Catholic Christianity and modern unbelief ...

Front matter

AND

CQodei^n Unbelief.

A PLAIN AND BRIEF STATEMENT

Preface

This work was suggested to me by a man of more than ordinary powers of observation and intelligence, who bad travelled over every part of tbe United States, and through most of the British colonies. His was not superficial travelling ; his duties led him to stay for weeks, and months, and even years, in some of the States, and in particular districts ; and the same duties gave him an insight into the religious wants of the people he visited. He told me that a book which would treat, in a popular way, the religious theories now so fashionable outside the Catholic Church, and contrast them with orthodox teaching, would be welcome and useful to many. I distrusted exceedingly my powers to accomplish a task, not altogether foreign to my experience ; but on consideration that it might help in a small way even to promote the honor and glory of God, I accepted it.

It will be manifest to any one who reads the introduction or glances over the headings of the chapters, that I make no pretensions whatever to scholarship : the life of. a missionary Bishop is almost an effectual barrier to careful and prolonged study and to the means of gratifying such tastes. I have, however, been observant of the currents of religious thought outside the Catholic Church in the colony where I have spent thirty-five years of my life as priest or Bishop ; and I have occasionally, when I believed it was my duty to check their turbulent course,

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especially whenever they seemed to assail the ground of Catholic teaching, endeavored to do so to the best of my ability. One cannot travel much, as I have done, over the large area confided to my spiritual care without encountering many un-Oatholic notions ; and it has been my constant practice to watch attentively these straws of religious opinion, and with the help of such books as I could collect, to examine what was the source of these peculiar views.

It was always a pleasure, not alone in the interests of orthodox teaching, but for the sake of communicating the results of my reading to men remarkable for that outspoken freedom of thought, which marks young countries, to "give reasons for the faith that is in me." It was often highly gratifying to be able thus to remove deep-seated prejudices, and to show those who, by their pleased and grateful attention, invited such explanation, that Catholics were not quite as bad as the teachers of error represented them to be. The frequent remark, "You surprise me," "Is it so, really ?" "Can what you say be the real truth ?" " How different is what you say from what I have always heard !" often, made me hopeful that those with whom I conversed might push their inquiries farther.

This habit of life will explain much that might otherwise be almost unintelligible to readers of the book in Catholic countries. The bold daring of the objections and the answers, so far removed from anything like scholastic precision, would seem to indicate a state of thought and feeling almost unknown to those of the "Household of the Faith." This must be my apology lor much that is not found in the pages of ordinary works of a controversial character.

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a.ndeed, this book can scarcely be considered a polemical work at all. There is manifestly a plunge in medias resy without any attempt to prepare the way by building up a solid starting-point of sound principles and elaborate arguments. Possibly this absence of formality may cause the book to be more generally read than it otherwise would be. I can assure those who may be thus attracted to examine its contents, that their reading will not be impeded by any show of learning or stiff reasoning derived from treatises on theology and metaphysics.

My object has been throughout to state the difficulties urged by unbelief against Catholic Christianity plainly and even forcibly — much more forcibly than they have been put to me by travelling companions, and men whom I have met, disposed to discuss religious questions. The answers are directed chiefly to common-sense, and are supported by plain matter-of-fact demonstrations carefully selected, on account of their simplicity, from hosts of others more suited to the schools.

The whole plan of the work is conceived on the same principles. I first endeavor to show what Catholic Christianity is as a whole, regarded from the point of view of a believer ; how all its doctrines, mysteries, sacraments, worship, and practices spring from a right understanding of the great mystery — God in the flesh, which forms the basis of all revealed religion. I then carefully eliminate this body of doctrine from the misunderstandings and misrepresentations to which it is commonly subjected, distinguish it from the doctrines of Christian sects, and explain fully these differences on the important questions of Justification, Free-will, Grace, and Predestination. If at times this leads me into the path of controversy, I have been careful to turn aside from the well-beaten track as

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soon as it was possible, satisfying myself with noting, in characters that cannot be mistaken by ordinary intelligence, the essential marks of true Catholic teaching.

