tion that she tamed and humanized the barbarians, or by what she added of her own? You say what she added by her doctrine of brotherly love, or the brotherhood of the race, and the example of the meek and lowly Jesus, presented as the model of excellence. Well, are these things less true and useful now than they were then? Or is there any doctrine the church teaches, or any claim she puts forth to govern or discipline her own children, true and useful in relation to past ages or nations, that is not equally so now?"

"Whether the church was or was not relatively true and useful in those ages that knew no better than to believe her dogmas, practise her worship, and submit to her despotic authority, it is certain that she is hostile to all modern civilization, and the chief obstacle to progress, or the organization of society according to the laws of nature.”

Here I thought the able editor rather evaded than met the home question of the venerable priest. Though all the listeners were against the priest and on the side of the metropolitan editor, their looks indicated that they wished him to state specifically and distinctly what in the church was true and useful at one time that can be false and hurtful at another. They all believed that the church had corrupted the faith, and buried it beneath a mass of unmeaning ceremonies, degrading superstitions, and human or satanic inventions, but they could not concede that truth itself is variable, or that the good effected was effected by any thing not always and everywhere true and useful.

II.-"You say, my dear Editor," replied the priest," that the church is hostile to modern civilization, and an obstacle to individual and social progress. One thing at a time, if you please. I presume that you will agree with me that before we can decide what favors or retards progress, we must determine what is or is not progress. Will you tell me what you understand by progress!"

а

"Progress is leaving the dead past and moving forward towards the living future. It is a continual melioration or advance from the imperfect towards the perfect. It is the continual enlargement of the quantity of our being, or the realization of the possibilities of our nature."

"I would strike out from your definition the enlargement of the quantity of our being, because our being is not in ourselves, but in God, in whom we live and move and are,'

6

and therefore can neither be increased nor diminished, since God is being in its plenitude, and self-existent. The literal or etymological meaning of the word is, as I before said, 'a stepping forward.' When taken in a figurative sense, as we are now taking it, you very well define it to be an advance from the imperfect towards the perfect. But before we can assert progress, whether of the individual or of society, we must know that the perfect of each really exists, though not yet attained to, or that there really is an end in which the progress terminates because, when it is attained, the perfect is reached; and before we can say this or that favors or retards progress, we must know what this end or this perfect is, or, in other words, in what the perfection of society and the individual man consists."

"The perfection consists in the complete realization of the possibilities of nature."

"But how am I to determine what are the possibilities of my individual and social nature, or whether I am realizing them or not? Progress implies imperfection, incompleteness, for what is perfect, complete, is not and cannot be progressive, since there are in it no unrealized possibilities. Imperfection implies perfection, which is its complement or fulfilment. If there is no perfect, there can be no imperfect. How am I to determine what this perfect is, or what is the true end of man and society, so as to be able to assert what is or is not progress?"

"It is not necessary to determine what it is. One has but to follow nature, for nature points directly to it."

"You mean that nature of itself goes instinctively, by the force of its own inherent laws, to its end?"

"Such is my meaning."

"What is the use, then, of intelligence anu moral effort? and wherein is there, then, any specific difference between man and the elemental forces of nature, between gratitude and gravitation, between virtue and vice, a moral act and an immoral act? Man would then act only as the winds and waves, storms and tempests, or as the thunderbolt that rives the oak-at best only as the beasts that perish. Call you this asserting the rights and dignity of man?"

"No; I recognize in man a moral nature."

"Right. But a moral nature acts for an end-propter finem, not simply to an end-ad finem, and therefore from intelligence and will, or reason. Then we must know the end, for we cannot will what we do not apprehend. Now

the church, my worthy young friend, teaches us what is this end, the true and last end of man, and also what is the end of society-points out the way we must go to attain to either, furnishes the means needed to gain it, and urges us by motives terrible as hell and as sweet and attractive as heaven to struggle for it. How, then, can you say that she is an obstacle to progress?"

"She may not oppose what she calls progress, but she opposes what this age understands by progress."

"That is possible. There are many things in which she and this age do not agree. But does she oppose any thing that you call progress?"

"She opposes popular education, the diffusion of intelligence among the people, is hostile to popular liberty, upholds tyrants and tyranny, and resists everywhere with all her power the introduction and establishment of popular government."

"May it not be that you mean one thing by these terms, and she another?"

"She opposes the emancipation of the people from ignorance and superstition, and their instruction in their rights and the means of asserting and maintaining them."

"Does the church oppose the emancipation of the people from what she holds to be ignorance and superstition, or their instruction in what she acknowledges to be their rights and dignity?"

