All that exists belongs to God. All science, all truth comes from him, the great First Cause, from whom all things proceed, in whom there can be no contradiction. His works, therefore, cannot contradict him nor contradict each other. Natural truth and revealed truth must, then, be in harmony, and we do not fear a conflict between them. The Catholic student of science is as fearless an investigator as is his rationalist confrère; but the former will not rashly give himself up to speculations the other’s further experience will oblige him to retract. The facts of science will never be in opposition to revelation, though the interpretation of scientific men may be, to their discomfiture later on. Even if the teacher of revelation, the church, should by any possibility, as is asserted in the case of Galileo, fail in a disciplinary decree with regard to scientific research, such decrees not being infallible utterances of the Holy See, there remains always the remedy of a reversal when the incontestable proof of the contrary, such as he did not bring forward, shall be produced. So spoke Cardinal Bellarmine, one of Galileo’s judges. Though we may safely say that those in charge of the interests of the church do well in being exceedingly careful how they interfere with scientific investigation, it nevertheless may become necessary at times to curb the license of those who undertake to interpret the truths of revelation according to their ideas or appreciation of science. How many scientific theories fall to pieces every day! And is it not reasonable that those who believe in a revelation should not be left at the mercy of every clever scientific man who is pleased to have a tilt against it? Let any scientific truth be fully proved, and the Catholic Church will be the first to applaud, for it redounds to the glory of her Head.
We need not, however, confine ourselves to this negative way of advocating the cause of revelation as friendly to science, for there is no dearth of positive proof of the fact.
Revelation is positively of advantage to the study of science. It is clear that any one who keeps me, when on a journey, from going out of my way saves me an amount of time and trouble. Instead of wandering in the woods and bypaths, I am enabled to keep the highway and so reach sooner my destination. This is one of the important services revelation renders science. It tells us: Don’t direct your attention hither or thither; for you will find out you are wrong, after losing precious time and making yourself a laughing-stock. Don’t go in search of the “missing link,” for you won’t find it. Don’t divide the unity of the human race, for it is one—of one man and one woman. Don’t grovel with the materialists; for man has a spirit, and he is destined for a better life hereafter. Such like warnings we have from revelation, and, instead of going astray with evolutionists and so-called philosophers, we employ our time and talents on points that are serious and practical in science and nature; and Heaven knows there are plenty of these to engage us. The result is useful knowledge that does not undo but builds up society and perfects civilization. For this our grateful thanks are due revelation.
Then, again, revelation opens up to us new fields of thought. It gives us an insight into what we could not otherwise know. It is as if chance discovered to us some principle of art or science no one had before suspected. Once presented, reason can occupy itself on it, explore it as far as possible, make deductions and applications. How much human ethics have gained in clearness and usefulness by the light of the command to love our neighbor, and by the example of the Redeemer of man! How much speculative philosophy with regard to personality, responsibility, good and evil, and the future life! The crude theories of pagan times excite our compassion nowadays, though we honor the ability of their original propounders; yet these same theories we see now broached by those who have cast aside revelation, but often with less depth and less wisdom than the pagan in whose mind not all the light of natural religion was quenched. No! revelation is the friend of science; science divorced from religion, the vaunted glory of to-day, is the enemy of progress; retrograde in all save the energetic talent that is lost in its service.
A few examples will show what revelation or the church has done and is doing for the cause of education; whether it has checked the development of man or favored it.
We will go to the “dark ages,” in which those who oppose the church as an educator are wont to find their cheval de bataille, their bugbear to frighten off those inclined to trust her. We say nothing of the unfairness of Protestants who wilfully ignore the sad state of the Roman world consequent on the barbarian invasions of the fifth, sixth, and seventh centuries, and the struggles with the Saracens, who penetrated even into Italy—a condition of things most inimical to the quiet requisite for study; who pass over the conquest of those barbarians and their civilization by the church; who pretend to know nothing of what was done by the monks to preserve learning in their monasteries, to whom the preservation of the classic, philosophic, and ascetic works of antiquity and of the early church—the Bible among them—is due. We come to the thirteenth century. There we see, burning with a light that is celestial, a luminary not of the church only but of human reason—St. Thomas Aquinas, the Angelic Doctor. There was hardly a branch of intellectual pursuit of which he was not a master. His works are wonderful, and have always been a precious and useful legacy in every subsequent age. His great work, the Sum of Theology, has remained the text-book of theologians. In fact, no theologian is master of his subject who has not made St. Thomas the object of his constant study. Though at times somewhat neglected, we may safely say that at present there is an increasing appreciation of his works. Certainly this is true of his philosophical treatise Contra Gentiles. There is now a wide-spread movement in all civilized nations to return to the use of the metaphysical and ethical teachings of St. Thomas, and it will be the means of regenerating such philosophical studies in this epoch of individual self-assertion, of ipse dixits, when every man of talent who lists puts forth his own hazy speculations as the truth, and strives to force down his deductions as the ne plus ultra of science. Domenico Soto, at the Council of Trent, defined scholastic theology to be reason illumined by faith; we may, like him, style scholastic philosophy reason kept in its right path by the torch of faith. In the works of St. Thomas will be found the refutation of the pantheism of Spinoza and the present German school, of the materialism of Hobbes and Büchner, of the utilitarian ideas of Mill, Spencer, and others of the followers of Puffendorf. We shall find, too, in his writings the ablest defence of revelation, and the sound principles that will enable us to put to flight the whole host of mythical theorists of the age. So much for theology, metaphysics, and ethics.
If we wish to speak of the work of the church in poetry, science, and literature, we have a monument of what she could do, even in the middle ages, in Dante. We hardly know which to admire most in this extraordinary man—his native genius, his extraordinary powers of imagination, the beauty of his imagery, the remarkable knowledge of theology and philosophy he exhibits in his writings, or the beauty of the language he created. His culture was due to the church; his inspiration was drawn from revelation; and his science he drank in at the great schools established and carried on by the church in Italy, in France, and in England. So pre-eminent is this writer, philosopher, and poet, that even in the nineteenth century our own poet whose works are read and justly appreciated wherever the English language is spoken—Henry W. Longfellow—has deemed it well worthy of his own genius to be his translator. Yet Dante is the product of the Catholic Church.
But the fashion to-day is to extol physical science. Of a truth, physical science does not hold, and should not hold, the first place. If man were only matter, it might and should; but he has a soul, and the spiritual and intellectual world is his proper sphere. Scientific knowledge is useful for the arts that serve to make commerce prosper, and should be sought after; but to make commerce and what pertains to it, and the material comforts of man, the main object of his thoughts and aims is a monstrous disorder.
However, even in this sphere of physical science the church is not afraid of her competitors. We leave to one side old Friar Bacon and other patriarchs of science, and we come to our own day. The church can point to Angelo Secchi, one of the first of living astronomers and physical scientists, and a member of a society that counts among its members men distinguished in every branch of human knowledge—the Society of Jesus. So great is the pre-eminence of this distinguished savant in his native Italy that, since the city of Rome has been in the hands of the present rulers, they have left nothing undone to gain him over to their side. And it is a pleasure to us to pay this public tribute to the noble fidelity he has shown to his faith, his church, and his society, giving as he does a splendid example of the alliance between the most advanced physical science and the Catholic Church.
As faithful adherents to revelation, though not Catholics, we may mention the late Prof. Faraday and the no less distinguished Dr. Carpenter, who show that revelation and science do not war against each other.