BASELESS IRRELIGIOUS THEORIES.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXVI, Issue 25, 27 October 1898, Page 31

BASELESS IRRELIGIOUS THEORIES.

The result has been the same as often as pretentious theories under the name of science have been advanced against the teaching of the Church. 'No sight can be more grateful to a true theologian (writes Father Faber) than to behold the giant strides of scientific discovery and the bold methods of scientific research. He has nothing to fear for his faith, except an embarrassment arising from the very riches of its demonstration which these discoveries are continually supplying. Nothing can be more narrow, vulgar, or stupid than the idea of an antithesis between science and religion. It is true that some of the sciences, in the earlier periods of their construction, turned the heads of those who drank at their fountains, and crude theories, incompatible with the dogmas of faith, were the result. Yet, these only changed, at last, to fresh and more striking proofs of the Divine and unalterable truth of Divine faith ; for further discovery and a larger induction led, in every case, to an abandonment of the irreligious theory.' Hence it is that the Chief Pastors of the Church, and none more so than the present illustrious successor of St. Peter, Pope Leo the Thirteenth, have never ceased to exhort her children to cultivate the higher studies, and to pursue perseveringly the paths of true science. Looking back upon this century now hastening to a close, we see innumerable names of devoted men, in the ranks alike of the clergy and of the laity, who though fervently attached to the doctrines and practices of the Catholic Church, yeo earnestly and untiringly cultivated every branch, of science. With the sanction and blessing of religion they pursued their labours and won the peerless reputation which they now enjoy. Their brilliant achievements in the pursuit of knowledge, no less than their manner of life, have added to the glory of the Church, and shall long remain an unanswerable vindication of her attitude towards enlightenment and scientific truth. If we now review the course of warfare against revealed truth pursued by the leaders of infidelity, we cannot fail to be struck by the inevitable fate of overthrow and decay that has befallen their various theories. In the last century Voltaire and the Encyclopedists may be said to have captivated for awhile the fashionable opinion of the literary world, and to have ruled supreme amid the corruption that then prevailed in the courts of Europe, and in many of the higher centres of learning. Nevertheless, at the present day the most embittered enemies of religion treat with disdain their sophistry, and fling aside with contempt the vain theories which they so idolised. M. Renan may be said to have pronounced the common verdict of modern rationalism when he wrote that Voltairianism was ' out of date.' THE HUMAN FAMILY AND THE DELUGE. I may illustrate by an example what is implied by this ■ out of date' verdict. Attention was called in those days to the vast deposits of shells which were found on some of the Alpine hills. Voltaire and his school, through dread that such a fact might be interpreted to favour the Catholic belief in the deluge, contended that such shells were mere ' lunun naturae,' freaks of nature, in ■which the versatile hand and skiliul genius of mother earth were sbkwn forth. Such an explanation was received with well-deserved iflp ule on every side, but Voltaire and his school bad another tueory ready at hand. Those shells they said, were brought by the crusaders and pilgrims from the Holy Land, and were flung aside when those visitors to distant shores parted company returning to their homes. Strange it is that so ridiculous a theory would have found favour wi*h men who pretended a claim to enlightenment and scientific attainments. We will not be surprised, however, that even the assailants of the Church would now-a-days pronounce it ' out of date.' Too much is now known of the crusaders' history to suppose them in their ihomeward iroute to be grouped in their thousands, on the summit of Mount Cenis, to fling away the pilgrim-

shells v, hich they so prized. Too much is also known of the deposits of shells. They have been found on the Rocky Mountains and the Andes, and, last, not least, even on our New Zealand ranges. The man would be ' out of date ' indeed who could suppose that these mountains were the theatre of the crusaders' meetings when returning to their homes.

We may take another instance from the complete revulsion of scientific opinion in regard to a favourite axiom of infidelity, which results from the theory of the uniformity of nature now so fashionable among some leading scientists. Voltaire and his disciples looked upon it as an unquestionable principle that the human race could not be derived from a common stock. You have only to open your eyes, he used to say, to see the diversity of men from men, and he heaped ridicule upon those who would allow of less than half-a-dozen human races wholly distinct in origin and stock. There were indeed many arguments at hand — the very organisation of the human frame, the unity of languages, the uniformity of traditions to refute this belated theory. Humboldt many years ago could truly write : ' The ancient legends of the human race, which we find dispersed throughout the whole world like the fragments of a great shipwreck, are of the deepest interest to the philosophical inquirer into the history of mankind. Like certain families of plants which preserve the type of a common ancestry in spite of the influences of height and the differences of climate, the coemogonic traditions of nations everywhere display a similarity of form and feature which move us to admiration.' But it was reserved for the scientists of the present day to proclaim aloud that the old infidel theory was quite ' out of date.' They have quite gone around to the opposite point of the compass, and now it has become quite fashionable to assert the uniformity of nature, and many will push this so far as to persuade us of the unity of stock, not of the human race alone, but of all animated nature. A representative of our modern scientists has not hesitated to proclaim this discovery to be the grandest achievement of modern science.