"You asked me to say in what respect she opposes what I call progress. I call progress the enlightenment of the people, their emancipation by the diffusion of intelligence from ignorance and superstition, and their instruction in respect to their rights."

Why not add to rights, duties? Men have duties as well as rights. Is that a true instruction which teaches men their rights, but says nothing as to their duties?"

"Men's duties grow out of their rights, and if duly instructed as to their rights, they can hardly remain ignorant of their duties."

"It would, perhaps, be more just to say men's rights grow out of their duties, but neither form of expression is exact. Men's duties grow out of their several relations, and their rights are simply their freedom to discharge their duties, or to act according to these relations, without any let or hindrance. Man has relations to his Creator, to his neighbor or society, and to the external world. Out of

these relations grow three classes of duties-duties to God, duties to our neighbor, and duties to the state or civil society that has charge of material interests, that is, religious, social, and political duties. In regard to these three classes of duties and their correlative rights, which cover the whole field of human activity, it shows great ignorance or great untruthfulness to pretend that the church opposes the instruction or enlightenment of the people. Has she not the sacrament of orders, and does she not educate and ordain a numerous class, as numerous a class as possible, of priests, one, and that not the least, of whose functions is to teach all ranks and conditions of men, even the poor of this world, whom the great neglect and the rich oppress, these three classes of rights and duties? Does she not found or encourage the founding of schools, academies, colleges, universities, for the education of the youth of all classes in the several sciences and the liberal arts, or general and special secular learning? Has she not religious orders and congregations of both sexes whose special vocation it is to teach your sons and daughters? Has she not founded nearly all the great universities of Europe, such as Oxford, Cambridge, Paris, Bologna, Padua, Salamanca, Alcalá ?"

"Yet she opposes all efforts to emancipate the people from superstition, and in her schools she teaches ignorance, and repulses science."

"That she opposes the emancipation of the people from superstition, is a mistake. I am a priest, received my education partly in Spain and partly in Rome; I have travelled over most European countries, and over nearly every state in the American Union, and wherever I have been, whether in schools or seminaries, I have found her making it the duty of her priests and professors to do their best to free the people from all superstitious notions and practices. You cannot take up a single one of her catechisms for the instruction of children and youth that does not teach them to avoid superstition and all approach to it."

"That is all very well; but her own doctrines and practices are superstitious. What else is the doctrine that a little water sprinkled or poured on the head of an infant, and a few magical words mumbled by the priest at the same time, can regenerate the soul, and translate it into the kingdom of Christ ?"

"Nothing instituted or commanded by our Lord can be superstition. He instituted the sacrament of baptism, com

manded his apostles to go and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, and has declared that unless a man be born again of water and the Holy Ghost, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. The church neither believes nor teaches that the water or the words regenerate; they are only the outward or visible sacrament, through which the regenerating grace of the Holy Ghost is communicated." "The church seeks to keep the people in ignorance, on the principle that ignorance is the mother of devotion."

"I have already shown you the contrary. But of what does she seek to keep the people ignorant? Is it of theology, the queen of the sciences? Is it of philosophy, of ethics, politics? Is it of astronomy, mathematics, mechanics, chemisty, electricity, cosmology, zoology, biology, physiology, philology, geology, botany, geography, history natural, civil, or ecclesiastical? I am aware of no prohibition against the study of any of these sciences. The church may not accept all the inductions or theories that many scientists are too prone to put forth as science, but she opposes no well-authenticated facts, and no well-established science. Indeed, my dear Editor, the church is so far from holding that ignorance is the mother of devotion, that she regards it as her worst enemy, and never ceases to combat it with all her energy." "She is hostile to liberty, and opposes every effort made to advance it.”

"The word liberty is much used, and much abused. It is taken in many senses, and not seldom in no definite sense at all. Men differ widely among themselves as to what is or is not true liberty, and no less as to the proper means of gaining or preserving it. In some of the senses in which the word is taken the church certainly opposes it, in others she approves and defends it. She opposes liberty in the sense of license or freedom from all law or authority; for she holds, what all experience teaches, that liberty in any good sense, cannot exist without law to define and protect it, and that law is inconceivable without a law-giver, and null without authority that has the right to enact and enforce it. But, on the other hand, she has always condemned tyranny and oppression, and at times gone so far as to excommunicate and depose the tyrant, and to absolve his subjects. from their oath of allegiance. Nearly all her doctors agree in teaching that the tyranny of the prince absolves the subject, though they uniformly condemn sedition, conspir-