demonstrated and perfected in its operation by the storms which the last three centuries have launched against her. The opposition to her, on the contrary, has brought about its own destruction. If the absurdities of modern individualism are to be remedied, the cure lies in an earnest consideration of the claims of Christianity. Protestantism, though a grievous calamity, has served to settle for ever all those questions concerning the supreme source of doctrinal authority which had been raised by the intrigues of the secular power in the middle age. Now it is no longer possible to confuse the sentiment of obedience to authority by reference to unlawful sources. The attack of modern governments upon the church tends still further to circumscribe the limits of secular power, and to define clearly that which belongs to Cæsar and that which belongs to God.
The stability and permanence of Catholic thought are maintained in great measure by the prerogatives of the spiritual power, which promulgates and guards the divine tradition committed to its care. But the real power which that tradition exercises is its truth and its conformity with facts. The divine revelation is made to reason. It supposes a rational being. It is accepted on rational and convincing evidence, and becomes operative in virtue of divine grace. Its aim is to elevate and ennoble human nature and to heal its infirmities. In fulfilling this mission it acts in harmony with God’s other works, always above and with reason, but never against it. It puts no obstacle in the way of human science, which, as the Vatican Council declares, can only contradict revelation by being incomplete or by misinterpreting divine truth. It encourages
labor in its development of nature as a means of discipline and as furnishing the necessary condition of peace and civilization. It stimulates art to search after beauty as a means of showing the necessity and embellishing the truth of heavenly doctrine. It is true that the Catholic faith does not permit the intellect to repose in any one of these occupations as its sole end. In the light of divine truth science and art are united by a synthesis; and the rest which faith forbids the soul to take in earthly pursuits is denied by its own nature. The synthesis which faith provides is sought restlessly and eagerly by the mind. Modern thought, which has been turned away from Catholicity, searches vainly for some principle of unity.
The faith which redeemed the ancient world and prepared the germs of that degree of civilization that has not been wholly destroyed by Protestantism, was in no respect like the withering, soul-destroying horrors of Calvinism. The doctrines which supplied matter for the intense intellectual life of the middle age, which corrected Aristotle and piled tome after tome of the close, serried reasoning of St. Thomas Aquinas, was in accord with human reason, vindicated the dignity and powers of man, and stimulated him with fresh vigor in every sphere of science, poetry, and art. Scholasticism was nothing else than an effort of human reason to demonstrate the reasonableness of Christianity. The present generation is so grossly ignorant of those eight hundred years of most intense life which formed Christendom that it is not capable of appreciating their influence and still less their character. But whoever will read the proœmium of the Summa Contra Gentiles
of the “Angel of the Schools” will see the difference between the constructive doctrine of the middle age and the reactionary delusions of the sixteenth century—the bitter fruit of that splendid revival of paganism. Protestantism, viewed as a system of doctrine, was simply an extravagant caricature of the supernaturalism of the Catholic Church. As a system of morality it was nothing else than the emancipation of the passions from the restraints imposed by Christianity. Having destroyed the necessary conditions of faith by denying authority, it presented the ideas of grace and sanctification in such a distorted manner as to render sacraments unnecessary and unmeaning, to do away with free will, merit, and natural goodness—in a word, to abolish human nature. Wherever the heirs of the so-called Reformers have revolted from the unnatural task of propagating their religious system they have left mankind, not simply bewildered by the darkness whence it has emerged, but without the heavenly guidance which genuine Christianity provides. It has robbed men of the light of heavenly doctrine, and has furthermore stripped them of the aid of the sacramental system, the means of the action of divine grace and of the growth of supernatural life, without which natural virtue and natural intelligence cannot long endure in purity.
The present state of our people calls for what Protestantism has not. Justification by faith could not save its first professor from breaking his vows and debauching another person equally bound; nor will its influence increase by repeating his famous dictum, Pecca fortiter sed crede fortius. The evanescence of genuine fanaticism on the part of
evangelical religion is no guarantee of a better state of morals. Our people have got beyond simply believing and feeling; they wish to do right, but they are gradually coming to acknowledge that man cannot do right without knowing what he ought to do, viz., what is right; and the best and wisest will confess that they do not know what they ought to do, and that they can see nothing in the future from whence they may expect to learn. Whether they will be content to review the evidences of Catholicity we know not. Many are doing so, but the intense worldliness of the day is not favorable to serious thought on the part, of the multitude. Should, however, the authority of true Christianity be revealed to, and accepted by, them, we may justly expect a development of the utmost significance in the history of the world.
Catholicity not only preserves and restores the Christian truth of which men have been robbed by the heresies of the Reformation, but it preserves, sanctifies, and makes fruitful the natural goodness which remains in the individual, the race, and the nation. But above all things it applies those principles of natural justice and purity which are now so seriously jeopardized.
An unjust man can console himself, when transmitting his dishonest gains to his descendants, by reflecting that he is to be justified by faith alone. This has been done to our certain knowledge, and doubtless every New Englander can recall similar cases. A man who admits the injustice of his transactions can find ways of forgetting his indebtedness. The fraudulent bankrupt can revel in the wealth of his wife and children. Even the thief
who admits in the abstract the obligation of restoring that which he has stolen, without the assistance of the confessional is too apt to cling to that which he has once acquired.