capable minds, but for one consideration. In the midst of our difficulties
I have one ground of hope, just one stay, but, as I think, a sufficient
one, which serves me in the stead of all other argument whatever, which
hardens me against criticism, which supports me if I begin to despond, and
to which I ever come round, when the question of the possible and the
expedient is brought into discussion. It is the decision of the Holy See;
St. Peter has spoken, it is he who has enjoined that which seems to us so
unpromising. He has spoken, and has a claim on us to trust him. He is no
recluse, no solitary student, no dreamer about the past, no doter upon the
dead and gone, no projector of the visionary. He for eighteen hundred
years has lived in the world; he has seen all fortunes, he has encountered
all adversaries, he has shaped himself for all emergencies. If ever there
was a power on earth who had an eye for the times, who has confined
himself to the practicable, and has been happy in his anticipations, whose
words have been facts, and whose commands prophecies, such is he in the
history of ages, who sits from generation to generation in the Chair of
the Apostles, as the Vicar of Christ, and the Doctor of His Church.
6.
These are not the words of rhetoric, Gentlemen, but of history. All who
take part with the Apostle, are on the winning side. He has long since
given warrants for the confidence which he claims. From the first he has
looked through the wide world, of which he has the burden; and, according
to the need of the day, and the inspirations of his Lord, he has set
himself now to one thing, now to another; but to all in season, and to
nothing in vain. He came first upon an age of refinement and luxury like
our own, and, in spite of the persecutor, fertile in the resources of his
cruelty, he soon gathered, out of all classes of society, the slave, the
soldier, the high-born lady, and the sophist, materials enough to form a
people to his Master’s honour. The savage hordes come down in torrents
from the north, and Peter went out to meet them, and by his very eye he
sobered them, and backed them in their full career. They turned aside and
flooded the whole earth, but only to be more surely civilized by him, and
to be made ten times more his children even than the older populations
which they had overwhelmed. Lawless kings arose, sagacious as the Roman,
passionate as the Hun, yet in him they found their match, and were
shattered, and he lived on. The gates of the earth were opened to the east
and west, and men poured out to take possession; but he went with them by
his missionaries, to China, to Mexico, carried along by zeal and charity,
as far as those children of men were led by enterprise, covetousness, or
ambition. Has he failed in his successes up to this hour? Did he, in our
fathers’ day, fail in his struggle with Joseph of Germany and his
confederates, with Napoleon, a greater name, and his dependent kings,
that, though in another kind of fight, he should fail in ours? What grey
hairs are on the head of Judah, whose youth is renewed like the eagle’s,
whose feet are like the feet of harts, and underneath the Everlasting
arms?
In the first centuries of the Church all this practical sagacity of Holy
Church was mere matter of faith, but every age, as it has come, has
confirmed faith by actual sight; and shame on us, if, with the accumulated
testimony of eighteen centuries, our eyes are too gross to see those
victories which the Saints have ever seen by anticipation. Least of all
can we, the Catholics of islands which have in the cultivation and
diffusion of Knowledge heretofore been so singularly united under the
auspices of the Apostolic See, least of all can we be the men to distrust
its wisdom and to predict its failure, when it sends us on a similar
mission now. I cannot forget that, at a time when Celt and Saxon were
alike savage, it was the See of Peter that gave both of them, first faith,
then civilization; and then again bound them together in one by the seal
of a joint commission to convert and illuminate in their turn the pagan
continent. I cannot forget how it was from Rome that the glorious St.
Patrick was sent to Ireland, and did a work so great that he could not
have a successor in it, the sanctity and learning and zeal and charity
which followed on his death being but the result of the one impulse which
he gave. I cannot forget how, in no long time, under the fostering breath
of the Vicar of Christ, a country of heathen superstitions became the very
wonder and asylum of all people,—the wonder by reason of its knowledge,
sacred and profane, and the asylum of religion, literature and science,
when chased away from the continent by the barbarian invaders. I recollect
its hospitality, freely accorded to the pilgrim; its volumes munificently
presented to the foreign student; and the prayers, the blessings, the holy
rites, the solemn chants, which sanctified the while both giver and
receiver.
