reminding you that the issue between Christianity and science falsely so called has never been enough simplified? Christianity rests squarely on the Fall of man. Deny the truth of Genesis and the whole edifice of our faith crumbles. If we be not under the curse of God for Adam's sin, there was never a need for a Saviour, the Incarnation and the Atonement become meaningless, and our Lord is reduced to the status of a human teacher of a disputable philosophy—a peasant moralist with certain delusions of grandeur—an agitator and heretic whom the authorities of his time executed for stirring up the people. In short, the divinity of Jesus must stand or fall with the divinity of the God of Moses, and this in turn rests upon the historical truth of Genesis. If the Fall of man be successfully disputed, the God of Moses becomes a figment of the Jewish imagination—Jesus becomes man. And this is what Science asserts, while we of the outer churches, through cowardice or indolence—too often, alas! through our own skepticism—have allowed Science thus to obscure the issue. We have fatuously thought to surrender the sin of Adam, and still to keep a Saviour —not perceiving that we must keep both or neither.
"There is the issue. The Church says that man is born under the curse of God and so remains until redeemed, through the sacraments of the Church, by the blood of God's only begotten Son.
"Science says man is not fallen, but has risen steadily from remote brute ancestors. If science be right— and by mere evidence its contention is plausible—then original sin is a figment and natural man is a glorious triumph over brutehood, not only requiring no saviour —since he is under no curse of God—but having every reason to believe that the divine favour has ever attended him in his upward trend.
"But if one finds mere evidence insufficient to outweigh that most glorious death on Calvary, if one regards that crucifixion as a tear of faith on the world's cold cheek of doubt to make it burn forever, then one must turn to the only church that safeguards this rock of Original Sin upon which the Christ is builded. For the ramparts of Protestantism are honeycombed with infidelity—and what is most saddening, they are giving way to blows from within. Protestantism need no longer fear the onslaughts of atheistic outlaws: what concerns it is the fact that the stronghold of destructive criticism is now within its own ranks—a stronghold manned by teachers professedly orthodox.
"It need cause little wonder, then, that I have found safety in the Mother Church. Only there is one compelled by adequate authority to believe. There alone does it seem to be divined that Christianity cannot relinquish the first of its dogmas without invalidating those that rest upon it.
"For another vital matter, only in the Catholic Church do I find combated with uncompromising boldness that peculiarly modern and vicious sentimentality which is preached as 'universal brotherhood.' It is a doctrine spreading insidiously among the godless masses outside the true Church, a chimera of visionaries who must be admitted to be dishonest, since again and again has it been pointed out to them that their doctrine is unchristian—impiously and preposterously unchristian. Witness the very late utterance of His Holiness, Pope Pius X, as to God's divine ordinance of prince and subject, noble and plebeian, master and proletariat, learned and ignorant, all united, indeed, but not in material equality—only in the bonds of love to help one another attain their moral welfare on earth and their last end in heaven. Most pointedly does his Holiness further rebuke this effeminacy of universal brotherhood by stating that equality exists among the social members only in this: that all men have their origin in God the Creator, have sinned in Adam, and have been equally redeemed into eternal life by the sacrifice of our Lord.
"Upon these two rocks—of original sin and of prince and subject, riches and poverty—by divine right, the Catholic Church has taken its stand; and within this church will the final battle be fought on these issues. Thank God He has found my humble self worthy to fight upon His side against the hordes of infidelity and the preachers of an unchristian social equality!"