OUT-OF-DATE ARGUMENTS.

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

OUT-OF-DATE ARGUMENTS.

But if, by the verdict of present-day science, the arguments arrayed against Divine Truth in the last century are thus branded ' out of date,' a no less disastrous fate may be said to have befallen the countless theories which in the present scientific age have been devised in a spirit of irreligion and in hostility to the Catholic Church. Cardinal Wiseman, in his Science and Revealed Religion writes that ' from the time of Buffon, system rose beside system,' like the moving pillars of the desert, advancing in threatening' array ; but like them they were fabrics of sand ; and though in 1806 the French Institute could count more than 80 such theories hostile to Scripture, not one of them has held its ground or deserves to be recorded.' Since 1806 those baseless irreligious theories have been multiplied a hundredfold, but one of the leading organs of the present-day scientist school not long ago plainly avowed that the teachers of infidelity had exhausted their resources, and that nothing but ' bankruptcy ' remained for them (applause). The Right Hon. Arthur Balfour, in his address at the Manchester Congress in 1888, suggested that a refutation of the scientist assailants of religion might be framed almost in their own words : ' We might begin,' he said, ' by showing how crude and contradictory are the notions of primitive man, and even of cultivated man in his unreflective moments, respecting the object-matter of scientific beliefs. We might then turn to the scientific apologists. We should show how the authorities of one age differed from those of another in their treatment of the subject, and how the authorities of the same a^e differed among themselves ; then we should comment on the strange obstinacy they evinced in adhering to their conclusions, whether they could prove them or not. Without attributing motives to individuals, we should hint politely but not obscurely, that prejudice and education in some, the fear of differing rrcim the majority, or the fear of losing a lucrative place in others, had been allowed to warp the impartial course of investigation ; and we should lament that scientific philosophers, in many respects so amiable and useful a body of men, should allow themselves so o'ten to violate principles which they openly and ostentatiously avowed.'