Nor can I forget either, how my own England had meanwhile become the
solicitude of the same unwearied eye: how Augustine was sent to us by
Gregory; how he fainted in the way at the tidings of our fierceness, and,
but for the Pope, would have shrunk as from an impossible expedition; how
he was forced on “in weakness and in fear and in much trembling,” until he
had achieved the conquest of the island to Christ. Nor, again, how it came
to pass that, when Augustine died and his work slackened, another Pope,
unwearied still, sent three saints from Rome, to ennoble and refine the
people Augustine had converted. Three holy men set out for England
together, of different nations: Theodore, an Asiatic Greek, from Tarsus;
Adrian, an African; Bennett alone a Saxon, for Peter knows no distinction
of races in his ecumenical work. They came with theology and science in
their train; with relics, with pictures, with manuscripts of the Holy
Fathers and the Greek classics; and Theodore and Adrian founded schools,
secular and monastic, all over England, while Bennett brought to the north
the large library he had collected in foreign parts, and, with plans and
ornamental work from France, erected a church of stone, under the
invocation of St. Peter, after the Roman fashion, “which,” says the
historian,(4) “he most affected.” I call to mind how St. Wilfrid, St. John
of Beverley, St. Bede, and other saintly men, carried on the good work in
the following generations, and how from that time forth the two islands,
England and Ireland, in a dark and dreary age, were the two lights of
Christendom, and had no claims on each other, and no thought of self, save
in the interchange of kind offices and the rivalry of love.
7.
O memorable time, when St. Aidan and the Irish monks went up to
Lindisfarne and Melrose, and taught the Saxon youth, and when a St.
Cuthbert and a St. Eata repaid their charitable toil! O blessed days of
peace and confidence, when the Celtic Mailduf penetrated to Malmesbury in
the south, which has inherited his name, and founded there the famous
school which gave birth to the great St. Aldhelm! O precious seal and
testimony of Gospel unity, when, as Aldhelm in turn tells us, the English
went to Ireland “numerous as bees;” when the Saxon St. Egbert and St.
Willibrod, preachers to the heathen Frisons, made the voyage to Ireland to
prepare themselves for their work; and when from Ireland went forth to
Germany the two noble Ewalds, Saxons also, to earn the crown of martyrdom!
Such a period, indeed, so rich in grace, in peace, in love, and in good
works, could only last for a season; but, even when the light was to pass
away from them, the sister islands were destined, not to forfeit, but to
transmit it together. The time came when the neighbouring continental
country was in turn to hold the mission which they had exercised so long
and well; and when to it they made over their honourable office, faithful
to the alliance of two hundred years, they made it a joint act. Alcuin was
the pupil both of the English and of the Irish schools; and when
Charlemagne would revive science and letters in his own France, it was
Alcuin, the representative both of the Saxon and the Celt, who was the
chief of those who went forth to supply the need of the great Emperor.
Such was the foundation of the School of Paris, from which, in the course
of centuries, sprang the famous University, the glory of the middle ages.
* * * * *
The past never returns; the course of events, old in its texture, is ever
new in its colouring and fashion. England and Ireland are not what they
once were, but Rome is where it was, and St. Peter is the same: his zeal,
his charity, his mission, his gifts are all the same. He of old made the
two islands one by giving them joint work of teaching; and now surely he
is giving us a like mission, and we shall become one again, while we
zealously and lovingly fulfil it.
Discourse II.
Theology A Branch Of Knowledge.
