SOLID ROCK AND SHIFTING SAND.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXVIII, Issue 47, 22 November 1900, Page 3

SOLID ROCK AND SHIFTING SAND.

THE CHURCH AND THE ' ISMS.'

Readers of Samuel Butler's great masterpiece, ITwlibrax—s. rhymed Don Quixote— will recall his hero's ' heroical epistle' to Sidrophel. Sidrophel had made a great discovery of an elephant in the moon, but the 'critter,' upon examination, turned out to be nothing more or less than an inquisitive and enterprising mouse that had lost its way and got into the tube of the great man's telescope — a curious anticipation, by the way, of the loud L> tnumphe and the later shock of blank disappointment that followed the discovery of the sticky ooze (sulphate of lime) which Huxley in 18G8 named Jiathybiut and proclaimed far and near to be Dame Nature's grand store of protoplasm, and to furnish the solution of the great puzzle of the origin of life upon this hoary old planet ! Well, Sidrophel represented the rather large class of persons who are gifted with an uncommon quid conceit 0' themsel's and who, in Butler's words, profess to ' Know more of any trade b" a hint, Thau those that tave been bred up in't '

There is probably no organisation on the surface of the earth that suffers more from the inane omniscience of these Sidrophels than the Catholic Church. Unfortunately they are frequently not content to play an innocuous part. An hour's perusal of a hostile pamphlet written by a wild-eyed vitriol-thrower, and, presto ' they know more about the Catholic C hurch than all her clergy, and set forth to teach the Pope and the whole College of Cardinals what they deem to be the real facts of our doctrine and practice. The course of the real student of Catholic history, dogma, and philosophy is much more toilsome and its results widely different. It is outlined with singular felicity and condensed and well-balanced completeness in the narrative of personal experience which Father Sheehan puts into the mouth of Geoffrey Austin in The Triumph of Fatlur-.

'I think," said Geoffery Austin, in the course of his narrative, 'my first great surpri»e— indeed, it was almost a chock— was to find that there was such a thing- as Catholic philosophy. Greek philosophy I had known, and tbe remnants of it that survived through the middle ages under the name of Neo-Platonism ; French philosophy I had known under the name of absolute negation ; German philosophy I had known nebulous and transcendental ; and the Bchools of Scotch and English philosophy, supposed to be characterised by common sense and hard-headedness, but always drifting towards a common idealism, but Catholic philosophy I Catholic dogma, if you like, clear-cut, well defined, unmistakable in its terms, independent of argument, but a Catholic philosophy with all the equipments of definition and axiom, and all the dread array of proposition and objection, why, this was a revelation. But Btill greater when I found what a firm, uniform, consistent, and spiritual system was embraced between the mysticism of the Fathers and the fiery logic of apologists, the decrees of councils, the testimony of martyrs, until, in the writings of St. Thomas, all became crystallised in the most compact and irrefragable theses that ever exercised the ingenuity of the human mind. Yet, even there, it does not terminate its marvels. For opening out again into dissertations on the loftiest truths and speculations on the highest mysteries, as in the pages of Suarez and Petavius, it gives the human mind new empires of thought to conquer, new realms of ideas wherein to disport itself, yet all is certain and tangible and sure ; and if you are blocked by the high walls of mysteries that are impenetrable, you are taught to know, not, in the jargon of philosophers, that behind is the Unknowable and Uncognisable, but that within are the gardens of God. It was magnificeut compared with this solid phalanx of mighty thinkers, marshalled and disciplined, marshalled under the same standard with the same eternal watchword on thetr lips, and with the unbroken assurance that theirs was the cause of truth and righteousness, and therefore of ultimate victory, the scattered bands of philosophers mutually distinguished and uniformly despairful appeared like a ragged battalion of filibusterers fighting for ideas that were blasphemous and a principle of liberty that was libertinism in thought and anarchy in action.

Their watchwords differ,' he continues. -Christian thinkers cry 'Jesus Christ, yesterday, to-day, and forever." The philosophers write one word on their standard : " Humanity " The former echo •' Humanity " ; bat they mean the humanity of Christ all-powerful to save humanity. The latter interpret the word • "Ye shall be as gods," even by your own effort*. The former declare that we are fallen, and can only rise by union with Christ The latter admit the imperfections of tho race without attempting to explain the cause, and bid us look along the interminable vistas of human evolution until we see the pprfect man somewhere in the far and undetermined tuture ho too wiui luvic ptuf^sious Ask the lendintr thinkers of the Church " What are you ,'" ami the answer of the innumerable host rrotn the first to thb uiu.-teenth cnutury is • " A Christian." Ask the hybrid masses of philosophers : " What are you ' " and you are confronted with Babel. Spinoziste and Cartesians, Kantians and Kiebteana, Hegelians of the right, Hegelians of the loft, Baconians and Voltaireans, Pantheists of the shape of Emerson, higher Pantheists, Spencerians, swearers by Schopenhauer, Idealists. Materialists. Sceptics, all mutually repellent, yet all identified by one common idea— the dethronement of God— and linked by one common ambition— tbe eversion of preceding theories and the erection of their own.

'It may be objected • " Such is the nature of philosophy, particularly ot that branch of philosophy called metaphysics. Even amongst your scholastics are found Nominalists and Realists, Thomists and Scotists. You are no better than than we." True, as far as variety of modes of teaching is concerned .But these mediaeval scholars excercised all the ingenuity of their keen intellects in unravelling mysteries that were accepted facts of faith. You are ingenious in devising subtleties that may take the place of faith. With them all the great truths were taken for granted before they discussed their constituent principles or ideas. You subvert all truth and try to build your own castles upon nothing. And all this would be tolerable if you had only speculative truth to deal with ; or if, a.s one of your philosophers said when '• waking out of his dogmatic slumber," life was but a bundle of sensations. But you touch on the one hand God with the rod of rebellion, and, on the other man's aoul, his life, his hopes, his destinies, with a wand of despair. In truth the great error of all philosophic thought that is not guided by the Church is embraced between the blasphemy of handling the Creator, His existence, His attributes, as a subject for metaphysical dissection, and the sacrilege of treating God's most perfect and delicate handiwork, the human soul, as a piece of mechanism whose intricacies are to be unravelled, and the secrets of its organisms laid bare. If all this concerned only the students of the closets or the recluses of laboratories, whose minds may have been constructed of tougher material than ordinary, and whose experiments might not disturb their beliefs, it would be not quite unendurable, although even here the warning would hold good: •' Quou/u'i lie *oit trks lohthmtnt monte- iljaut nr pat hrutahirr la marhin"." But unfnrtnn.uely the vast mijority of philosoohers have aimed at beingnot merely Htudent.s of the unknown, but framer* and buillers of systems, and have passed from thence to the arahition of founding religions and establishing new codes of ethics amongst men. What the re-ult has been the world knows. They have committed the awful crime agiinst humanity of destroying its beliefs and substituting- wild theories that end in despair.'