Volume 22 — THE CATHOLIC WORLD. VOL. XXII., No. 131.—FEBRUARY, 1876.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1875, by Rev. I. T. Hecker, in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C.

A SEQUEL OF THE GLADSTONE CONTROVERSY.[228]

“It is wonderful,” wrote Proudhon, “how in all our political questions we always stumble on theology.” Mr. Gladstone will doubtless concur in this sentiment; for he cannot take a step without stumbling on the Catholic Church. She is everywhere, and everywhere she is to him a cause of alarm. So potent is her influence growing to be, so cunningly laid are the plans by which her policy is directed, so perfect is the organization and discipline of her forces, so insidious are her methods of procedure, as he would have us believe, that it is full time all Christendom should be warned of the approaching danger. She is in his eyes an ever-present menace to the civilization of the world.

He at least bears testimony to her power and vitality. She is not a relic of a past age; she lives, and, what is more, it does not seem that she is willing to die. If we consider the various efforts by which men are seeking to weaken and destroy the church, we shall find in them no mean evidence of her divine strength. And first of all, in an age intellectually most active, she is the subject of universal criticism, and is cited before every tribunal of human knowledge to be tried on an hundred different and often contradictory counts. Her historical relations with the world, extending over eighteen hundred years and co-extensive with Christendom, are minutely examined into by men who, shutting their eyes to the benefits which she has conferred upon the human race, are eager to discover charges against her. She is made responsible for the crimes of those who called themselves Catholics, though she was the first to condemn their evil deeds. The barbarism, the ignorance, and the cruelty of the middle ages are set to her count, when, in fact, she was the chief source of civilization, of enlightenment, and of mercy during that period. When she opposes the tyranny of kings, she is called the enemy of the state; when she seeks to restrain the lawlessness of the people, she is proclaimed the friend of tyrants. Against her dogmas and institutions all the sciences are brought to bear—astronomy, geology, ethnology, and the others. Not in politics alone, but in all the physical sciences, men in our day stumble on the Catholic Church.

We are told that she is the one great spiritual organization which is able to resist, and must as a matter of life and death resist, the progress of science and modern civilization. These men profess to find innumerable points of collision between her dogmas and the conclusions of science, and are surprised when she claims to understand her own teachings better than they, and is not prepared to abandon all belief in God, the soul, and future life because physical research has given men a wider knowledge of the phenomena of matter. Now we hear objections to her moral teaching—that it is too severe, that she imposes burdens upon men’s shoulders too heavy for human nature to bear, that she encourages asceticism, celibacy, and all manner of self-denial opposed to the spirit of the age and of progress; then, on the contrary, that her morality is lax, that she flatters the passions of men, panders to their sensual appetites, and grants, for gain, permission to commit every excess.

At one time we are told that her priests are indolent, immoral, ignorant, without faith; at another, that they are ceaselessly active, astute, learned, and wholly intent upon bringing all men to their own way of thinking. Now we are informed that her children cannot be loyal subjects of any government; and immediately after we hear that they are so subservient, so passively obedient, that they willingly submit to any master. And here we come more immediately upon our subject; for whereas Mr. Gladstone has declared that the loyalty of Catholics is not to be trusted, M. de Laveleye asserts that “despotic government is the congenial government of Catholic populations.”

The pamphlet from which we quote these words, and which we propose now to examine, has been presented to the English-reading public by the special request of Mr. Gladstone, and has been farther honored by him with a prefatory letter. The author, it is true, takes a fling at the Church of England, and plainly intimates that in his opinion it is little better than the Catholic Church; but the ex-premier could not forego the opportunity of striking his enemy, though he should pierce his dearest friend in giving the blow. He takes the precaution, indeed, to disclaim any concurrence in M. de Laveleye’s “rather unfavorable estimate of the Church of England in comparison with the other reformed communions.” The question discussed in the pamphlet before us, as its title implies, is the relative influence of Catholicism and Protestantism on the liberty and prosperity of nations; and the conclusion which is drawn is that the Reformation is favorable to freedom and progress, and that the Catholic Church is a hindrance to both.

