for, even admitting for the sake of argument that the knowledge of the
universe is comparatively “a recent thing,” it would not follow that
such a knowledge must alter the Christian conception of the divine
nature. Let the professor make the universe as great, as boundless, and
as harmonious as possible; what then? Will such a universe proclaim a
new God? By no means. It will still proclaim the same God, though in a
louder voice. For the harmony, beauty, and grandeur of the universe
reveal to us the infinite greatness, beauty, and wisdom of its Creator;
and the greater our knowledge of such a universe, the more forcible the
demonstration of the infinite perfection of its Creator. Now, this
Creator is our old God, the God of the Bible, the God to whom Mr.
Youmans owes his existence, and to whom he must one day give an account
of how he used or abused his intellectual powers. This is, however, the
God whom the professor would fain banish from the universe. Is there
anything more unphilosophic or more unscientific?
But the knowledge of the universe, from which we rise to the conception
of God, is not “a recent thing.” Infidels are apt to imagine that the
world owes to them the knowledge of natural science. We must remind them
that science has been built up by men who believed in God. “Advanced”
science is of course “a recent thing,” but it does not “constitute an
important stage” in the line of real progress; for it consists of
nothing but reckless assumptions, deceitful phraseology, and illogical
conclusions. Three thousand years ago King David averred that “the
heavens show forth the glory of God, and the firmament declareth the
work of his hands.” Has advanced science made any recent discovery in
the heavens or on earth which gives the lie to this highly philosophical
statement? Quite the contrary. It is, therefore, supremely ridiculous to
talk of a “vast revolution” whose effect must be “to purify the ideal of
Divinity.” This vast revolution is a dream of the professor.
But he says:
“Is it rational to expect that the man of developed intellect
whose life is spent in the all-absorbing study of that mighty
and ever-expanding system of truth that is embodied in the
method of Nature will form the same idea of God as the ignorant
blockhead who knows and cares nothing for these things, who is
incapable of reflection or insight, and who passively accepts
the narrow notions upon this subject that other people put into
his head? As regards the divine government of the world, two
such contrasted minds can hardly have anything in common.”
This is a fair sample of the logical processes of certain thinkers “of
developed intellect.” Our professor assumes, first, that Catholic
theologians are “ignorant blockheads,” that they “know and care nothing”
for natural truths, that they are “incapable of reflection or insight,”
and that they “passively accept” what others may put into their heads.
Would it not be more reasonable to assume that a “blockhead” is a man
who asserts what cannot be proved, as a certain professor is wont to do?
And would it be unfair to assume that the man who “knows and cares
nothing” for truth is one who beguiles his readers into error, and, when
convicted, makes no amends? We would not say that the professor is
“incapable of reflection or insight,” for we think that no human being
can be so degraded as to deserve this stigma; but we cannot help
thinking that Mr. Youmans “passively accepts” many absurd notions, for
which he cannot account, except by saying that they “have been put into
his head” by such “developed intellects” as Huxley’s, Darwin’s,
Spencer’s, and other notorious falsifiers of truth.
Professor Youmans assumes also that our intellects cannot be “developed”
enough to form a true conception of God, unless we apply to “the
all-absorbing study of the method of Nature,” by which he means the
conservation of energy, the indestructibility of matter, the evolution
of species, and other cognate theories. This assumption has no
foundation. To form a true conception of God it suffices to know that
the universe is subject to continual changes, and therefore contingent,
and consequently _created_. This leads us directly to the conception of
a Creator, or of a First Cause which is self-existent, independent, and
eternal. Modern science and “developed intellects” have nothing to say
against this. It is therefore a gross absurdity to assume that the study
of the method of nature interferes with the old conception of God.
A third assumption of the professor is that our notion of divine nature
is “narrow.” It is astonishing that Mr. Youmans could have allowed
himself to make so manifestly foolish a statement. Is there anything
“narrow” in immensity? in omnipotence? in eternity? in infinite wisdom?
or in any other attribute of the true God? And if our notion of God,
which involves all such attributes, is still “narrow,” what shall we say
of the professor’s notion which involves nothing but the
“unthinkable”—that is, nothing at all?
