When Frank entered his room, he found Lutz in a very bad humor.
"You have judged that old bear much too leniently," began the professor. "The man is a model of coarseness and intolerable bigotry."
"I thought so," said Frank. "I know you and I know the doctor; and I knew two such rugged antitheses must affect each other unpleasantly. What occasioned your dispute?"
"What! A thousand things," answered his friend ill-humoredly. "The old rhinoceros has not the least appreciation of true knowledge. He carries haughtily the long wig of antiquated stupidity, and does not see the shallowness of the swamp in which he wallows. The genius of Christianity is to him the sublime. Where this stops, pernicious enlightenment—which corrupts the people, turns churches into ball-rooms, and the Bible into a book of fables—begins."
"The doctor is not wrong there," said Frank earnestly. "Are they not endeavoring with all their strength to deprive the Bible of its divine character? Does not one Schenkel in Heidelberg deny the divinity of Christ? Is not this Schenkel the director of a theological faculty? Do not some Catholic professors even begin to dogmatize and dispute the authority of the holy see?"
"We rejoice at the consoling fact that Catholic savants themselves break the fetters with which Rome's infallibility has bound in adamantine chains the human mind!" cried Lutz with enthusiasm.
"It appears strange to me when young men—scarcely escaped from the school, and boasting of all modern knowledge—cast aside as old, worthless rubbish what great minds of past ages have deeply pondered. The see of Rome and its dogmas have ruled the world for eighteen hundred years. Rome's dogmas overthrew the old world and created a new one. They have withstood and survived storms that have engulfed all else besides. Such strength excites wonder and admiration, but not contempt."
"I let your eulogy on Rome pass," said the professor. "But as Rome and her dogmas have overthrown heathenism, so will the irresistible progress of science overthrow Christianity. Coming generations will smile as complacently at the God of Christendom as we consider with astonishment the great and small gods of the heathen."
"I do not desire the realization of your prophecy," said Frank gloomily; "for it must be accompanied by convulsions that will transform the whole world, and therefore I do not like to see an anti-Christian tendency pervading science."
"Tendency, tendency!" said Lutz, hesitating. "In science there is no tendency; there is but truth."