They have only reached its starting-point. Let them begin their search, and investigate every form or scheme of religion that has existed among men from the beginning of the human race; let them speculate on these to their hearts’ content, and indulge in the fancy that they have a mission to invent or construct a new religion—and what then? Why, they will find, at the end of all their earnest efforts, that there are, and especially for those who have been under the light and quickening influences of Christianity, but two possible movements, one a continuous curve and the other a tangent. One or the other of these lines they will be inevitably forced to take. If they pursue the first and push their premises to their logical consequences, they will, if intelligent and consistent, be led at some point into the circle of the Catholic Church; if they follow the latter, and have the courage of their opinions, they will declare themselves first infidels and then atheists. The fact is becoming daily more and more plain to intelligent and fearlessly honest men that there is no logical standing ground, we do not say between Catholicity and atheism—for atheism has no logical standing position whatever—but that there is no logical standing ground at all outside of Catholicity. For Catholicity professes to be, and has ever maintained that it is, the most perfect manifestation to men of the supreme divine Reason, and to reject the truths which it sets before human reason with the convincing evidence of their divine origin necessarily involves the denial of human reason itself; consequently, human reason inevitably falls, in the end, with the rejection of Catholicity. A man may reject Protestantism and claim human reason; nay, he is bound to repudiate Protestantism, if he holds to human reason, for the doctrine of “total depravity” taught by orthodox Protestant sects undermines altogether the value of human reason.[[18]] But Catholicity appeals confidently to human reason for its firm support, since its entire structure is based upon the infallibility of human reason in its sphere, and the irrefragable certitude of its great primary truths. The interdependent relations, therefore, existing between reason and Catholicity are essential, and they stand or fall together. The way that Dr. Holmes has put this question is not, we beg his pardon, the right way; he says: “Rome or Reason?” He should have said: Rome and Reason.
There can be no rational belief in God, in the immortality of the soul, in human responsibility as against Christianity, as there can be no rational belief in Christianity as against Catholicity. Outside of the Catholic Church there is only nihilism.
III.—THE DRIFTS OF FREE-RELIGIONISM.
It would be difficult to predict the precise course of these “come-outers” of the latest date, called free-religionists. Some will probably stop after having repudiated Protestantism, rest upon the truths of reason, and, without inquiring further, vainly try to satisfy, with a species of theism, the great aspirations and deep needs of their souls; eventually they may fall back on old Unitarianism. Others will venture to examine, as some before them have done, the claims of the Catholic Church, and finding that these are founded on human reason, that her doctrines perfect the truths of human reason, and that she alone is adequate to satisfy all the wants of the human heart, will become in the course of time Catholics, and save their souls—that is, reach their high destiny. Another section will, during, perhaps, their whole lives, seriously amuse themselves with the study of Brahminism, Buddhism, and every other kind of outlandish religion—not a vain intellectual amusement, except when associated with the absurd idea of concocting a new religion. While the larger section, we fear, will follow the tangent and end in nihilism. For although the main drift of the religious world outside of the Catholic Church, especially in the United States, is towards naturalism; although the face of each free-religionist looks in a somewhat different way, yet the actual movement of the greatest number of these Unitarian dissenters is apparently in the direction of zero.
Precisely where the president of the Free-Religious Association stands, to what definite truths he assents as undeniable, and what convictions he holds as settled, is not to be gathered from any of his sermons, tracts, speeches, and several published books. He seems to be laboring under the impression that he has a mission to bring forth a new religion, but thus far he or his associates in this illusive idea have given to the world no new word in religion, or in morals, or in philosophy, or in politics, or in social life, or in art, or in science, or in method, or in anything else scibile. Mr. William R. Alger has ventured to predict to his free-religionist brethren in their last annual gathering a new incarnation and its gospel, in which we fail to see anything new or important, if true. “The spirit of science,” such are the words of his prophecy, “enriched with the spirit of piety, is the avatar of the new Messiah.”