The professor proceeds to say that if a man is ignorant and stupid his
contemplation of divine things will reflect his own limitation. This is
a great truth; but he should have been loath to proclaim it in a place
where we find so many proofs of his own “limitation.” On the other hand,
it is not from the ignorant and the stupid that our philosophers and
theologians have derived their notion of God; and to confound the latter
with the former is, on the part of a “developed intellect,” a miserable
show of logic. The ignorant and the stupid, continues Mr. Youmans, “will
cling to a grovelling anthropomorphism,” and conceive of the Deity “as a
man like himself, only greater and more powerful, and as chiefly
interested in the things that he is interested in.” To which we answer
that the stupid and the ignorant of divine things are those who _do not
know_ God, and who maintain against the universal verdict of reason that
God is “unknowable.” We defy Mr. Youmans to point out a stupidity and an
ignorance of divine things which equals that of him who pretends to
think of the “unthinkable.” This is even worse than “to cling to a
grovelling anthropomorphism.” Of course our anthropomorphism is a poetic
invention of the “developed intellect,” and therefore we may dismiss it
without further comment.
“The profound student of science,” he adds, “will rise to a more
spiritualized and abstract ideal of the divine nature, or will
be so oppressed with a consciousness of the Infinity as to
reverently refrain from all attempts to grasp, and formulate,
and limit the nature of that which is past finding out, which is
unspeakable and unthinkable.”
To understand the real meaning of this sentence we must remember that he
who wrote it does not accept the God of theologians. Scientific men, as
he has told us, claim that their studies lead them “to higher and more
worthy conceptions” of the divine power than the conceptions offered by
theology. It is obvious, therefore, that the “spiritualized and abstract
ideal of the divine nature” to which the profound student of science is
expected to rise is not the ideal recognized by theology. This is very
strange; for if theology does not furnish the true ideal of divine
nature, much less can such an ideal be furnished by the science of
matter. Every science is best acquainted with its own specific object;
and since God is the object of theology, the ideal of the divine nature
is to be found in theology, not in natural science. Hence “the profound
student of science” may indeed determine the laws of physical and
chemical phenomena, speak of masses and densities, of solids and fluids,
and of other experimental subjects without much danger of error, but he
has no qualification for inventing a new ideal of divine nature. The
ideal of a thing exhibits the essence of the thing; and the study of
essences does not belong to the scientist, whose field is confined
within the phenomena and their laws. The best scientists confess that
they do not even know the essence of matter, though matter is the proper
and most familiar object of their study. Yet these are the men who,
according to Mr. Youmans, should know best the essence of God.
But we should like further to know how the “profound student” of
advanced science will be able to rise to a “spiritualized” ideal of
Divinity. The general drift of modern infidel science is towards
materialism. It teaches that thought is secreted by the brain as water
is by the kidneys, or, at least, that thought consists of molecular
movements, and that the admission of a spiritual substance in the
organism of man is quite unwarranted. How, then, can a science which
rejects spiritual substances lead its “profound student” to a
spiritualized ideal of Divinity? It is manifest, we think, that all this
talk is mere jugglery, and the professor himself seems to have felt that
it was; for he admits that the profound student of science may be “so
oppressed with a consciousness of the Infinite as to refrain from all
attempts to grasp and formulate and limit the nature of what is past
finding out.” This last expression shows that Mr. Youmans has no ground
for expecting that his profound student will rise to the ideal of the
divine nature, as what is “past finding out” will never be found, and is
not only “unspeakable,” as he declares, but also “unthinkable.” The
profound student of science is therefore doomed, so far as Mr. Youmans
may be relied on, to remain without any ideal of God. What is this but
genuine atheism?
Mr. Youmans will reply that his profound student will not be an atheist,
because he will feel “so oppressed with the consciousness of the
Infinite.” But we should like to know how the profound student can have
consciousness of what he cannot think of. And, in like manner, if the
Infinite is unthinkable, how can the profound student know that it is
infinite? These contradictions go far to prove that “ignorance” and
“stupidity,” far from being the characteristics of Christianity, find a
more congenial abode in the “developed intellects of the profound
students of advanced science.”
