INSPIRATION

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXVI, Issue 22, 6 October 1898, Page 4

INSPIRATION

ot the Holy Ghost, which gives authority to the sacred orator, fills him with apostolic liberty of speech and communicates force and power to his eloquence, for his, efforts are infused with the spirit and ■strength of tha Word of God, and he speaks ' not in words only, but in power also, and in the Holy Gho^t, and in much fulness' (I Jhcxx. i., .*>). v

The Council or Trent (Sess 5) ordains that the 'heavenly treasure of the Sacred Books, which the Holy Ghost has with the greatest liberality delivered unto men, should not lie neglected.' I' or this purpose it has decreed that, in cathedrals and collegiate

churches, aome oompetent person be appointed to expound and interpret the Sacred Scripture, and in churches where the annual revenues are so small that a lectureship on thelogy cannot be conveniently held therein, let them at least have a master (approved otj to teach grammar gratuitously to clerics and other scholars, tnat so they may afterwards with God's blessing pass on to the said Btudy of the Sacred Sorlpture. Most desirable it is, and most essential, that the whole teaching of tneology should be pervaded and animated by the use of the Word oi «od. This the Fathers and greatest theologians of all ages have desired and reduced to practice. Chiefly from the sacred writings they endeavoured to proclaim and establish the articles of the faith and the truths contained therein, and it was in them, and in tradition, that they found the refutation of heretical error, and the reasonableness, the true meaning, and the mutual relation of the truths of Catholicism. THEOLOGY, the science of the Word of God, holds all other sciences as its handmaids, but draws from the Scripture its first principles. We have to contend against those, who, making an evil use of physical science, minutely scrutinise the Sacred Book in order to detect the writers in a mistake, and to take occasion to vilify its contents Attacks of this kind, bearing as they do on matters of sensible experience, are peculiarly dangerous to the masses and to the young mere can never be any real discrepancy between the theologian and tne physicist as long as each confiuea himself within his own line« and both are careful, as St. Augustine warns us, ' not to make rash assertions, or to assert what is not known as known ' (St. Aug in Utn. ix., 30). Whatever they can really demonstrate to be true of physical nature, we must show to be capable of reconciliation with our Scriptures ; and whatever they assert in their treatises, which ia contrary to these Scriptures of ours, we must either prove it as well as we can to be entirely false, or at all events we must, without the smallest hesitation, believe it to be so. To understand how ]ust is the rule here formulated, we must remember, first, that the sacred writers, or to speak more accurately, the Holy Ghost • • Who spoke by them,' did not intend to teach men these things— to wit the essential nature of the things of the visible universe. Hence tney did not seek to penetrate the secrets of nature, but rather I described and dealt with things in more or less figurative language or in terms which were com nonly used at the time, and which iii many instances are in daily u & e at this day, even by the most eminent men of science. (Conclusion in our next issue.)