Catholic education. We trust it may have an extensive patronage. A
little more timeliness and brevity in the articles, and a more pointed
and direct application of them to matters moving around us here at home,
would add greatly to the value and interest of so excellently conceived
a work.
* * * * *
We have received from the Catholic Publication Society Co. advance
sheets of Cardinal Manning’s latest volume, reprinted from the English
plates, which were specially furnished to this house by the English
publishers. It is impossible at so short a notice to deal fitly with a
work by so eminent an author, and touching on a variety of subjects,
each one of which is timely and important. Some indication of the value
of the volume may be gathered from the titles of the various papers:
“The Work and Wants of the Catholic Church in England”; “Cardinal
Wiseman”; “French Infidelity”; “Ireland”; “On Progress”; “The Dignity
and Rights of Labor”; “The Church of Rome”; “Cæsarism and
Ultramontanism”; “Ultramontanism and Christianity”; “The Pope and Magna
Charta”; “Philosophy without Assumptions,” etc., etc.
BOOKS AND PAMPHLETS RECEIVED.
SAINT ELIZABETH, QUEEN OF HUNGARY. By the author of _Life in a
Cloister_, etc.
HORTENSE: an Historical Romance. Translated from the French. By R. J.
Halm. Kelly, Piet & Co., Baltimore.
THE CROWN OF HEAVEN, THE SUPREME OBJECT OF CHRISTIAN HOPE. From the
German of Rev. John N. Stöger, S.J. By Rev. M. Nash, S.J. P. O’Shea,
New York.
SELECTIONS from the _Imitation of Christ_. SELECTIONS from the _Thoughts
of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus_. Roberts Bros., Boston.
STRENGTH AND CALCULATION OF DIMENSIONS OF IRON AND STEEL CONSTRUCTIONS,
WITH REFERENCE TO THE LATEST EXPERIMENTS. Translated from the German
of J. J. Weyrauch, Ph.D., Prof. Polytechnic School of Stuttgart. D.
Van Nostrand, New York.
TEN YEARS OF MY LIFE. By the Princess Felix Salm-Salm. R. Worthington,
New York.
_The Forty-seventh Annual Report of the Inspectors of the State
Penitentiary for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, for the year
1876_. Sherman & Co., Philadelphia.
SIXTH ANNUAL REPORT OF THE WOMAN’S BAPTIST MISSIONARY SOCIETIES. With
the Proceedings of the Annual Meetings. Rand, Avery & Co., Boston.
NINTH ANNUAL REPORT OF THE CLARKE INSTITUTION FOR DEAF MUTES AT
NORTHAMPTON, MASS., FOR THE YEAR ENDING SEPTEMBER 1, 1876.
ON THE VALUE AND CULTURE OF ROOTS FOR STOCK FEEDING. By David Landreth &
Sons. McCalla & Stavely, Philadelphia.
FINAL ANNOUNCEMENT OF THE WOODRUFF SCIENTIFIC EXPEDITION AROUND THE
WORLD. Indianapolis _Journal_ Co., Indianapolis.
ANNALS OF THE CATHOLIC INDIAN MISSIONS OF AMERICA. Bureau of Catholic
Indian Missions, Washington, D. C.
INDULGENCES APOSTOLIQUES, OU INDULGENCES APPLICABLES AUX VIVANTS ET AUX
DEFUNTS. Que le Saint Père Pie IX. attache aux Rosaires, Chapelets,
Croix, etc., qui en ont obtenu le pouvoir approuvé par l’autorité
compétente. Rome: Libreria di Roma.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE
CATHOLIC WORLD.
---------------------
VOL. XXVI., No. 152.—NOVEMBER, 1877.
---------------------
THE FREE-RELIGIONISTS.
I.—THE NEW-ENGLANDER.