As all errors are misrepresentations of truth, we cannot dismiss this
point without saying a word about the truth here misrepresented. God is
incomprehensible; such is the truth. God is unthinkable; this is the
error. To argue that what is incomprehensible is also unthinkable, is a
manifest fallacy. There are a very great number even of finite things
which we know but cannot comprehend. For instance, we know gravitation,
electricity, and magnetism, but our knowledge of them is quite
inadequate. We know ancient history, though numberless facts have
remained inaccessible to our research. We know the operations of our own
faculties, but we are far from comprehending them. Comprehension is the
perfect and adequate knowledge of the object comprehended. If the
cognoscibility of the object is not exhausted, there is knowledge, but
not comprehension; and as our finite intellect has no power of
exhausting the cognoscibility of things, human knowledge is not
comprehension, though no one will deny that it is true and real
knowledge. In like manner, though we do not comprehend the infinite, yet
we conceive it, and we know how to distinguish it from the finite. We
know what we say when we affirm that the branches of the hyperbola
extend to infinity, that the decimal division of ten by three leads to
an infinite series of figures, that every line is infinitely divisible,
that every genus extends infinitely more than any of its subordinate
species, and the species infinitely more than the individual, etc. Thus
the notion of the infinite is a familiar one among men; and when Mr.
Youmans contends that the infinite is unthinkable, he commits a blunder,
and every one of his readers has the right to tell him that such a
blunder in inductive science is inexcusable.
Perhaps it may not be superfluous to point out, before we conclude,
another fallacy of the “developed intellect” of the professor. He
assumes that to form a conception of God is to limit the divine nature;
for he declares that the profound student of science oppressed with the
consciousness of Infinity ought reverently to refrain “from all attempts
to grasp, and formulate, and _limit_ the nature of that which is past
finding out.” We would inform Mr. Youmans that the notion of a thing
does not limit the thing, but simply expresses that the thing is what it
is, whether it be limited or unlimited. In all essential definitions
some notion is included, which expresses either perfection or
imperfection. When we say that a being is _irrational_, we point out an
imperfection, or a defect of further perfection; whereas when we say
that a being is _rational_, we express a perfection of the being. Now,
since all imperfection is a real limit, it follows that all denial of
imperfection is a denial of some limit, and therefore the affirmation of
every possible perfection is a total exclusion of limit. Thus
omnipotence excludes all limit of power, eternity all limit of duration,
omniscience all limit of knowledge, immensity all limit of space. We
need not add that all the other attributes of God exclude limitation, as
they are all infinite. It is evident, therefore, that we can “formulate”
our notion of God without “limiting” the divine nature; and that those
“profound students” of nature whose “developed intellect” is “oppressed
with the consciousness of Infinity” strive in vain to palliate their
atheism by “reverently (?) refraining from all attempts to grasp and
formulate” the nature of the Supreme Cause.
We may be told that Prof. Youmans, though he rejects the “God of
theology,” admits something equivalent—viz., Infinity, the consciousness
of which he feels so oppressive. He also admits that “religious feelings
may be awakened” in a mind so oppressed by the thought of Infinity, and
insists that “religious teachers ought in these days to have liberality
enough to recognize this serious fact, remembering that human nature is
religiously progressive as well as progressive in its other capacities.”
Would not this show that we cannot without injustice hold him up as a
professor of atheism? We reply that the accusation of atheism preferred
against the tendency of advanced science has been met by the professor
in such a manner as to give it only more weight, according to the old
proverb which says that
_Causa patrocinio non bona pejor erit_.