There were two questions, to which I drew your attention, Gentlemen, in
the beginning of my first Discourse, as being of especial importance and
interest at this time: first, whether it is consistent with the idea of
University teaching to exclude Theology from a place among the sciences
which it embraces; next, whether it is consistent with that idea to make
the useful arts and sciences its direct and principal concern, to the
neglect of those liberal studies and exercises of mind, in which it has
heretofore been considered mainly to consist. These are the questions
which will form the subject of what I have to lay before you, and I shall
now enter upon the former of the two.
1.
It is the fashion just now, as you very well know, to erect so-called
Universities, without making any provision in them at all for Theological
chairs. Institutions of this kind exist both here and in England. Such a
procedure, though defended by writers of the generation just passed with
much plausible argument and not a little wit, seems to me an intellectual
absurdity; and my reason for saying so runs, with whatever abruptness,
into the form of a syllogism:—A University, I should lay down, by its very
name professes to teach universal knowledge: Theology is surely a branch
of knowledge: how then is it possible for it to profess all branches of
knowledge, and yet to exclude from the subjects of its teaching one which,
to say the least, is as important and as large as any of them? I do not
see that either premiss of this argument is open to exception.
As to the range of University teaching, certainly the very name of
University is inconsistent with restrictions of any kind. Whatever was the
original reason of the adoption of that term, which is unknown,(5) I am
only putting on it its popular, its recognized sense, when I say that a
University should teach universal knowledge. That there is a real
necessity for this universal teaching in the highest schools of intellect,
I will show by-and-by; here it is sufficient to say that such universality
is considered by writers on the subject to be the very characteristic of a
University, as contrasted with other seats of learning. Thus Johnson, in
his Dictionary, defines it to be “a school where all arts and faculties
are taught;” and Mosheim, writing as an historian, says that, before the
rise of the University of Paris,—for instance, at Padua, or Salamanca, or
Cologne,—“the whole circle of sciences then known was not taught;” but
that the school of Paris, “which exceeded all others in various respects,
as well as in the number of teachers and students, was the first to
embrace all the arts and sciences, and therefore first became a
University.”(6)
If, with other authors, we consider the word to be derived from the
invitation which is held out by a University to students of every kind,
the result is the same; for, if certain branches of knowledge were
excluded, those students of course would be excluded also, who desired to
pursue them.
Is it, then, logically consistent in a seat of learning to call itself a
University, and to exclude Theology from the number of its studies? And
again, is it wonderful that Catholics, even in the view of reason, putting
aside faith or religious duty, should be dissatisfied with existing
institutions, which profess to be Universities, and refuse to teach
Theology; and that they should in consequence desire to possess seats of
learning, which are, not only more Christian, but more philosophical in
their construction, and larger and deeper in their provisions?
But this, of course, is to assume that Theology _is_ a science, and an
important one: so I will throw my argument into a more exact form. I say,
then, that if a University be, from the nature of the case, a place of
instruction, where universal knowledge is professed, and if in a certain
University, so called, the subject of Religion is excluded, one of two
conclusions is inevitable,—either, on the one hand, that the province of
Religion is very barren of real knowledge, or, on the other hand, that in
such University one special and important branch of knowledge is omitted.
I say, the advocate of such an institution must say _this_, or he must say
_that_; he must own, either that little or nothing is known about the
Supreme Being, or that his seat of learning calls itself what it is not.
This is the thesis which I lay down, and on which I shall insist as the
subject of this Discourse. I repeat, such a compromise between religious
parties, as is involved in the establishment of a University which makes
no religious profession, implies that those parties severally
consider,—not indeed that their own respective opinions are trifles in a
moral and practical point of view—of course not; but certainly as much as
this, that they are not knowledge. Did they in their hearts believe that
their private views of religion, whatever they are, were absolutely and
objectively true, it is inconceivable that they would so insult them as to
consent to their omission in an Institution which is bound, from the
nature of the case—from its very idea and its name—to make a profession of
all sorts of knowledge whatever.
2.