This has long been a favorite theme with Protestants—the weapon with which they think themselves best able to do good battle in their cause; and doubtless it is employed, in most favorable circumstances, in an age like ours, in which material progress is so marked a feature that its influence may be traced in everything, and in nothing more than in the thoughts and philosophies of the men of our day. It is worthy of remark that Protestantism, professing to be a purer and more spiritual worship, should have tended to turn men’s thoughts almost exclusively to the worldly and temporal view of religion; so that it has become the fashion to praise Christianity, not because it makes men humble, pure, self-denying, content with little, but rather because its influence is supposed to be of almost an opposite nature. Much stress is laid upon the physical, social, and mental superiority of Christian nations to those that are still pagan, and the inference implied, if not always expressly stated, is that these temporal advantages are due to the influence of Christianity, and prove its truth and divine origin. Without stopping to consider the question whether the material and social superiority of Christian nations is to be attributed to their religious faith, we may ask whether, admitting that this is the case, it may with propriety be adduced in proof of the truth of the religion of Christ?

In the case of individuals no one, certainly, would think of arguing that prosperity proves a right faith, or even consistent practice. To hold that wealth and success are evidences of religious life, whatever it may be, is certainly not Christianity. Does the teaching of Christ permit the rich to lay the unction to their souls that they are God’s favored children? Were they his friends? Did they flock around him? Did they drink in his words gladly? If men who claim to be his disciples have deified worldly success, and made temporal prosperity a sufficient test of the truth of his religion, they cannot plead any word of his in excuse.

He certainly never paid court to the great, or stooped to flatter the rich. Was it not he who said, “Woe be to you rich: ye have received your reward”? and again, “It is harder for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven than for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle”? Did he not take Lazarus to his bosom when Dives was in hell?

“Blessed are ye,” he said, “when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely for my sake. Rejoice and be exceeding glad; for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you.”

The preaching of Christ was wholly unworldly. He sternly repressed the earthly ambitions of his disciples, and declared that, as the world hated him, it would also hate those who believed in him. They would be outcasts for his name’s sake; if this life were all, they of all men would be most miserable. Indeed, he rarely speaks of human happiness in the customary sense; he passes over what might be said in favor of this life, and brings out in bold relief its vanity and unsatisfactoriness. He draws no pictures of domestic bliss, and says but little of even innocent pleasures or those temporal blessings which are so sweet to all; and as he taught that worldly prosperity is no evidence of God’s favor, he was careful to correct the error of those who looked upon misfortune as a proof of guilt, as in the case of the man born blind and of those upon whom a tower had fallen.

Christ was poor, his apostles were poor, his disciples were poor, nearly all the Christians of the first ages were poor; and yet every day we hear men talk as though they considered poverty and Christianity incompatible. This is manifestly the opinion of M. de Laveleye. His argument may be stated in this way: England and Scotland are rich, Ireland is poor. The Protestant cantons of Switzerland are rich, the Catholic are poor. “In the United States,” says De Tocqueville, “the greater part of the Catholics are poor.” In fact, wherever the two religions exist together, the Protestants are more active, more industrious, and consequently richer than the Catholics.

This is the substance of what is spread over a dozen pages of the pamphlet. The conclusion is not difficult to draw: Protestants are richer than Catholics, and therefore better Christians.

“No man can serve two masters,” said Christ: “you cannot serve God and Mammon.” On the contrary, says M. de Laveleye, the success with which you worship Mammon is the best proof that you serve God truly. Of course it would be foreign to M. de Laveleye’s purpose to stop to inquire whether the poverty of Ireland be due to the Catholic faith of her people or to the rapacity and misgovernment of England; whether that of the Catholic cantons of Switzerland might not be accounted for by the fact that they are mountainous, with an inhospitable climate and a barren soil; and whether even M. de Tocqueville’s assertion that the greater part of the Catholics of the United States are poor might not be satisfactorily explained by stating that the greater part of them are emigrants who have recently landed upon these shores without a superabundance of this world’s goods.

He had also good reasons, while treating this part of his subject, for not looking nearer home. He had in Belgium, under his very eye, one of the most thrifty, industrious, and prosperous peoples of Europe, and at the same time one of the most Catholic. Why did he not compare the wealth of Belgium with that of Sweden or Denmark? Why did he not say a word about Catholic France, whose wealth and thrift cannot be denied. He does, indeed, make mention of two French manufacturing towns, in which, he states, on the authority of M. Audiganne, the capitalists are for the most part Protestants, whilst the operatives are Catholics; though what this has to do with any debatable question between Catholicism and Protestantism is not easily seen.