He does not believe in the God of theology. In what does he believe? In
the “unthinkable”! This is sheer mockery. But the unthinkable is said to
be infinite. This is sheer nonsense, as we have shown. Again, the
unthinkable is said to awaken religious feelings. This is written for
unthinkable persons. The professor, as we have already noticed, admires
the grandeur of nature, and holds it to be “boundless,” and therefore
infinite. This may lead one to suspect that the material universe—the
sun, the planets, the stars, heat, light, electricity, gravity, and
their laws—constitute the “Infinity” with the consciousness of which the
professor is oppressed. If this could be surmised, we might regard him
as a pantheist. This, of course, would not better his position, as
pantheism is, after all, only another form of atheism. But if nature (or
rather Nature, as he writes it) is his Deity, how can he affirm that
such a nature is “unspeakable” and “unthinkable”? If nature is
“unthinkable,” the science of nature is a dream; and if it is
“unspeakable,” all the talk of the _Popular Science Monthly_ is a fraud.
If Prof. Youmans wishes us to believe that “advanced” science does not
tend to foster atheism, and that its foremost champions are not
atheists, let him come forward like a man, and show that, after
rejecting the God of theology and of philosophy, another God has been
found, to whom “developed intellects” offer religious worship, and in
whom their religious feelings are rationally satisfied. Let him give us,
above all, his “scientific” reasons for abandoning the God of the Bible,
in whom we “ignorant blockheads” have not ceased to believe; and let him
state his “philosophic” reasons also, if he has any, that we may judge
of the case according to its full merit. We need not be instructed about
the “religious progressiveness” of mankind, or any other convenient
invention of unbelievers; we want only to know the new God of “advanced”
science, his nature and his claims. When Prof. Youmans shall have
honestly complied with this suggestion, we shall see what answer can
best meet his appeal to the “liberality” of religious teachers.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
A LEGEND OF DIEPPE.
A gloomy three days’ storm has prevailed all along the French coast.
Dull gray clouds hide the blue vault of heaven and frown upon the
tossing waters beneath. The fresh, invigorating air, remembered with
delight by all who have ever been in Normandy, has given place to a
damp, chilly heaviness, broken occasionally by fierce gusts of wind and
rain. The fisher-boats are all in port, the small ones drawn up high on
the beach, the larger securely anchored. But this is not due only to the
storm. Even if it were the fairest of weather, no Dieppe fisherman would
set sail to-day. It is All-Souls’ day—the feast of the dead, the
commemoration of the loved and lost; and who is there that has not loved
and lost? But among these simple Catholic souls one feels that the loved
are never lost. The dead live still in the tender remembrance of those
left behind. Tears shed in prayer for the departed have no bitterness.
But the heartless and ungrateful man who fishes to-day will be
everywhere followed by his double—a phantom fisher in a phantom boat.
All signs fail him, all fish escape his net. Again and again he draws it
in empty. If he persist, at length he thinks himself rewarded. His net
is so heavy he nearly swamps his boat in the endeavor to draw it in; and
horrible to say, his catch is only grinning skulls and disjointed human
bones.
At night, tossing on his sleepless pillow, he hears the ghostly “white
car” rolling through the silent street. He hears his name called in the
voice of the latest dead of his acquaintance, and dies himself before
the next All-Souls’ day.
Spite of the bleak and rainy weather, all the good people of Dieppe, or
rather of its fisher suburb, Le Pollet, are gathered together in church.
Rude as it is, weather-beaten, discolored, gray-green, like the unquiet
ocean it overlooks, Notre Dame du Pollet is still grand and picturesque.
It has suffered both from time and desecration, as is seen by its broken
carvings, empty niches, and ruined tombs. The altars are plain, the
ornaments few and simple. On the wall of the Lady chapel hang two rusty
chains—the votive offering, it is said, of a sailor of Le Pollet, once a
slave to pirates. Miraculously rescued by Our Lady, he returned to his
native place only to sing a _Te Deum_ in her chapel and hang up his
broken fetters therein; then, retiring to a neighboring monastery, he
took upon himself a voluntary bondage which love made sweet and light.
It is the solemn Mass of requiem, and almost noon, though the sombre
day, subdued yet more by stained-glass windows, seems like a winter
twilight. The church is all in deep shadow, except the sanctuary with
its softly-burning lamp, and its altar decked with starry wax-lights.
Black draperies hang about the altar, black robes are upon the
officiating priests. The slow, mournful chant of the _Dies Iræ_, sung by
a choir invisible in the darkness, resounds through the dim, lofty
aisles.