I think this will be found to be no matter of words. I allow then fully,
that, when men combine together for any common object, they are obliged,
as a matter of course, in order to secure the advantages accruing from
united action, to sacrifice many of their private opinions and wishes, and
to drop the minor differences, as they are commonly called, which exist
between man and man. No two persons perhaps are to be found, however
intimate, however congenial in tastes and judgments, however eager to have
one heart and one soul, but must deny themselves, for the sake of each
other, much which they like or desire, if they are to live together
happily. Compromise, in a large sense of the word, is the first principle
of combination; and any one who insists on enjoying his rights to the
full, and his opinions without toleration for his neighbour’s, and his own
way in all things, will soon have all things altogether to himself, and no
one to share them with him. But most true as this confessedly is, still
there is an obvious limit, on the other hand, to these compromises,
however necessary they be; and this is found in the _proviso_, that the
differences surrendered should be _but_ “minor,” or that there should be
no sacrifice of the main object of the combination, in the concessions
which are mutually made. Any sacrifice which compromises that object is
destructive of the principle of the combination, and no one who would be
consistent can be a party to it.
Thus, for instance, if men of various religious denominations join
together for the dissemination of what are called “evangelical” tracts, it
is under the belief, that, the object of their uniting, as recognized on
all hands, being the spiritual benefit of their neighbours, no religious
exhortations, whatever be their character, can essentially interfere with
that benefit, which faithfully insist upon the Lutheran doctrine of
Justification. If, again, they agree together in printing and circulating
the Protestant Bible, it is because they, one and all, hold to the
principle, that, however serious be their differences of religious
sentiment, such differences fade away before the one great principle,
which that circulation symbolizes—that the Bible, the whole Bible, and
nothing but the Bible, is the religion of Protestants. On the contrary, if
the committee of some such association inserted tracts into the copies of
the said Bible which they sold, and tracts in recommendation of the
Athanasian Creed or the merit of good works, I conceive any subscribing
member would have a just right to complain of a proceeding, which
compromised the principle of Private Judgment as the one true interpreter
of Scripture. These instances are sufficient to illustrate my general
position, that coalitions and comprehensions for an object, have their
life in the prosecution of that object, and cease to have any meaning as
soon as that object is compromised or disparaged.
When, then, a number of persons come forward, not as politicians, not as
diplomatists, lawyers, traders, or speculators, but with the one object of
advancing Universal Knowledge, much we may allow them to
sacrifice.—ambition, reputation, leisure, comfort, party-interests, gold;
one thing they may not sacrifice,—Knowledge itself. Knowledge being their
object, they need not of course insist on their own private views about
ancient or modern history, or national prosperity, or the balance of
power; they need not of course shrink from the co-operation of those who
hold the opposite views; but stipulate they must that Knowledge itself is
not compromised;—and as to those views, of whatever kind, which they do
allow to be dropped, it is plain they consider such to be opinions, and
nothing more, however dear, however important to themselves personally;
opinions ingenious, admirable, pleasurable, beneficial, expedient, but not
worthy the name of Knowledge or Science. Thus no one would insist on the
Malthusian teaching being a _sine quâ non_ in a seat of learning, who did
not think it simply ignorance not to be a Malthusian; and no one would
consent to drop the Newtonian theory, who thought it to have been proved
true, in the same sense as the existence of the sun and moon is true. If,
then, in an Institution which professes all knowledge, nothing is
professed, nothing is taught about the Supreme Being, it is fair to infer
that every individual in the number of those who advocate that
Institution, supposing him consistent, distinctly holds that nothing is
known for certain about the Supreme Being; nothing such, as to have any
claim to be regarded as a material addition to the stock of general
knowledge existing in the world. If on the other hand it turns out that
something considerable _is_ known about the Supreme Being, whether from
Reason or Revelation, then the Institution in question professes every
science, and yet leaves out the foremost of them. In a word, strong as may
appear the assertion, I do not see how I can avoid making it, and bear
with me, Gentlemen, while I do so, viz., such an Institution cannot be
what it professes, if there be a God. I do not wish to declaim; but, by
the very force of the terms, it is very plain, that a Divine Being and a
University so circumstanced cannot co-exist.