The assertion (p. 14) that “wherever the two religions co-exist in the same country the Protestants are more active, more industrious, more economical, and consequently richer than the Catholics,” is not borne out by facts. A single example will suffice to show how rash M. de Laveleye has been in making so wide an affirmation. The Catholics of the Rhine Province are universally acknowledged to be among the most thrifty and enterprising populations of Prussia, and are far richer than, for instance, the Protestants of Pomerania.

It would not be difficult, by adopting M. de Laveleye’s mode of reasoning, to turn his whole argument on this point against his own position. Whether or not national wealth, we might say, is evidence of orthodox Christian faith, there can be no doubt but that the Christian religion is favorable to even the temporal interests of the lowest and most degraded classes of society. Its doctrines on the brotherhood of the race and the equality of all before God first inspired worthy notions of the dignity of man. Then the sympathy which it created for the poor, the suffering, and the oppressed naturally set men to work to devise means for the relief of human misery. It is to its influence that we must ascribe the abolition of slavery, the elevation of woman, and the thousand ministries which in Christian lands attend on the wretched and the weak.

We must infer that those nations in which this influence is most powerful—which, in other words, are most truly Christian—will have, in proportion to their population, the smallest class of human beings cursed by the worst plague known to modern civilization, bearing with it, as it does, a threefold degradation, moral, physical, and social. We of course refer to pauperism.

Now, in England, from whose wealth M. de Laveleye would infer the superiority of her religion, we find that this pauper class, compared with the whole population, is as 1 to 23; whereas in Ireland, which is poor—and, according to this theory, for that reason under the ban of a false religion—there is but 1 pauper to 90 inhabitants; in other words, pauperism is four times more common in England than in Ireland. Now, whether we refer this fact to England’s wealth or to England’s religion—and in M. de Laveleye’s opinion they are correlative—our conclusion must be either that the influence of the Christian religion, which necessarily tends to promote the temporal well-being of the most degraded classes of society, is less felt in England than in Ireland, or else that national wealth is hurtful to the interests of these same classes, and consequently opposed to the true Christian spirit; and in either case we have Catholic Ireland more fairly Christian than Protestant England. We would not have our readers think for a moment that we are seriously of the opinion that our argument proves anything at all. We give it merely as a specimen of the way in which the reasoning of this pamphlet may be turned against its own conclusions, though, in fact, we have done the work too respectably.

We cannot forget, if M. de Laveleye does, that, of all sciences, the social—if, indeed, it may be said as yet to exist at all—is the most complex and the most difficult to master. The phenomena which it presents for observation are so various, so manifold, and so vast, our means of observation are so limited, our methods so unsatisfactory, and our prejudices so fatal, that only the thoughtless or the rash will tread without suspicion or doubt upon ground so uncertain and so little explored.

M. de Laveleye himself furnishes us an example of how easily we may go astray, even when the way seems plain.

“Sectarian passions,” he writes (p. 11), “or anti religious prejudice have been too often imported into the study of these questions. It is time that we should apply to it the method of observation and the scientific impartiality of the physiologist and the naturalist. When the facts are once established irrefragable conclusions will follow. It is admitted that the Scotch and Irish are of the same origin. Both have become subject to the English yoke. Until the XVIth century Ireland was much more civilized than Scotland. During the first part of the middle ages the Emerald Isle was a focus of civilization, while Scotland was still a den of barbarians. Since the Scotch have embraced the Reformation, they have outrun even the English.… Ireland, on the other hand, devoted to ultramontanism, is poor, miserable, agitated by the spirit of rebellion, and seems incapable of raising herself by her own strength.” The conclusion which is drawn from all this, joined with such other facts as the late victories of Prussia over Austria and France, is that “Protestantism is more favorable than Catholicism to the development of nations.”

We may as well pause to examine this passage, which, both with regard to the statement of facts and to the interpretation put upon them, fairly represents the style and method of the pamphlet before us.