Motionless upon the uneven stone pavement kneel the people, a dark and
silent mass, only relieved here and there by the gleam of a snowy cap or
bright-colored kerchief; for the fisher-folk, and, indeed, all the
peasantry of thrifty Normandy, dress in serviceable garb, of sober
colors. There is one little group apart from the rest of the
congregation; not all one family, for they are too unlike. They seem to
be drawn together by some common calamity or dread. First is an old
woman perhaps seventy years of age, and looking, as these Norman
peasants usually do, even older than her years. The full glow of light
from the altar falls upon her white cap, with the bright blue kerchief
tied over it. A string of large beads hangs from her bony fingers. Her
eyes, singularly bright for one so aged, are raised to the black-veiled
crucifix, and tears glisten upon her brown and withered cheeks. Her arm
is drawn through that of a slender young woman, and near them is a
little girl, round and rosy. All three are dressed nearly alike, and all
say their beads, though not with the same tearful devotion. Anxiety and
weariness are in the young girl’s pale but pretty face; and the child
looks subdued, almost frightened, by the gloom around her.
Behind them kneels a comely matron, a little child clinging to her gown;
near her two fishermen, one old and gray-haired. The other, who is
young, has an arm in a sling; he kneels upon one knee, his elbow on the
other, and his face hidden in his hand.
They are two households over whom hangs the shadow of a calamity,
perhaps all the greater because of its uncertainty. Two months ago
Jacques Payen and his son sailed for the fishery. Jacques Suchet and his
cousin, Charles Rivaud, completed the crew; for Jean Suchet, disabled by
a broken arm, remained at home with his grandmother and sister. The
season proved unusually stormy. Two fishing-boats of Le Pollet narrowly
escaped the terrible rocks of the Norman coast; and one of these
reported seeing a vessel, resembling that of the Payens, drifting past
them in a fog, with broken mast and cordage dragging over the side. They
hailed the wreck, but heard no reply, and concluded that the crew had
been swept overboard, or possibly had escaped in their boat.
Weeks had passed since this vague but terrible intelligence had reached
the stricken families. Old Mère Suchet had at once received it as
conclusive. She wept and prayed for the bold young fishers, the hope and
comfort of her old age. Not so Manon Payen. No one dared condole with
her, not even her old father, Toutain. Life hitherto had gone so well
with her! Her husband loved her; her son was her pride and delight; her
rosy Marie and little toddling Pierre filled her cottage with laughter
and sunshine. Grief was so new and strange and frightful. What! her
husband and son taken from her at one blow? No, it could not be! It was
too dreadful! God _could_ not be so cruel! Besides, there were no better
sailors than the Payens, father and son; none who knew the coast so
well, with all its perils, its hidden rocks, and dangerous currents.
Their vessel was new and strong; why should they be lost; they _alone_?
Jean Pinsard was not positive it was their vessel he had seen; how could
he tell in a fog? No; she was sure they were safe. They had put in to
one of the islands. They would not risk a dangerous journey in stormy
weather just to tell her, what she knew already, that they were safe.
To Mère Suchet’s Mathilde, the betrothed of Jacques Payen, how much
better and clearer was this reasoning than the submissive grief of her
pious old grandmother! Young people cannot easily believe the worst when
it concerns themselves. Mathilde _could_ not pray for the repose of the
souls of lover, brother, and cousin. With the passionate, impatient
yearning of a heart new to affliction, she besought the Blessed Mother
for their safe return. Her brother Jean did not try to destroy her
hopes, though he would not say he shared them.
As time passed on and brought no news of the absent, the hearts of these
two poor women grew faint and sore; but they refused to acknowledge it
to one another, or even to themselves. Their days passed in feverish,
and often vain, endeavors to be cheerful and busy; their nights in
anguish all the more bitter because silent and unconfessed. On
All-Souls’ day old Toutain and Mère Suchet had wished to have a Requiem
Mass offered for the lost sailors, but Mathilde wept aloud at the
suggestion, and Manon forbade it instantly, positively, almost angrily.