When this has been effected, and Catholic Christianity stands forth in its dogmas and practices as I revere and love it, and as I believe it is revered and loved by the two hundred millions of my fellow-Catholics throughout the world, I contrast its sublime grandeur, its venerable antiquity, and its unchanging truth with the fascinations of unbelief.

I do not enter minutely into the analysis of these theories that are the fashion of the hour. It is unnecessary to do so. They are self -conflicting, like their teachers, " tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine," and ever dashing against the sound principles of revealed religion, as established and bound together by the labors of Christian scholars in every age, on the solid foundation laid by Christ Himself.

There is nothing worthy of serious study in any of these ephemeral systems that amuse the fancies of a frivolous and unthinking generation.

" We live," said the late Lord Beaconsfleld, " in an age when young men prattle about protoplasm and when young ladies, in golden saloons, unconsciously talk Atheism."

" Positive polity," says another able writer, " is composed of concrete and abstract, positive and metaphysical elements of fact and fiction, of entity and non entity." It would be a mere loss of time to pick and choose among these glittering toys, sometimes facts, and more often fictions, set before the public by unbelieving scientific writers, and out of these elements to construct something worth battering down by theological argument.

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When the scientific teachers themselves understand what they teach, and unite in giving the world something like a system, it will be time enough for the upholders of revealed religion to refute it.

As one of the distinguished lecturers before the Christian Evidence Society says of the grand theory of Development : " Development is in truth as amazing and incomprehensible a mystery as creation. It seems to be but another word for creation. Only they who affect to use it instead of the word creation insist upon creation without a creator. The unintelligent and unconscious universe, in their view, is continually creating itself — Professor Huxley's protoplasm breaks it down. All scientific evidence is opposed to the idea that protoplasm was developed out of inorganic matter. The hypothesis of spontaneous life-generation appears to be exploded. Science at any rate, on its own positive principles, has no right whatever to pretend that life has ever been developed out of what was not living."

Just so, at one time in the world's history, we are told by the leaders of progress, everything was inorganic and dead ; then that all was living.

Whence did life come % It could not be developed. Was it then created ? When scientific men are agreed on this one point — the origin of life — then no doubt there will appear able supporters of revealed religion to demonstrate to an interested public that the source of life is the great, omnipotent, and all-knowing personal God, " by Whom all things were made, and without Whom was made nothing that was made."

In the meantime, and until progress has laid before the world its demonstration of the origin of life, Christians of all denominations can rest securely on the words of the

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inspired writer, "Thou Thyself O Lord, alone, Thou

hast made heaven, and the heaven of heavens, and all the hosts thereof : the earth and all the things that are in it : the seas, and all that are therein ; and Thou givest life to all these things, and the host of heaven adoreth Thee" (2 Esdras ix. 6).

Contents

PAGE

Dedication 3

Preface 5

Introduction

If one could calmly contemplate the great stream of human life as it rolls on toward the ocean of eternity, and with a keen power of perception, such as is rarely given to finite reason, grasp the aims and projects of the masses as they are swept onward in their rapid course, he would soon be convinced that few among the many millions concern themselves about " the wide, the unbounded prospect" that lies before them after death. It is not simply that " shadows, clouds, and darkness rest upon it," but that they do not care or concern themselves to look forward, and try to penetrate the dark future. Life with its busy cares absorbs the whole attention of the many, and if Death and its immortal consequences roughly obtrude upon their day-dreams, the grim phantom is at once relegated to the land of myths and shadows.