“It is admitted that the Scotch and Irish are of the same origin.” This is true, as here stated, only in the sense that both are descended of Adam; and hence it would have been as much to the point to affirm that all the nations of the earth are of the same origin. The Scots were, indeed, an Irish tribe; but when they invaded Caledonia, they found it in the possession of the Picts, of whom whether they were of Celtic or Teutonic race is still undecided. The power of the Scots themselves declined in the XIIth century, when Scotland fell under the influence of the Anglo-Norman Conquest, and the Celtic population either withdrew towards the north, or, by intermarriage with the conquerors, formed a new type; so that the people of that country are even yet divided into two great and distinct stocks differing from each other in language, manners, and dress.

“Until the XVIth century,” continues M. de Laveleye, “Ireland was much more civilized than Scotland. During the first part of the middle ages the Emerald Isle was a focus of civilization, while Scotland was still a den of barbarians.” Now, it was precisely in those ages in which Ireland was “a focus of civilization” that the Catholic faith of her people shone brightest. It was then that convents sprang up over the whole island; that the sweet songs of sacred psalmody, which so touched the soul of Columba, were heard in her groves and vales; that the sword was sheathed, and all her people were smitten with the high love of holy life and were eager to drink at the fountains of knowledge. It was then that she sent her apostles to Scotland, to England, to France, to Germany, to Switzerland, and to far-off Sicily; nor did she remit her efforts in behalf of civilization until the invading Danes forced her children to defend at once their country and their faith.

But let us follow M. de Laveleye: “Since the Scotch have embraced the reformed religion, they have outrun even the English.… Ireland, on the other hand, devoted to ultramontanism, is poor, miserable, agitated by the spirit of rebellion, and seems incapable of raising herself by her own strength.”

We cannot think that Mr. Gladstone had read this passage when he requested the author to have his pamphlet translated into English; for we cannot believe that he is prepared to lay the misfortunes of Ireland to the influence of the Catholic faith upon her people, and not to the cruelty and misgovernment of England.

The Irish Catholics are reproached with their poverty, when for two hundred years the English government made it a crime for them to own anything. They are taunted with their misery, when for two centuries they lived under a code which placed them outside the pale of humanity; of which Lord Brougham said that it was so ingeniously contrived that an Irish Catholic could not lift up his hand without breaking it; which Edmund Burke denounced as the most proper machine ever invented by the wit of man to disgrace a realm and degrade a people; and of which Montesquieu wrote that it must have been contrived by devils, ought to have been written in blood and registered in hell!

Ireland is found fault with because she is agitated with the spirit of rebellion, when even to think of the wrongs she has suffered makes the blood to boil. Is it astonishing that she should be poor when England, with set purpose, destroyed her commerce and ruined her manufacturing interests, fostering at the same time a policy fatal to agriculture, the aim of which, it would seem, was to force the Irish to emigrate, that the whole island might be turned into a grazing ground for the supply of the English markets?

“What a contrast,” further remarks M. de Laveleye (p. 12), “even in Ireland, between the exclusively Catholic Connaught and Ulster, where Protestantism prevails!”

Mr. Gladstone certainly cannot be surprised at this contrast, nor will he seek its explanation in the baneful influence of the Catholic Church. He at least knows the history of Cromwell’s invasion of Ireland; he has read of the massacres of Drogheda and Wexford; he knows the fate of the eighty thousand Catholic Irishmen whom Cromwell drove into the ports of Munster, and shipped like cattle to the sugar plantations of the Barbadoes, there to be sold as slaves; nor is he ignorant of what was in store for those Irish Catholics who were still left; of how they were driven out of Ulster, Munster, and Leinster across the Shannon into Connaught—that is, into the bogs and wild wastes of the most desolate part of Ireland—there to die of hunger or cold, or to survive as best they might. Five-sixths of the Catholics had perished; the remainder were driven into barren Connaught; the Protestants settled on the rich lands of Ulster, Munster, and Leinster; and now here comes good M. de Laveleye to find that Connaught is poor because it is Catholic, and Ulster is rich because it is Protestant. But we must not forget Scotland.

“Since the Scotch,” says M. de Laveleye, “have embraced the reformed religion, they have outrun even the English.”

We shall take no pains to discover whether or in what respect, or how far the Scotch surpass the English. The meaning of the words which we have just quoted is evidently this: The progress which the Scotch have made during the last three centuries, in wealth and the other elements of material greatness, must be ascribed to the influence of the Protestant religion.