This pamphlet[17] of ninety-five pages gives an account of the last
annual meeting in Boston of the “Free-Religious Association, its object
being to promote the practical interests of pure religion, to increase
fellowship in spirit, and to encourage the scientific study of man’s
religious nature and history.” Associations of this kind seem to be
necessary as safety-valves to a certain class of men and women, chiefly
found in New England, who, especially in matters of religion, are in a
state of effervescence, and feel the pressing need at times of publicly
delivering themselves of such thoughts as come uppermost in their minds
on this and kindred subjects. The phenomenon is a peculiar one, and
perhaps in no other country could such a variety of odd spirits as are
usually found in these assemblies be convoked. Their proceedings are
full of interest to the student of religion and the mental philosopher,
no less than to the observer of the phases of religious development of
some of the most active thinkers of this section of our country.
The American mind at bottom is serious, clings with deathless tenacity
to a religion of some sort; and of none is this more characteristic than
of the descendants of the Puritan Fathers. The children of the Puritans
may be eccentric, at times fanatical, and inclined to thrust their
religious, social, political, and even dietetical notions upon others;
but they are men and women who think; they are restless until they have
gained a religious belief, and are marked with earnestness of some sort,
energy, and practical skill. The Puritan race is a thinking, religious,
and an aggressive race of men and women. Whatever he may be, there is
always in a genuine Puritan a great deal of positive human nature. Let
him be under error, and his teeming brain will breed countless
crotchets, any one of which he will maintain with the bitterest
fanaticism, and, if placed in power, will impose it upon others with a
ruthless intolerance.
Give him truth, and you have an enlightened faith, indomitable zeal, and
not a few of the elements which go to make up an apostle. The main
qualities which distinguish the typical New-Englander, though not
altogether the most attractive, are nevertheless not the meanest in
human nature, and we candidly confess, though not a drop of Puritan
blood runs in our veins, that we have but few dislikes, while we
entertain many feelings of sincere respect, for the New England type of
man. It is, therefore, with special interest that we read whatever
offers an insight into the workings of the minds of so large,
influential, and important a class of the American people.
Copyright: Rev. I. T. HECKER. 1877.
II.—WHAT IS THE FREE-RELIGIONIST MOVEMENT.
The Unitarian Association did not go far enough and fast enough to suit
the temper of a class of its more radical and ardent members; hence the
existence of the separate organization of “The Free-Religious
Association.” The movement of the free-religionists may be said to
spring from a laudable desire to get rid in the speediest way possible
of the spurious Christianity which was imposed upon them by their
forefathers as genuine Christianity and pure religion.
Suppose they have accomplished this laborious task of purification, what
then? Have they found wherewith “to yield the religious sentiment
reasonable satisfaction,” which Mr. Tyndall says “is the problem of
problems at this hour”? By no means; this discovery is quite another
affair.
“Hic labor,
Hoc opus est.”
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.
“I speak now,” he says, “as one who _believes_ in religion, thus
conceived, from the sole of the foot to the crown of the head,
without apology either for the name or the thing, and without
the smallest concession to the prejudice that assails either the
one or the other. To-day I speak only to the large in heart and
broad in mind—to those who must accept science and would fain
accept religion too. To these I say that science itself would
lose its fearless love of truth, were it not that religion fed
its secret springs; that social reform would lose its motive and
inspiration, literature and art their beauty, and all human life
its sweetest and tenderest grace, did not religion evermore
create the insatiable hunger after perfection in the soul of
man. Bright, cheerful, ennobling, stimulating, emancipating,
religion is the greatest friend of humanity, ever guiding it
upward and onward to the right and the true; ay, and to all we
yearn for, if, as we believe, the right and the true are indeed
the pathway to God.”
But not all free-religionists are gifted with so deep, intelligent, and
healthy an appreciation of the essence of religion as Francis E. Abbot,
who leaves nothing at present to be desired but the courage of his
convictions—_proficiat!_
There is, however, in the _Christian Inquirer_ a revelation made by
William Ellery Channing, a distinguished nephew of the celebrated Dr.
Channing, which tells quite another story. It appears by this article
that the president of the Free Religious Association, O. B. Frothingham,
had attributed to Mr. Channing, one of the speakers in the tenth annual
assembly, a “poetic Christianity,” a “religion in the air,” an
“up-in-a-balloon” religion, and in reply to this accusation he draws
from nature the following unattractive personal portraits:
“Let me,” says Mr. Channing, “make a clean breast of it to you
before all onlookers. What you mean by the ‘rumors’ that I had
become ‘ecclesiastical in tastes and opinions’ I can but
conjecture. But the simple facts are in brief these: You
remember how seven years ago, on the public platform, and in the
reunions of the Free-Religionists in dear John Sargent’s
hospitable rooms, and in private ‘confabs’ with yourself, and W.