Francis Ellswood Abbot, a conspicuous member of the Free-Religious Association, as well as one of its active directors and the editor of the Index, a weekly journal which is in some sort the organ of the free-religious movement, has, among other notable things, come to the front and publicly impeached Christianity. His indictment contains five counts against the Christian religion: “human intelligence, human virtue, the human heart, human freedom, and humanitarian religion.”[[19]] Here are his charges: “Christianity,” he says, “no longer proclaims the highest truths, inculcates the purest ethics, breathes the noblest spirit, stimulates to the grandest life, holds up to the soul and to society the loftiest ideal of that which ought to be.”[[20]] But this is neither new nor original; for what is the Christianity which Mr. Abbot so boldly impeaches? Why, in all its main features it is that disfigurement of Christianity which he has inherited from his Calvinistic progenitors, and which the Council of Trent impeached, and for the most part on the very same grounds as he does, more than three centuries ago; so that in each of his articles of impeachment every Catholic to-day will heartily join, and to each of his charges say: Amen; Anathema sit!
What is surprising to Catholics is that there should be intelligent and educated men living in this enlightened nineteenth century who have found out that Calvinism is false, and have not yet discovered in the intellectual environment of Boston that Calvinism is not Christianity. “They do not attack the Catholic Church,” said Daniel O’Connell, in speaking of a similar class of men, “but a monster which they have created and called the Catholic Church.”
But Mr. Abbot is not of the men who are content to rest in mere negation. In a lecture delivered by him in a course under the auspices of the Free-Religious Association, entitled A Study of Religion, after much preliminary discourse, he gives with the heading, “The New Conception of Religion,” the following definition of religion: “Religion,” he says, “is the effort of man to perfect himself.”[[21]] Now, what is the origin of “man’s effort to perfect himself”? “Religion,” he affirms, “appears in its universal aspect as the decree of Nature that her own end shall be achieved. Religion is the inward impulsion of Nature, seconded by the conscious effort of the individual to conform to it,” etc.[[22]]
What Mr. Abbot calls “nature” and “ideal excellence in all directions” is what the common sense of mankind has named God. Mr. Abbot has no objection to the same name; only he insists that the idea of God, which is very proper, should be submitted “to the educated intelligence of the human race.”[[23]] “It is,” he says, “because I do believe in God that I am willing to submit my belief in him to the sharpest and most searching scrutiny of science.”[[24]]
Now, Mr. Abbot admits that if you once concede the Messianic claim of Christ, “then it is true that Catholicism is itself Christianity in its most perfect form.”[[25]] He therefore stops virtually in his analysis of religion at the idea of God, and, if he believed in the Divinity of Christ and did not eschew logic, he would have to embrace Catholicity. Mr. Abbot, like many Unitarians, agrees on this point with P. J. Proudhon, but with this difference: the Frenchman recedes a step, and maintains that “outside of Christianity there is no God, no religion, no faith, no theology.... The church believes in God, and believes in God more faithfully and more perfectly than any sect. The church is the purest, most perfect, and most enlightened revelation of the divine Being, and none other understands what is worship. From a religious stand-point the Catholicism of the Latin peoples is the best, the most rational, and the most perfect. Rome, in spite of her repeated and frightful falls, remains the only legitimate church.” Hence Proudhon and those of his school lay it down as a sine qua non that the elimination of the idea of God, and of all obligation to any divine law, is the condition of all true progress. From this we may draw the conclusion that Francis E. Abbot is on the curve line, and, if he follows out his definition of religion to its logical consequences, he will surely land, whatever may be the sweep of his continuous curve, in the bosom of the Catholic Church. There is no escape from this ultimate result, if reason is to rule, except by hastily taking the back track, and starting on the tangent, and eventually plunging with Proudhon into the dark abyss of nihilism. Hence every sagacious straight-line radical cannot but look upon the platform of the editor of the Index as the jumping-off place into popery for all consistent theists. That this is not meant as pleasantry, but is written in downright earnestness, we quote the conclusion of his lecture on A Study of Religion, and preface it by saying that the language with which he urges his definition of religion on his hearers finds in every word an echo in the hearts of all sincere and instructed Catholics, and receives their full endorsement.