To avoid even the suspicion of unfairness in discussing this part of the subject, we shall quote the words of an author who devoted much time and research to the study of the character and tendencies of Scotch Presbyterianism, and whose deeply-rooted dislike of the Catholic Church is well known:

“To be poor,” says Buckle (History of Civilization, vol. ii. p. 314), describing the doctrines of the Scotch divines of the XVIIth century—“to be poor, dirty, and hungry; to pass through life in misery and to leave it with fear; to be plagued with boils and sores and diseases of every kind; to be always sighing and groaning; to have the face streaming with tears and the chest heaving with sobs; in a word, to suffer constant affliction and to be tormented in all possible ways—to undergo these things was a proof of goodness just as the contrary was a proof of evil. It mattered not what a man liked, the mere fact of his liking it made it sinful. Whatever was natural was wrong. The clergy deprived the people of their holidays, their amusements, their shows, their games, and their sports; they repressed every appearance of joy, they forbade all merriment, they stopped all festivities, they choked up every avenue by which pleasure could enter, and they spread over the country an universal gloom. Then truly did darkness sit on the land. Men in their daily actions and in their every looks became troubled, melancholy, and ascetic. Their countenance soured and was downcast. Not only their opinions, but their gait, their demeanor, their voice, their general aspect, were influenced by that deadly blight which nipped all that was genial and warm. The way of life fell into the sere and yellow leaf; its tints gradually deepened; its bloom faded and passed off; its spring, its freshness, and its beauty were gone; joy and love either disappeared or were forced to hide themselves in obscure corners, until at length the fairest and most endearing parts of our nature, being constantly repressed, ceased to bear fruit and seemed to be withered into perpetual sterility. Thus it was that the national character of the Scotch was in the XVIIth century dwarfed and mutilated.… They [the Scotch divines] sought to destroy not only human pleasures, but human affections. They held that our affections are necessarily connected with our lusts, and that we must therefore wean ourselves from them as earthly vanities. A Christian had no business with love or sympathy. He had his own soul to attend to, and that was enough for him. Let him look to himself. On Sunday, in particular, he must never think of benefiting others; and the Scotch clergy did not hesitate to teach the people that on that day it was sinful to save a vessel in distress, and that it was a proof of religion to leave ship and crew to perish. They might go; none but their wives and children would suffer, and that was nothing in comparison with breaking the Sabbath. So, too did the clergy teach that on no occasion must food or shelter be given to a starving man, unless his opinions were orthodox. What need for him to live? Indeed, they taught that it was a sin to tolerate his notions at all, and that the proper course was to visit him with sharp and immediate punishment. Going yet farther, they broke the domestic ties and set parents against their offspring. They taught the father to smite the unbelieving child, and to slay his own boy sooner than to allow him to propagate error. As if this were not enough, they tried to extirpate another affection, even more sacred and more devoted still. They laid their rude and merciless hands on the holiest passion of which our nature is capable—the love of a mother for her son.… To hear of such things is enough to make one’s blood surge again, and raise a tempest in our inmost nature. But to have seen them, to have lived in the midst of them, and yet not to have rebelled against them, is to us utterly inconceivable, and proves in how complete a thraldom the Scotch were held, and how thoroughly their minds as well as their bodies were enslaved.”

The XVIIth century, which was the golden age of French literature, and also of the Catholic Church in France, threw almost total darkness over Scotland, which during that period was most completely under the power of Protestantism. The clergy governed the nation; they were the only men of real influence; and yet there was no philosophy, no science, no poetry, no literature worth reading. “From the Restoration,” says Laing, “down to the Union the only author of any eminence whom Scotland produced was Burnet.”

If the thrift and industry of the Scotch are due to Protestantism, to what shall we ascribe the enterprise and commerce of the Catholic republics of Venice and Genoa during the middle ages?

If England’s wealth to-day comes from the Reformation, how shall we account for that of Spain in the XVIth and XVIIth centuries? And if the decline of Spain has been brought about by the Catholic faith, to what cause shall we assign that of Holland, who in the XVIIth century ruled the seas and did the carrying trade of Europe?