J. Potter, and S. Longfellow, and S. Johnson, and J. Weiss, and
T. W. Higginson, and D. A. Wasson, and F. E. Abbot, etc., I
tried to preach my gospel, that the _vital centre_ of free
religious union is the _life of God in man_ as made gloriously
manifest in Jesus the Christ. And you remember, too, how around
that centre I illustrated the historic fact that the great
religions of our race arranged themselves in orderly groups.
For nearly a year I opened my heart and mind to the
free-religionists and liberal Christians, without a veil to hide
my inmost holy of holies. But shall I tell you, my friend, that
when I bade you all farewell, in the summer of 1870, it was with
sad forebodings? And why? The story, too long to tell in full,
ran thus: One, in his wish to be bathed in the sense of
ever-present Deity, had ceased to commune with the Spirit of
spirits in prayer. Another, in his repulsion from imprisoning
anthropomorphism, had abandoned all conceptions of a personal
God, and so lost the Father. A third, in his historic purpose to
lead a heavenly-human life, here and now, gave up the hope of
immortal existence, as a sailor might turn from contemplating
the cloud-palaces of sunset to pull the tarry cordage and spread
the coarse canvas of his ship. And, saddest of all, a fourth, in
his bold purpose to be spontaneous in every impulse and emotion,
spurned the motherly monitions of duty so sternly that
conscience even seemed driven to return to heaven, like ‘Astræa
Redux.’ In brief, one felt as if the liberal college of all
religions in council with pantheism, agnosticism, and atheistic
materialism was destined to fall flat to dust in a confused
chaos of most commonplace _spiritual ‘know-nothingism.’_ Such
was my disheartening vision of the near future for dearly-loved
compeers. And a darker valley of ‘devastation,’ as our
Swedenborgian friends say, than I was driven into I have never
traversed.”
But Mr. Channing goes further; he shows that he has studied the
religious philosophers of antiquity to some purpose, seized their true
meaning and real drift, and in touching language takes his readers into
his confidence, offering to them an insight into his present relations
to Christianity.
The following remarkable paragraph possesses a thrilling interest for
Catholics; and if it affects others as it has the present writer on
reading it, they will not fail to offer up an aspiration to Him who has
given such graces to the soul of the man who penned it—and doubtless to
others among the free-religionists—that he will render their faith
explicit and perfect it.
“Once again,” he says, “I sought comfort with the blessed
company of sages and saints of the Orient and Hellas—with
Lao-Tsee and Kung Fu-Tsee; with the writers of the Bhagava-Geeta
and the Dhamma-Bada; of the hymns of ancient Avesta and the
modern sayings and songs of the Sufis; with radiant Plato and
heroic Epictetus, etc., etc. Once more they refreshed and
reinspirited me as of old. But they did something better: hand
in hand they brought me up to the white marble steps, and the
crystal baptismal font, and the bread and wine-crowned
communion-table—ay, to the cross in the chancel of the Christian
temple—and, as they laid their hands in benediction on my head,
they whispered: ‘Here is your real _home_. We have been but your
guides in the desert to lead you to fellowship with the Father
and his Son in the spirit of holy humanity. Peace be with you.’
And so, my brother, once again, and with a purer, profounder,
tenderer love than ever, like a little child, I kissed the
blood-stained feet and hands and side of the Hero of Calvary,
and laid my hand on the knees of the gentlest of martyrs, and
was uplifted by the embracing arms of the gracious elder
Brother, and in his kiss of mingled pity and pardon found the
peace I sought, and became a Christian in _experience_, as
through a long life I had hoped and prayed to be. Depend upon
it, dear Frothingham, there is on this small earth-ball no
_reality_ more _real_ than this central communion with God in
Christ, of which the saints of all ages in the church universal
bear witness.”
IV.—THE MEETING.