The Elements of Molecular Mechanics. By Joseph Bayma, S.J., Professor of Philosophy, Stonyhurst College. London and Cambridge: Macmillan & Co.
This work contains a philosophical, mathematical, and mechanical theory of the ultimate molecular constitution of matter, probably the most generally interesting question now being discussed in the scientific world. It is not one which can be dismissed hastily; and we shall, therefore, postpone a fuller notice of this certainly very able treatment of the subject to a future number.
THE CATHOLIC WORLD.
VOL. X., No. 57.—DECEMBER, 1869.
FATHER HECKER'S FAREWELL SERMON.[59]
"Render, therefore, to Cæsar the things that are Cæsar's; and to God the things that are God's"—St. Matt. xxii 21.
The Pharisees endeavored to entrap our blessed Lord by a dilemma which would force him to present his doctrine under a false and untenable issue, whichever side of it he might take. He overcame their cunning by a superior wisdom which reduced them to silence and covered them with shame. In a precisely similar manner the enemies of the church are perpetually endeavoring to force upon her some false issue, with equally signal ill success. The Pharisees presented the rights of God and the rights of Cæsar as two contrary, antagonistic sides of a dilemma, one of which must be chosen to the exclusion of the other, and either one of which would be fatal to the cause of Jesus Christ. The modern enemies of the church place religion in opposition to reason, faith to science, grace to nature, liberty to authority, as if these were contrary and antagonistic to each other. They require us to choose between them. If we choose the first set of principles, they expect to ruin our cause by simply showing its opposition to the second set; if we choose the second set of principles, they expect an equally easy victory, because in that case religion and the church become unnecessary. The church will not, however, permit herself to be placed in any such false position. She will not choose between religion and reason, faith and science, grace and nature, authority and liberty, but she will embrace and reconcile them all, giving to each one of them all that is justly due to it.
At the present moment, when the pope has summoned an œcumenical council, the influence of which upon the world is dreaded by anti-Catholics and some nominally Catholic statesmen, the cry has become unusually loud and alarming that the church is assuming an aggressive attitude against science, civilization, the rights of the state, religious and political liberty. What! the church aggressive, her attitude dangerous? It is not long since you all said she was an effete institution, an affair of past ages, totally dead! Now it seems you have suddenly become afraid of her aggressions, and are alarmed lest she should swallow up all modern society. You no longer affect to pity her feebleness, but you exclaim against her audacity. Undoubtedly, the convocation of an œcumenical council by Pius IX. was a very bold act. When you consider his advanced age of nearly eighty years, the critical state of Europe, the vastness and complication of the questions and interests upon which a council must deliberate, and other circumstances well known to you all, which I need not specially enumerate, the act of the pope may very properly be characterized as one of the boldest steps which has ever been taken by any sovereign ruler.