3.
Still, however, this may seem to many an abrupt conclusion, and will not
be acquiesced in: what answer, Gentlemen, will be made to it? Perhaps
this:—It will be said, that there are different kinds or spheres of
Knowledge, human, divine, sensible, intellectual, and the like; and that a
University certainly takes in all varieties of Knowledge in its own line,
but still that it has a line of its own. It contemplates, it occupies a
certain order, a certain platform, of Knowledge. I understand the remark;
but I own to you, I do not understand how it can be made to apply to the
matter in hand. I cannot so construct my definition of the subject-matter
of University Knowledge, and so draw my boundary lines around it, as to
include therein the other sciences commonly studied at Universities, and
to exclude the science of Religion. For instance, are we to limit our idea
of University Knowledge by the evidence of our senses? then we exclude
ethics; by intuition? we exclude history; by testimony? we exclude
metaphysics; by abstract reasoning? we exclude physics. Is not the being
of a God reported to us by testimony, handed down by history, inferred by
an inductive process, brought home to us by metaphysical necessity, urged
on us by the suggestions of our conscience? It is a truth in the natural
order, as well as in the supernatural. So much for its origin; and, when
obtained, what is it worth? Is it a great truth or a small one? Is it a
comprehensive truth? Say that no other religious idea whatever were given
but it, and you have enough to fill the mind; you have at once a whole
dogmatic system. The word “God” is a Theology in itself, indivisibly one,
inexhaustibly various, from the vastness and the simplicity of its
meaning. Admit a God, and you introduce among the subjects of your
knowledge, a fact encompassing, closing in upon, absorbing, every other
fact conceivable. How can we investigate any part of any order of
Knowledge, and stop short of that which enters into every order? All true
principles run over with it, all phenomena converge to it; it is truly the
First and the Last. In word indeed, and in idea, it is easy enough to
divide Knowledge into human and divine, secular and religious, and to lay
down that we will address ourselves to the one without interfering with
the other; but it is impossible in fact. Granting that divine truth
differs in kind from human, so do human truths differ in kind one from
another. If the knowledge of the Creator is in a different order from
knowledge of the creature, so, in like manner, metaphysical science is in
a different order from physical, physics from history, history from
ethics. You will soon break up into fragments the whole circle of secular
knowledge, if you begin the mutilation with divine.
I have been speaking simply of Natural Theology; my argument of course is
stronger when I go on to Revelation. Let the doctrine of the Incarnation
be true: is it not at once of the nature of an historical fact, and of a
metaphysical? Let it be true that there are Angels: how is not this a
point of knowledge in the same sense as the naturalist’s asseveration,
that myriads of living things might co-exist on the point of a needle?
That the Earth is to be burned by fire, is, if true, as large a fact as
that huge monsters once played amid its depths; that Antichrist is to
come, is as categorical a heading to a chapter of history, as that Nero or
Julian was Emperor of Rome; that a divine influence moves the will, is a
subject of thought not more mysterious than the result of volition on our
muscles, which we admit as a fact in metaphysics.
I do not see how it is possible for a philosophical mind, first, to
believe these religious facts to be true; next, to consent to ignore them;
and thirdly, in spite of this, to go on to profess to be teaching all the
while _de omni scibili_. No; if a man thinks in his heart that these
religious facts are short of truth, that they are not true in the sense in
which the general fact and the law of the fall of a stone to the earth is
true, I understand his excluding Religion from his University, though he
professes other reasons for its exclusion. In that case the varieties of
religious opinion under which he shelters his conduct, are not only his
apology for publicly disowning Religion, but a cause of his privately
disbelieving it. He does not think that any thing is known or can be known
for certain, about the origin of the world or the end of man.
4.