The blighting curse of the present age is the total absence of serious thought about the great hereafter. Well may the words of the prophet be applied to the myriads who are so fascinated with the joys and pursuits of the present short-lived time as to take no precautions whatever against the wreck and ruin of all that should be most dear to beings who "shall never die:" — "With desolation is all the land made desolate ; because there is none that considereth in the heart" (Jeremias xii. 11). Men will talk occasionally about these all-important sul> jects, but they will not think. They will even jest an#

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trifle about them, if they can in no other way shake off the gloomy vision; and as "the fool hath said" — not thought — " in his heart, there is no God " (Psalm xiii. 1), so will they who " love the world and the things that are in the world " say and affect to believe that there is no future to cause them apprehension.

I believe that no one of ordinary intelligence and observation will deny that unbelief, the offspring of frivolity and thoughtlessness, is rapidly spreading over the whole civilized world. It is not philosophical and reasoning Infidelity that is causing whole nations, in this nineteenth century, to turn away from God and His Christ and the hopes of Faith, but thoughtless and flippant ridicule of the joys and terrors set before us by revelation. It is utter carelessness and indifference about sacred things that is doing this wide-spread mischief.

Voltaire, and the wretched crew who sided with him in the war against Christianity, perverted their splendid abilities in order to fling away the fetters and restraints of conscience and the Divine law. They labored hard, they spared themselves no toil, they shrunk from no sacrifice of honor or truth, to carry out their diabolical purpose, and " ecraser Vinfame"

But the laughing, jeering, mocking infidels of our time have found a shorter way than this to secure what are called " the glorious privileges of Free-thought." They simply caricature revealed religion, picture to themselves an extravagantly ludicrous creation of their irreverent and unrestrained imagination, and, instead of the venerable and beautiful "mother of all the living" that ruled the hearts and guided the steps of her wayward children with infinite patience and love, set up a hateful monster, hideous in its deformity, and destitute of any quality

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deserving of reverence and affection. They leave all the thinking and reasoning to a few deluded visionaries of science, who, in the pride of their grand discoveries and inventions, have been led to worship themselves, and forget the God who made them ; and, borrowing from these prophets and guides some charming but extravagant theories, they amuse their idle hours with fancy sketches of Religion, that convulse themselves with merriment, and which, while they amuse the thoughtless multitude, effectually rob them of every element of reverent and trusting faith.

What do these " blind leaders of the blind " care for patient reasoning and sound argument ? They will not give themselves the trouble to entertain a serious thought on such a subject. If they are checked by the thoughtful and the wise, and called upon to explain the principles that are supposed to sustain their crude and whimsical notions of the Deity and the world to come, they at once fall back on the great discovery of the age — Agnosticism. " God," they say, " is the unknown and unknowable."

This great principle of Positivism and modern Free-thought being once supposed, there is no going beyond this stronghold. Nay, admit for a moment this crowning bulwark of Infidelity, and the very raw recruits of the movement will dash forth in brilliant charges on the lines of Christian argument. " Who can tell us anything of the unknowable — who hath seen the invisible? Who can say anything with certainty of the dark future ? Who will venture to say that we have immortal souls, or speculate on the blank form of eternity of which we can know absolutely nothing ?"

Our great leaders in scientific research have settled it to their own satisfaction, that nothing can be established

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as a fact save through the reason instructed by bodily sense. " This is an axiom, and therefore no one can argue about Heaven, or Hell, or the Immortality of the soul. These things possibly may be ; but they are beyond the ken of beings who have their eyes and ears and hands and smell and taste to guide them to rational conclusions. Everything beyond plain and satisfactory results like these is irrational and absurd. And why, therefore, should we concern ourselves about proofs in revelation, and prophecies and mysteries and miracles, when it is manifestly beyond our powers of thought to convince others, or be convinced ourselves, that there is such a thing as a personal God ?"

Sophistry like this will of course be readily admitted by the ignorant or unthinking crowd, who care only to drive away from the conscience whatever can put a restraint on their sensual appetites. They have neither the time nor the disposition to confuse their minds with the "musty old questions of the ages of darkness and superstition." Carpe diem: "A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush." " Let us eat, drink, and be merry, as we float joyously and swiftly down the stream of life. And if to-morrow we die, why then it will be time enough to think of the future — if indeed there is a future."

