DR. NEWMAN ON THE SPREAD OF INFIDELITY.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume IV, Issue 206, 16 March 1877, Page 9

DR. NEWMAN ON THE SPREAD OF INFIDELITY.

++ The Rev. Dr. J. H. Newman, preaching at the Birmingham Oratory on Sunday morning on " Approaching signs of the end of the world," said that, ever since he grew up, wherever he had been, he had this one lesson imprinted on him by holy men, that the aim of the world was to exult knowledge over religion. Before he was a Catholic, as well as at the present, he had nlways seen that the world asked more and were putting forward more knowledge and the benefit which came from knowledge as the thing which was necessnry for the world. They wanted to supersede religion ; they did so without knowing it fifty years ago ; but now their ej es were opened, they saw that they wanted religion, and they wished to destroy it by means of knowledge. There seemed to be no doubt, humanly speaking, that as years went on tliere would be more and more a spread of principles of unbelief or Atheism, or a denial of God. These poor men were so beguiled and deceived, and tbe deceit was so strong, that even the elect were in danger. It was now getting greater strength, and he did not see that there «as any help for it, except by the prayers of the Church. There was no human way by which they could stop that tonent of infidelity which was threatening them so much, and of tbe existence of which they ought to be made perfectly awaie. The literature of the present day was very sprcious and plausible in argument Perhaps Catholic? were not so clevei as these men, who had drawn information from so many sources, and put forward their views so confidently, that it was only through God's grace they were not all deceived. The religion of the present day was one of self-idolatry, and utterly destructive of all faith and hope of heaven. Thinking much of these things in the course of, be migh;. say, fifty or sixty years, he could not help looking with great anxiety and distress and pity on the generation before us. He believed a most dreadful combat, a most awful conflict between the powers of good and evil was now coming upon us in the next generation, and that there would be a great temptation to give up the Holy Catholic Church.