It will not do to say that every successful religion that has taught unnatural doctrines, unnatural practices, must of necessity have been of divine origin. In most religions there has been a strange mingling of the good and bad, of the merciful and cruel, of the loving and malicious. Buddhism taught the universal brotherhood of man, insisted on the development of the mind, and this religion was propagated not by the sword, but by preaching, by persuasion, and by kindness—yet in many things it was contrary to the human will, contrary to the human passions, and contrary to good sense. Buddhism succeeded. Can we, for this reason, say that it is a supernatural religion? Is the unnatural the supernatural?

It is insisted that, while other churches have changed, the Catholic Church alone has remained the same, and that this fact demonstrates its divine origin.

Has the creed of Buddhism changed in three thousand years? Is intellectual stagnation a demonstration of divine origin? When anything refuses to grow, are we certain that the seed was planted by God? If the Catholic church is the same to-day that it has been for many centuries, this proves that there has been no intellectual development. If men do not differ upon religious subjects, it is because they do not think.

Differentiation is the law of growth, of progress. Every church must gain or lose; it cannot remain the same; it must decay or grow. The fact that the Catholic church has not grown-that it has been petrified from the first-does not establish divine origin; it simply establishes the fact that it retards the progress of man. Everything in nature changesevery atom is in motion-every star moves. Nations, institutions and individuals have youth, manhood, old age, death. This is and will be true of the Catholic Church. It was once weak-it grew stronger-it reached its climax of power-it

began to decay-it never can rise again. It is confronted by the dawn of Science. In the presence of the nineteenth century it cowers.

It is not true that “All natural causes run to disintegration."

Natural causes run to integration as well as to disintegration. All growth is integration, and all growth is natural. All decay is disintegration, and all decay is natural. Nature builds and nature destroys. When the acorn grows-when the sunlight and rain fall upon it and the oak rises-so far as the oak is concerned "all natural causes" do not "run to disintegration." But there comes a time when the oak has reached its limit, and then the forces of nature run towards disintegration, and finally the old oak falls. But if the Cardinal is right—if "all natural causes run to disintegration," then every success must have been of divine origin, and nothing is natural but destruction. This is Catholic science: "All natural causes run to disintegration." What do these. causes find to disintegrate? Nothing that is natural. The fact that the thing is not disintegrated shows that it was and is of supernatural origin. According to the Cardinal, the only business of nature is to disentegrate the supernatural. To prevent this, the supernatural needs the protection of the Infinite. According to this doctrine, if anything lives and grows, it does so in spite of nature. Growth, then, is not in accordance with, but in opposition to nature. Every plant is supernatural-it defeats the disintegrating influences of rain and light. The generalization of the Cardinal is half the truth. It would be equally true to say: All natural causes run to integration. But the whole truth is that growth and decay are equal.

The Cardinal asserts that "Christendom was created by the world-wide Church as we see it before our eyes at this day.

374

Philosophers and statesmen believe it to be the work of their own hands; they did not make it, but they have for three hundred years been unmaking it by reformations and revolutions.

The meaning of this is that Christendom was far better three hundred years ago than now: that during these three centuries Christendom has been going towards barbarism. It means that the supernatural Church of God has been a failure for three hundred years: that it has been unable to withstand the attacks of philosophers and statesmen, and that it has been helpless in the midst of "reformations and revolutions."

What was the condition of the world three hundred years ago, the period, according to the Cardinal, in which the Church reached the height of its influence, and since which it has been unable to withstand the rising tide of reformation and the whirlwind of revolution?

In that blessed time, Philip II. was king of Spain—he with the cramped head and the monstrous jaw. Heretics were hunted like wild and poisonous beasts; the inquisition was firmly established, and priests were busy with rack and fire. With a zeal born of the hatred of man and the love of God, the Church, with every instrument of torture, touched every nerve in the human body.

In those happpy days, the Duke of Alva was devastating the homes of Holland; heretics were buried alive-their tongues were torn from their mouths, their lids from their eyes; the Armada was on the sea for the destruction of the heretics of England, and the Moriscoes-a million and a half of industrious people-were being driven by sword and flame from their homes. The Jews had been expelled from Spain. This Catholic country had succeeded in driving intelligence and industry from its territory; and this had been done with a cruelty, with a ferocity, unequaled in the annals of crime.

Nothing was left but ignorance, bigotry, intolerance, credulity, the Inquisition, the seven sacraments and the seven deadly sins. And yet a Cardinal of the nineteenth century, living in the land of Shakespeare, regrets the change that has been wrought by the intellectual efforts, by the discoveries, by the inventions and heroism of three hundred years.

Three hundred years ago, Charles IX., in France, son of Catherine de Medici, in the year of grace 1572-after nearly sixteen centuries of Catholic Christianity-after hundreds of vicars of Christ had sat in St. Peter's chair-after the natural passions of man had been "softened" by the creed of Rome -came the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, the result of a conspiracy between the Vicar of Christ, Philip II., Charles IX., and his fiendish mother. Let the Cardinal read the account of this massacre once more, and, after reading it, imagine that he sees the gashed and mutilated bodies of thousands of men and women, and then let him say that he regrets the revolutions and reformations of three hundred years.

About three hundred years ago Clement VIII., Vicar of Christ, acting in God's place, substitute of the Infinite, persecuted Giordano Bruno even unto death. This great, this sublime man, was tried for heresy. He had ventured to assert the rotary motion of the earth; he had hazarded the conjecture that there were in the fields of infinite space worlds larger and more glorious than ours. For these low and groveling thoughts, for this contradiction of the word and vicar of God, this man was imprisoned for many years. But his noble spirit was not broken, and finally, in the year 1600, by the orders of the infamous Vicar, he was chained to the stake. Priests believing in the doctrine of universal forgivenesspriests who when smitten upon one cheek turned the othercarried with a kind of ferocious joy fagots to the feet of this incomparable man. These disciples of "Our Lord" were

made joyous as the flames, like serpents, climbed around the body of Bruno. In a few moments the brave thinker was dead, and the priests who had burned him fell upon their knees and asked the infinite God to continue the blessed work forever in hell.

There are two things that cannot exist in the same universe -an infinite God and a martyr.

Does the Cardinal regret that kings and emperors are not now engaged in the extermination of Protestants? Does he regret that dungeons of the Inquisition are no longer crowded with the best and bravest? Does he long for the fires of the auto da fé?

In coming to a conclusion as to the origin of the Catholic Church-in determining the truth of the claim of infallibility— we are not restricted to the physical achievements of that Church, or to the history of its propagation, or to the rapidity of its growth.

Let

This Church has a creed; and if this Church is of divine origin-if its head is the vicar of Christ, and, as such, infallible in matters of faith and morals, this creed must be true. us start with the supposition that God exists, and that he is infinitely wise, powerful and good—and this is only a supposition. Now, if the creed is foolish, absurd and cruel, it cannot be of divine origin. We find in this creed the following:

"Whosoever will be saved, before all things it is necessary that he hold the Catholic faith."

It is not necessary, before all things, that he be good, honest, merciful, charitable and just. Creed is more important than conduct. The most important of all things is, that he hold the Catholic faith. There were thousands of years during which it was not necessary to hold that faith, because that faith did not exist ; and yet during that time the virtues were just as important as now, just as important as they ever can be.