This, without exaggeration, is, I believe, the sum and substance of the laughing, gay, and rollicking sort of Infidelity, which is fast dissipating from the minds of the giddy throng even their nebulous and shadowy traditions of the old Faith, that has sustained the world for eighteen hundred years.

It can easily be seen from this that the Infidelity of the latter part of the nineteenth century is much more dan

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gerous to society than that of any former age. The Yoltaireans were wits and scholars. They read a great deal, they were familiar with every passage in the Sacred Scriptures which their leader had applied all his learning to twist and transform into a sense that captivated the polished taste of his admiring votaries. They had learned from him to set a witty or epigrammatic form of expression above all other excellences in writing or in speech ; and to esteem the play of fancy most of all whenever it ridiculed what was sacred and venerable in the thoughts and convictions of believers. But the double-entendres, and bon-mots, and the flashing epigram were above the perceptions of the unread and uneducated, and were the exclusive property of a privileged class. "Partem et circenses" cheap food and unrestrained enjoyment, no labor, no taxes — these were the fruits of the new philosophy that charmed the masses. They heeded not the fine sayings and the learned doctrines of the Encyclopsedia and the Dictionary of Philosophy, so long as the sovereign will of the people triumphed, and an age of wholesale levelling set in. The gay crowds of the cities of France were delirious with the new spirit of progress. They shouted "A bas les Aristocrates" "A has les Pretres" with the same frenzy as the high-sounding names " Liberie , Egalite, Fraternite" and danced like fiends round the tree of liberty. While they had their own way, unrestrained by law and order and the dictates of conscience and the warnings of religion, it mattered little to them how their leaders thought out the political problems of the hour, or what idols were set up for their adoration. They were as brutal as the crowd at the foot of Sinai ; and, had a golden calf been placed on the altar instead of a shameless woman, it would have been all the

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same, provided it symbolized the reign of lawlessness and sensuality.

Things are quite different now. The hruttcm fulmen — the power of the law supported by bayonets — keeps the mob in order. No high-wrought sentimentalism for fellow-citizens will cause men who have money in the funds to fraternize with poverty-stricken wretches who presume to disturb the public order. Simon Tappertits may thunder in dark cellars against government, and the rights of property; trades-unions may now and then show their teeth in public ; but if they growl or even bark, they dare not bite. For this reason, the Infidelity that is corrupting the masses of the chief towns of Europe, causes no alarm ; and therefore it has advanced unchecked, until now it has reached a point that may well excite the apprehensions of all governments.

It is more than forty years ago that I read of one of the Bradlaugh class, who, in his club-room in London, defied God to strike him dead, if the horrid blasphemies he uttered were untrue, and pointing to the clock, gave his Divine Maker a full five minutes to carry out the imprecation, It is stated, in the respectable publication in which I read the account of the revolting occurrence, that a terror seemed to diffuse itself over the whole assembly as they watched the hands slowly move over the interval, and looked at the sturdy ruffian who had thus dared to outrage and trample out the conscience of his fellow-men stand with folded arms awaiting the result. I venture to state that at the present day, in thousands of workingmen's associations in Great Britain, where men speak freely of religion, a sensational scene like this, if attempted, would only provoke a laugh ; and that the speaker who would boldly deny the existence of God

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would be told to pass on to some other point of greater interest and less admitted and understood.

Those who have read in Dickens' " Barnaby Rudge" the account of the Gordon riots (when some fanatics who gloried in the heritage of Free-thought, urged the mob to crush the Roman Catholics of London for daring to petition for something like the free exercise of their religion), may think that nothing could be worse than the condition of the metropolis during these terrible days of riot and confusion. But I feel assured, from what I have read of the secret societies in that great city, and seen of the illustrated printed matter circulated amongst them, that the Gordon riots would afford the faintest idea of the scenes of violence and confusion that would ensue if for any cause the strong arm of the law were paralyzed or suspended. It is a terrible thing to realize to one's self that in these enlightened days, when we are supposed to bask in the enjoyment of that much-lauded Free-thought and independence of Divine authority in religion, there is scarcely such a thing as a conscience in the souls of the most dreaded and dangerous classes ; that no sense of right and wrong, and fear of God and His chastisements, would offer the least restraint to the perpetration of deeds, the bare thought of which makes one sick with terror ; and that it is only fear of " the powers that be" — cringing, whipt-dog fear — that keeps the mobs of our great cities of Europe in anything like order.

Education without religion is to a great extent the cause of this state of things ; but the main cause of all is the absence of Divine Faith, which is the necessary consequence of rebellion against legitimate authority. The Catholic Church, through her divinely instituted teaching body, has never ceased to warn the rulers of this world

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that the seeds of that wild teaching, scattered at the will of each individual, will infallibly produce its fatal results — " They shall sow wind, and reap a whirlwind " (Osee viii. 7).

Hitherto I have confined the contrast between the Infidelity of the present day and that of the period of the great Revolution of the eighteenth century to the effects on the working-classes, or the uneducated portion of the community. In the higher classes, also, there is much to be noted that makes the Infidelity of the present age more dangerous to society than that of the Yoltairean period. The educated Yoltaireans prided themselves on an accurate knowledge of the arts and sciences, the facts of history, and the discoveries of the learned, that rendered them, in their opinion, immeasurably superior in learning to the scholars in the service of the Church. This was in truth only a conceit ; for the clergy of France at the time had every advantage which could be afforded by colleges and universities, and the long training for the ministry, and the careful study of philosophy, and of " the science of sciences" — theology. This knowledge was practically tested by repeated examinations, and after ordination, by annual conferences which insured competent knowledge in all the clergy. The Yoltairean, therefore, to shine in the salons and enjoy triumph over his clerical adversary, should necessarily be well-informed, and quick and sharp in argument, on all topics connected with religion.

The Lord Dundrearies of our time and their Ladyships, who have made up their minds to enjoy life and let the future take care of itself, abhor everything like religious controversy. Even amongst the rich and wellto-do commoners such subjects are tabooed ; for it is well

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understood that to raise questions on religion m polite and polished circles is directly opposed to good taste and the convenances of society. Lady So-and-so may, through the irresistible instincts of a benevolent disposition, take an interest in certain charitable institutions ; or ray Lord love to preside at meetings for the benefit of the benighted heathens of Borrioboola-Gha, or Alderman Bull and his amiable lady delight in heading a large subscription-list in the Times ; but you will scarcely find one of these tranquil and self-satisfied souls who will allow the calm surface of their lives to be rippled by the breath of an earnest discussion about truths that concern the world to come.

There is little to move any of this easy-going class to self-sacrifice or disinterested labor for the honor and glory of God and the good of their neighbor, where the work does not fall in with their notions of what is fashionable and becoming. If the preacher of the church, where they are wont to attend, commends himself to them and their " set" by the suavity of his voice and manner and the sesthetical arrangement of his nambypamby essays on morality in general, and if the choir sing prettily, they condescend to patronize Divine worship Sunday after Sunday unless they feel indisposed. But woe betide the preacher if he should dare to ruffle their tender sensibilities by allusion to the fact that "the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent only bear it away" (Matt. xi. 12), or the necessity of taking up the cross daily, or the judgment, and the wrath to come. He may soon address his appeals to empty benches. These good people are too fond of their own comfort to expose themselves to the danger of having their equanimity disturbed, and they prefer some charm-

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ing novel, in their own quiet snuggery, to the luxurious ease of the family pew.

It is a well-known fact that there are in fashionable quarters of London whole streets of mansions the Sabbath rest of which is never broken by the sounds of carriages conveying the wealthy proprietors to and from the parochial church on Sundays.

I have been told by an old resident of the great city that the rule of life in these paradisaical retreats, on the Lord's Day, is, within the last fifteen or twenty years, to have a social gathering of kindred spirits on Saturday nights, generally prolonged to the small hours with music and dancing, and a sumptuous supper, to give the greater part of Sunday to indolent repose, and to take a drive in the afternoon to give zest to the late evening meal. When this becomes fashionable and the correct thing, as it seems to be already, how poor are the chances of even a gleam of spiritual life ! And when superadded to this the reading of works of a transcendental character, in which a loftier idea of the aims and objects of life is pretended than vulgar Christianity or the Bible suggests, becomes the rage, and these favored children of fortune, reclining on luxurious couches, dream away their existence

"till human time Shall fold its eyelids, and the human sky- Be gathered like a scroll within the tomb, Unread forever,"

what is to become of sturdy, healthy Faith, and walking in the footsteps of " the Man of sorrows" ? Well might our Divine Lord, in His luminous vision of these lotus-eaters of the world of fashion in these latter times, exclaim, "When the Son of Man cometh, shall He find, think you, faith on earth ?" (Luke xviii. 8.)

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It will be readily inferred from this tendency of the age to indifference about religion — life without God, education without God, the poor deprived of the consolations of Faith, and chafing under the sense of cruel wrong, and longing ardently for the day when capital and its possessors shall be dragged down from their earthly paradise, and compelled to share their coveted possessions ; the rich wrapped up in the selfish enjoyment and repose that comes of " beauteous order" and the "gladness of the world," that the spread of irreligion and the forgetfulness of God and the future must be far wider than is generally imagined. Yes, and it will continue to diffuse itself with ever-increasing rapidity where it does not encounter the Rock founded by an Almighty hand, and that immovable barrier against which He has assured us even the powers of hell shall never prevail.

If that Rock could be upheaved, if that barrier could be swept away, if the " everlasting Church" could crumble into ruins, what then could stem the tide of evil that is rising every day higher and higher, till it fills with alarm every man of mind that watches its progress ?

Will Free-thought, and the right of all men to deal as they think fit with the Divine message, stem the surging torrent ? "Why, this is itself the true source and origin of the growing impiety. If this boasted prerogative of human pride were not sustained by the bond of formularies and creeds, it would long ago have been overwhelmed by the forces it has called into existence.

"Will the millions and millions of Bibles that are teeming from the press close the breaches which Pantheism and Socialism, and the other "isms" Free-thought has engendered, are making in its feeble and worthless barrier ? Why, it is this senseless scattering of the Word of

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God amongst the crowds, who can hardly read, much less understand its pages, that has robbed the Holy Book of that strength and power with which it was endowed while it was carefully guarded by the Church from the touch of profanity, and made it as useless as the dust trodden down on the highways, to oppose the floods of Infidelity.

Will emotional piety, however worked up by stirring appeals to sentiment, dare to sustain itself in the way of the accumulated waters of unbelief, that now assert themselves openly and defiantly, and can already be heard by those "who have ears to hear," threatening the foundations of social order? As well might we hope to dam the furious course of a swollen river with a bundle of weak and perishable reeds.

The only salvation of the world against this ever-increasing danger is, I repeat, the Rock established more than eighteen centuries ago, by our Divine Redeemer. We have His solemn promise that this Rock shall never fail. It has stood the test of perils that seemed overwhelming from within and without. It defied, for three hundred years, the persecution of the greatest power the world ever saw. It has crushed by its ponderous mass the almost immovable heresies that endeavored to sap its deep foundations ; and though it stands alone in these latter times, and apart from all human aid to protect it, it seems to smile, with the bright look of unfading youth, on every effort of the powers of earth and hell to upheave it. " Heaven and earth shall pass away, but My word," says the Son of God — the promise to sustain it, " shall never pass away."