with spiritual languor and death; and they who were led by a boasted independence of Christ have fallen into the snares of Satan and become his dupes and abject slaves. Behold the revenge of neglected Catholic truth; for only in Catholic unity every truth is held in its true relation with all other truths, shines in its full splendor, and produces its wholesome and precious fruits!
Suppose for a moment that Dr. Nevin should succeed in the task which he has undertaken, and by his efforts raise those around him, and the whole Protestant world, to a sense of their relation to the supernatural world. What then? Why, he has only brought souls to a state which many Protestants have reached before; and when they sought for the light, aid, and sympathy which these new conditions required, in those around them, they found none.
By quickening their spiritual sensibilities you have opened the door to wilder fancies, more dangerous illusions, and thereby exposed the salvation of their souls to greater perils. For, as St. Gregory tells us: “Ars artium est regimen animarum”—the art of arts is the guidance of souls; and where is this art, this science, this discipline, to be found? Not in Protestantism. What then? Why, either these souls have to renounce their holiest convictions, their newly-awakened spiritual life, and sink into their former insensibility; or go where they can find true guidance, certain peace, and spiritual progress—enter into the bosom of the holy Catholic Church, where alone the cravings of that spiritual hunger can be appeased which nowhere else upon earth found food, and the soul can at last breathe freely.
But there is another point involved
in Dr. Nevin’s article; and however so much, as Catholics, we may sympathize with his endeavors to awaken Protestants to their relations with the supernatural world, this point in question will come up, and we cannot help putting it: What is Dr. Nevin’s criterion of revealed truth? The rule of interpretation of the written Word? Dr. Nevin has one; for neither he nor any one else can move a single step without employing and applying, implicitly or explicitly, a rule of faith. He criticises, judges, condemns others, but on what ground? Does his own position, at bottom, differ from that of those whom he condemns? He lacks neither the ability nor the learning to make a consistent statement on this point. Truth is consistent. God is not the author of confusion.
Where does Dr. Nevin find or put the rule of faith? If it be placed in simple human reason, then we have as the result, in religion, pure rationalism. If it be placed in human reason illuminated by grace, then we have illuminism. If it be placed in both of these, with the written Word—that is, the Bible as interpreted by each individual with the assistance of divine grace—then we have the common rule of faith of all Protestants, so fruitful in breeding sects and schisms, and inevitably tending to the entire negation of Christianity.
This last appears to be Dr. Nevin’s rule of faith; for what else does he mean when in the beginning of his article, its second sentence, he makes the following surprising statement: “Christianity is a theory of salvation”? Did God descend from heaven and become man upon earth, live, suffer, and die, and for what? “A theory”! Is this the whole issue
and reality of Christianity—“a theory,” a speculation? Did Christ rise from the dead and ascend to the Father, and, with him, send forth upon earth the Holy Ghost, to create “a theory,” a speculation, or an abstraction? “Christianity a theory”! We fear that one who would deliberately make that assertion has never had the true conception of what is meant by the reality of Christianity. What would be said of a man who in treating of the sun should say: The sun is a theory, or a speculation, or an exposition of the abstract principles of light? If the sun be a theory, it would be quickly asked, what becomes, in the meanwhile, of the reality of the sun? This way of dealing with Christianity, while professing to explain it, allows its reality altogether to escape. Notwithstanding Dr. Nevin’s condemnation of “the abstract spiritualistic thinking of the age,” and of those who would make Christianity “a fond sentiment simply of their own fancy,” he falls, in his definition of Christianity, into the very same error which in others he emphatically condemns.
That this is so is evident; for while he says, “Christianity is a theory,” he adds in the same sentence, “and is made known to us by divine revelation.” Now, the separation, even in idea, between the church and Christianity, is the fountain, source, and origin of all the illusions and errors uttered or written, since the beginning, concerning the Christian religion. The attempt to get at and set up a Christianity independently of the Christian Church is the very essence and nature of all heresies. The church and Christianity are distinguishable, but not separable; and in assuming their separability, as a primary position, lies all the confusion of ideas and
misapprehensions of Christianity in the author of the article under present consideration. This point needs further explanation, as it is all-important, and forms, indeed, the very root of the matter. “Christianity is a theory,” says Dr. Nevin, “and is made known to us by divine revelation.” But what does Dr. Nevin mean by “divine revelation”? Here are his own words in explanation: