Planting themselves on this thesis, its advocates profess to have à priori principle by which they prove the all-sufficiency of nature for the fulfilment of its own destiny, and reject as an unnecessary or even inconceivable intrusion, the affirmation of another divine creative act, giving a new impact to nature, superadding a new force to natural law, subordinating the physical universe to a higher end, implanting a superior principle of intelligence and will in the human soul, and giving to the race a destination above that to which it tends by its own proper momentum. They refuse to entertain the question of a supernatural order, or an order which educates the race according to a law superior to that of the evolution of the mere forces of nature; and in consequence of this refusal, they logically refuse to entertain the question of a supernatural revelation disclosing this order, and of a supernatural religion in which the doctrines, laws, institutions, forces and instruments of this order are organized, for the purpose of drawing the human race into itself. This is the last fortress into which heterodox philosophy has fled. The open plains are no longer tenable. The only conflict of magnitude now raging in Christendom is between the champions of the Catholic faith and the tenants of this stronghold. It is a great advantage for the cause of truth that it is so. The controversy is simplified, the issues are clearly marked, the opportunity is favorable for an [{580}] unimpeded and decisive collision between the forces of faith and unbelief, and the triumph of faith will open the way for Christianity to gain a new and mighty sway over the mind, the heart, and the life of the civilized world. This stronghold is no more tenable than any of the others which have been successively occupied and abandoned. Its tenants have gained only a momentary advantage by retreating to it. They escape certain of the inconsistencies of other parties and evade the Catholic arguments levelled against these inconsistencies. But they can be driven by the irresistible force of reason from their position, and made to draw the Catholic conclusion from their own premises.
We do not say this in a boastful spirit, or as vaunting our own ability to effect a logical demolition of rationalism. Rather, we desire to express our confidence that the reason of its advocates themselves will drive them out of it, and that the common judgment of an age more enlightened than the present will demolish it. It is our opinion, formed after hearing the language used by a great number of men of all parties, and reading a still greater number of their published utterances, that the most enlightened intelligence of this age in Protestant Christendom has reached two conclusions; the first is, that the Catholic Church is the true and genuine church of Christianity; and the second, that it is necessary to have a positive religion which will embody the same idea that produced Christianity. The combination and evolution of these two intellectual convictions promise to result in a return to Catholicism. And there are to be seen even already in the writings of those who have given up the positive Christianity of orthodox Protestantism, indications of the workings of a philosophy which tends to bring them round to the positive supernatural faith of the Catholic church. It is by these grand, intellectual currents moving the general mind of an age, that individual minds are chiefly influenced, more than by the thoughts of other individual minds. Individual thinkers can scarcely do more than to detect the subtle element which the common intellectual atmosphere holds in solution, to interpret to other thinkers their own thoughts, or give them a direction which will help them to discover for themselves some truth more integral and universal than they now possess. Therefore, while confiding in the power of the integral and universal truth embodied in the Catholic creed to bear down all opposition and vanquish every philosophy which rises up agamst it, we do not arrogate the ability to grasp and wield this power, and to exhibit the Catholic idea in its full evidence as the integrating, all-embracing form of universal truth. It is proposed in an honorable and conciliatory spirit to those who love truth and are able to investigate it for themselves. Many things must necessarily be affirmed or suggested in a brief, unpretending series of essays, which admit of and require minute and elaborate proof, such as can only be given in an extensive work, but merely sketched here after the manner of an outline engraving which leaves out the filling up belonging to a finished picture.
To return from this digression. We have begun the task of indicating how that naturalism or pure rationalism which affirms the theistic conception logically demonstrable by pure reason, can only integrate itself and expand itself to a universal Theodicy or doctrine of God, in a supernatural revelation.
If the opposite theory of pure naturalism were true, it ought to verify itself in the actual history of the human race, and in the actual process of its education. The idea of the supernatural ought to be entirely absent from the consciousness of the race. For, on the supposition of that theory, it has no place in the human mind--and no business in the world. If unassisted nature and reason suffice for [{581}] themselves they ought to do their work alone, and do it so thoroughly that there would be no room for any pretended supernatural revelation to creep in. The history of mankind ought to be a continuous, regular evolution of reason and nature, like the movements of the planets; the human race ought to have been conscious of this law from the beginning, and never to have dreamed of the supernatural, never to have desired it.
Philosophy ought to have been, from the first, master of the situation, and to have domineered over the whole domain of thought.
The reverse of this is the fact. The history of the human race, and the whole world of human thought, is filled with the idea of the supernatural. The philosophy of naturalism is either a modification and re-combination of principles learned from revelation, or a protest against revelation and an attempt to dethrone it from its sway. It has no pretence of being original and universal, but always pre-supposes revelation as having prior possession, and dating from time immemorial. Now human nature and human reason are certainly competent to fulfil whatever task God has assigned them. They act according to fixed laws, and tend infallibly to the end for which they were created. The judgments of human reason and of the human race are valid in their proper sphere. And therefore the judgment of mankind that its law of evolution is in the line of the supernatural is a valid judgment. Revelation has the claim of prescription and of universal tradition. Naturalism must set aside this claim and establish a positive claim for itself based on demonstration, before it has any right even to a hearing. It can do neither. It cannot bring any conclusive argument against revelation, nor can it establish itself on any basis of demonstration which does not pre-suppose the instruction of reason by revelation.
It cannot conclusively object to revelation. The very principle of law, that is, of the invariable nexus between cause and effect, which is the ultimate axiom of naturalism, is based on the perpetual concurrence of the first cause with all secondary causes, that is, the perpetuity of the creative act by which God perpetually creates the creature. There is no reason why this creative act should explicate all its effects at once or merely conserve the existences it has produced, and not explicate successively in space and time the effects of its creative energy. The hypothesis that the creative power can never act directly in nature except at its origin, and must afterwards merely act through the medium of previously created causes in a direct line, is the sheerest assumption. Some of the most eminent men in modern physical science maintain the theory of successive creations. There may be the same direct intervention of creative power in the moral and spiritual world. Miracles, revelations, supernatural interventions for the regeneration and elevation of the human race, are not improbable on any à priori principle. The artifice by which the entire tradition of the human race is set aside, and a demand made to prove the supernatural de novo, is unwarrantable and unfair. The supernatural has the title of prescription, and the burden of proof lies only upon the particular systems, to show that they are genuine manifestations of it, and not its counterfeits. The existence of a reality which may be counterfeited is a fair postulate of reason, until the contrary is demonstrated, and something positive of a prior and more universal order is logically established from the first principles of reason. We are not to be put off with assurances like a fraudulent debtor's promises of payment, that our doubts and uncertainties, will be satisfied after two thousand or two hundred thousand years. Exclude the supernatural, and natural reason will have, and can have nothing in the future, beyond the universal data and principles which we have now and have had from the beginning, with which to solve its problems. The [{582}] connection between mind and matter, the origin and destination of the soul, the future life, the state of other orders of intelligent beings, the condition of other worlds, will be as abstruse and incapable of satisfactory settlement then as now. If we are to gain any certain knowledge concerning them, it must be in a supernatural way. And what conclusive reason is there for deciding that we may not? Who can prove that some of that infinite truth which surrounds us may not break through the veil, that some of the intelligent spirits of other spheres may not be sent to enlighten and instruct us? [Footnote 125]
[Footnote 125: That is, who can prove it from reason alone, without the evidence of Revelation itself that it is already completed?]
One of the ablest advocates of naturalism, Mr. William R. Alger, has admitted that it is possible, and oven maintains that it has already taken place. In his erudite work on the "History of the Doctrine of a Future Life," he maintains the opinion that Jesus Christ is a most perfect and exalted being, who was sent into this world by God to teach mankind, who wrought miracles and really raised his body to life in attestation of his doctrine, although he supposes that he laid it aside again when he left the earth. He distinctly asserts the infallibility of Christ as a teacher, and of the doctrine which he actually taught with his own lips. Here is a most distinct and explicit concession of the principle of supernatural revelation. To those who heard him he was a supernatural and infallible teacher. In so far as his doctrine is really apprehended it is for all generations a supernatural and infallible truth. It has regenerated mankind, and Mr. Alger believes it is destined, when better understood, to carry the work of regeneration to a higher point in the future. It is true, he does not acknowledge that the apostles were infallible in apprehending and teaching the doctrine of Christ. But he must admit, that in so far as they have apprehended and perpetuated it, and in so far as he himself and others of his school now apprehend it more perfectly than they did, they apprehend supernatural truth and appropriate a supernatural power. Besides, once admitting that Christ was an infallible teacher, it is impossible to show why he could not do what so many philosophers have done, communicate his doctrine in clear and intelligible terms, so that the substance of it would be correctly understood and perpetuated. Miss Frances Cobbe, admitted to be the best expositor of the doctrine of the celebrated Theodore Parker, in her "Broken Lights," and other similar writers, give to the doctrine and institutions of Christ a power that is superhuman and that denotes the action of a superhuman intelligence. Those who prognosticate a new church, a new religion, a realization of ideal humanity on earth, cannot integrate their hypothesis in anything except the supernatural, and must suppose either a new outburst of supernatural life from the germ which Christ planted on the earth, or the advent of another superhuman Redeemer.
Dr. Brownson while yet only a transcendental philosopher on his road to the Church, exhibited this thought with great power and beauty, in a little book entitled "New Views." The dream of a new redemption of mankind in the order of temporal perfection and felicity was never presented with greater argumentative ability or portrayed in more charming colors, at least in the English language; and never was any thing made more clear than the necessity of superhuman powers for the actual fulfilment of this bewitching dream. [Footnote 126]