M. de Laveleye’s way of accounting for the prosperity of nations is certainly simple, but we doubt whether it would satisfy any respectable schoolboy. Unfortunately for such as he, there is no rule of three by which social problems may be solved. Race, climate, soil, political organization, and many other causes, working through ever-varying combinations, must all be considered if we would understand the history of material progress. As labor is the most fruitful cause of wealth, there is a necessary relation between national wealth and national habits, which are the outcome of a thousand influences, one of the most powerful of which undoubtedly is religious faith. But who does not know that climate influences labor, not only by enervating or invigorating the laborer, but also by the effect it produces on the regularity of his habits? If the Italian loves the dolce far niente, while the New Englander makes haste to grow rich as though some demon whom gold could bribe pursued him, shall we find the secret of their peculiar characters in their religious faith or in the climate in which they live, or shall we not rather seek it in a combination of causes, physical and moral? We have assuredly no thought of denying the intimate connection which exists between faith and character or between a nation’s religion and its civilization. We are willing even to affirm that not only the general superiority of Christian nations, but their superior wealth also, is in great measure attributable to their religion. And now, bidding adieu to M. de Laveleye for a while, we propose to discuss this subject, to which we have already alluded, somewhat more fully.

Christianity certainly does not measure either the greatness or the happiness of a people by its wealth, nor does it take as its ideal that state of society in which “the millionaire is the one sole god” and commerce is all in all; in which “only the ledger lives, and only not all men lie.”

Whether we consider individuals or associations of men, the Catholic Church does not hold and cannot hold that material interests are the highest. To be noble, to be true, to be humble, to be pure, is, in her view, better than to be rich. Man is more than money, which is good only in so far as it serves to develop his higher nature.

“The whole aim of man is to be happy,” says Bossuet. “Place happiness where it ought to be, and it is the source of all good; but the source of all evil is to place it where it ought not to be.”

“It is evident,” says S. Thomas, “that the happiness of man cannot lie in riches. Wealth is sought after only as a support of human life. It cannot be the end of man; on the contrary, man is its end.… The longing, moreover, for the highest good is infinite. The more it is possessed, the more it is loved and the more all else is despised; for the more it is possessed, the better is it known. With riches this is not the case. No sooner are they ours than they are despised, or used as means to some other end; and this, as it shows their imperfect nature, is proof that in them the highest good is not to be found.”

If wealth is not the highest good of individuals, is it of nations? What is the ideal of society? The study of the laws which govern national life must necessarily begin with this question, which all who have dealt with the subject, from Plato to Comte and Mill, have sought to answer. It is manifest that each one’s attempt to solve this problem will be based upon his views on the previous question: What is the ideal of man? This, in turn, will be answered according to each one’s notions of the ideal of God; and here we have the secret of the phenomenon which so surprised Proudhon—the necessary connection between religion and society, theology and politics.

Is there a God, personal, distinct from nature? Or is nature the only god, and science her prophet? It is right here at this central point that men are dividing; it is here we must place ourselves, if we would view the two great armies that in all Christendom are gathering for a supreme conflict.

There is a form of infidelity in our day—and it is the one into which all unbelief must ultimately resolve itself—which starts with this assumption: “Whether or not there is a God must for ever remain unknown to man.” It reasons in this way: “This whole subject belongs within the region, not only of the unknown, but of the unknowable. It is an insoluble riddle, and the philosophies and theologies which have sought to unravel it, if only idle, might deserve nothing more than contempt; but they have been the bane of human thought, have soured all the sweetness of life, and therefore ought to be visited with the execration of mankind. Since religion is a subject about which nothing can be known, what is so absurd as to spend time upon it? What so absurd as to divert the thoughts of men from subjects in which thinking is fruitful to those in which it must for ever remain barren of all except evil results? What so absurd as to set them working for a future life, of which we can never know whether it exists at all, when we might at least teach them how to make the present one worth having? The paradise of the future, which the prophetic eye of science can already descry, is in the world, not beyond it; and to seek to hasten its approach is the highest and only worthy object in life.” As we take it, this is the creed of modern unbelief, to which as yet few will openly subscribe, but toward which all its hundred conflicting schools of thought are moving. Few men indeed are able to perceive the logical outcome of their opinions, and still fewer have the courage to confess what they more than half suspect.

This superstition is a return to the nature-worship of paganism, but under a different aspect. Of old, nature was worshipped as revealed to sense, and now as revealed to thought; then as beautiful, now as true or useful. The first was artistic, and form was its symbol; the last is scientific, and law is its expression. The religion of humanity is only a phase of this worship; for in it man is considered, not as the child of God, but as the product of nature.

And now what has this to do with the ideal of society or the wealth of nations? At the basis of all social organization lies morality, as it is by conduct that both individuals and nations are saved or lost. The history of the human race shows that religion and morality are intimately related. That there have been good atheists does not affect the truth of this proposition any more than that there have been bad Christians. Men are usually better or worse than their principles; practice and profession rarely accord; and this is remarked because it ought not to exist.

Conduct, to be rational, should be motived, and consequently referable to certain general principles by which it is justified. To be particular, a man who believes in God, the Creator, a Father as just as he is good, has fundamental motives of action which are wanting to the atheist. The one should seek to approve himself to his heavenly Father; the other cannot go farther than conform to the laws of nature. To the one this life, as compared with that which is to be, is of value only as it relates to it; to the other it is all in all. And since the ultimate end of society is the welfare of the associated, the one will regard this end from a transcendental point of view, taking in time and eternity; the other will consider it merely with reference to man’s present state. Their notions of life, of its ends, aims, and proper surroundings, will be radically different.

Suppose for a moment that religious beliefs are mere dreams, fancies of sick brains; is it not at once manifest that human life is a much poorer and sorrier thing than it is commonly thought to be? As the light of heaven fades away, do not all things grow dark, leaving us in the shadow of death, despairing or debauched, sullen or frantic? The poet’s dream, the mother’s fond hope, the heart’s deep yearning, the mind’s flight towards the infinite, all become flat, meaningless, and unprofitable. Men are simply animals chained to this clod, too happy if the heaven-seeking eye permitted them to see it alone. Trouble, danger, and physical pain are the only evils, and virtue is the sharp-sighted prudence which enables us to avoid them. Self-denial is not only useless, it is irrational. Our appetites are good and ought to be indulged. Nothing, of its own nature, is sinful; excess alone is wrong; all indulgence, provided it hurt no one, is good—nay, it is necessary. Whoever denies any one of his appetites the food it craves cripples himself, is maimed and incomplete. “He may be a monk; he may be a saint; but a man he is not.”

When these views are transferred to questions of political economy and social organization, they lead to materialistic and utilitarian theories. Society must be organized on the basis of positivism; the problem of the future is how to give to the greatest number of individuals the best opportunities of indulgence, the greatest amount of comfort, with the least amount of pain. This is the greatest-happiness principle of Bentham and Mill. Culture, of course, intellectual and æsthetic, as affording the purest pleasure, must form a feature of this society; but its distinctive characteristic is wealth, which is both the means and the opportunity of indulgence.

“We constantly hear of the evils of wealth,” says Buckle, “and of the sinfulness of loving money; although it is certain that, after the love of knowledge, there is no one passion which has done so much good to mankind as the love of money.”

“If we open our eyes,” says Strauss,[229] “and are honest enough to avow what they show us, we must acknowledge that the entire activity and aspiration of the civilized nations of our time is based on views of life which run directly counter to those entertained by Christ. The ratio of value between the here and the hereafter is exactly reversed; and this is by no means the result of the merely luxurious and so-called materialistic tendencies of our age, nor even of its marvellous progress in technical and industrial improvements.… All that is best and happiest which has been achieved by us has been attainable only on the basis of a conception which regarded this present world as by no means despicable, but rather as man’s proper field of labor, as the sum total of the aims to which his efforts should be directed. If, from the force of habit, a certain proportion of workers in this field still carry the belief in an hereafter along with them, it is nevertheless a mere shadow, which attends their footsteps without exercising any determining influence on their actions.”

This is the cosmic religion, which is preached as “the new faith, the religion of the future.” This world is all in all—let us make the most of it; or, as the pagans of old put it: “Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die.”

In its essence it is sensualism; in its manifestations it will be refined or coarse, according to the dispositions of the persons by whom it is accepted. Now its worship will be accompanied with music and song and dance; at other times it will sink to those orgies in which man becomes only an unnatural animal.

Let us now turn to the Christian religion, and consider its teachings in their bearing upon the subject we are discussing. They are the very opposite of those which we have just read, and proceed from principles which are in direct contradiction to the cosmic philosophy. God is the highest, the Creator of all things, which are of value only as they relate to him and are in harmony with the laws of his being. The earth is but the threshold of heaven or of hell, as the case may be. This life is a preparation for a future one, which is eternal; and all human interests, whether individual or social, to be rightly understood, must be viewed in their relation to this truth. Man is essentially a moral being, and duty, which is often in conflict with pleasure, is his supreme law. He is under the action of antagonistic forces; seeing the better and approving it, he is drawn to love the worse and to do it. Thus self-denial becomes the condition of virtue, and warfare with himself his only assurance of victory.

“But he said to all: If any one wishes to come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross every day, and follow me.”

Wealth, which is the world’s great slave and idol, and universal procurator of the senses, though in itself not evil, is yet a hindrance to the highest spiritual life. “If thou wouldst be perfect, go sell what thou hast, and give it to the poor, and thou shall have treasure in heaven: and come and follow me.”

As duty is the supreme law of the individual, it follows that we must seek the ideal of society in the moral order, to which all other social interests should be made subservient, or else they will beget only an unbounded and lawless activity. Even education is valuable only in so far as it gives man a deeper sense of his responsibility to God, and enables him more thoroughly to understand and perform his duty.

The social problem as between Christianity and modern paganism may be stated in this way: is it the end of society to grow strong in virtue through self-denial, or to increase indefinitely the means and opportunity of indulgence? On which side is progress, on which decline?

We cannot now go farther into this subject, but before leaving it we wish to quote the words of Fitzjames Stephen, who will hardly be called a Christian, on modern progress.

“I suspect,” he says,[230] “that in many ways it has been a progress from strength to weakness; that people are more sensitive, less enterprising and ambitious, less earnestly desirous to get what they want, and more afraid of pain, both for themselves and others, than they used to be. If this should be so, it appears to me that all other gains, whether in wealth, knowledge, or humanity, afford no equivalent. Strength, in all its forms, is life and manhood. To be less strong is to be less a man, whatever else you may be. This suspicion prevents me, for one, from feeling any enthusiasm about progress, but I do not undertake to say it is well founded.… I do not myself see that our mechanical inventions have increased the general vigor of men’s characters, though they have no doubt increased enormously our control over nature. The greater part of our humanity appears to me to be a mere increase of nervous sensibility in which I feel no satisfaction at all.”

The general superiority, and even the greater wealth, of Christian nations as compared with others we would attribute, in great part at least, to the influence of their religious faith, to which they owe their sentiments on the dignity and sacredness of human nature in itself, apart from surroundings; on the substantial equality of all men before God, which tends to produce as its counterpart the equality of all before the law, thus leading to the abolition of slavery, the elevation of woman, and the protection of childhood. To it also they owe their ideas on the family, which, in its constitutive Christian elements, lies at the very foundation of our civilization. To Christianity they owe the principles of universal charity and compassion, which have revolutionized the relations of social life; and, finally, to it they are indebted for the rehabilitation of labor, the chief source of wealth, which the pagan nations looked upon as degrading.

“I cannot say,” writes Herodotus, “whether the Greeks get their contempt for labor from the Egyptians; for I find the same prejudice among the Thracians, the Scythians, the Persians, and the Lydians.”

“The Germans,” says Tacitus, “cannot bear to remain quiet, but they love to be idle; they hold it base and unworthy of them to acquire by their sweat what they can purchase with their blood.” In the same way the Gauls looked upon labor with contempt.

We shall have to take up M. de Laveleye’s pamphlet again; for the present we lay it aside with the following remark: If we should grant, to the fullest, all that is here said about the greater wealth and material prosperity of Protestant as compared with Catholic nations what are we thence to conclude? Shall we say that the greed of gain which is so marked a feature in the populations of England and the United States is at once the result and proof of true Christian faith? May it not be barely possible that the value of material progress is exaggerated? Is there not danger lest, when man shall have made matter the willing slave of all his passions, he should find that he has become the creature of this slave? However this may be, might not a Catholic find some consolation in the words of Holy Writ?

“And the angel that spoke in me, said to me: Cry thou, saying, Thus saith the Lord of hosts: I am zealous for Jerusalem and Sion with a great zeal. And I am angry with a great anger with the nations that are rich; for I was angry a little, but they helped forward the evil.”

TO BE CONTINUED.

ARE YOU MY WIFE?

BY THE AUTHOR OF “PARIS BEFORE THE WAR,” “NUMBER THIRTEEN,” “PIUS VI.,” ETC.