IV.

RELIGION'S GIFT TO THE NATIONS.

IRELAND the lawless from lawless doom,

RELAND! the lawless chid thy lawlessness:---

Strengthening God's law its throne to re-assume
In hovels low and lordly palaces.

Ireland! the ignorant scoffed thy ignorance :-bless
With spiritual light the scorner! Lift that gloom
Which turns false greatness to a gilded tomb :-
Bid Freedom's sons their Fathers' Faith confess!
Behold, the Nations also live by Truth:
The soul of knowledge is the light divine:
That halo circled Oxford once.* Maynooth!
The "meek usurper's" forfeit crown be thine!
She boasts the Learning new: with thee endure
The creed unchanged;-the heart-sick Nation's cure.

V.

THE FOUNDATION STONE.

DEChild of the sea-beat cliff, or skyey height,

ESCEND, strong Stone! into my country's breast:

Descend, well-pleased, into the eternal night;
Amid the eternal silence make thy rest!
Descend in hope, thou high, prophetic Guest!
For God a covenant upon thee doth write:
On thee His pledge is graved in words of might
Plain as those mandates Ten, by Him impressed,
While Sinai's peaks made answer, thunder-riven,
On the twinned Tablets of the Hebrew Law.
This day the future with the past is wed ;
The undying promise with the greatness dead;
Ireland this day her ancient pact with Heaven
Renews in godly triumph, loving awe.

AUBREY DE VERE.

* The old motto of the University of Oxford was "Deus illuminatio mea."

Α

THE AGGRESSIONS OF SCIENCE.

UTHORITY when used intolerantly is almost certain to provoke an inquiry into its claim to be obeyed. We are apt to think it the most justifiable ground of resistance, that the power against which we rebel has been unlawfully established, and exercises a jurisdiction which it has usurped. It is, perhaps, this natural feeling of opposition to a power which has become oppressive that prompts us to question the right of modern science to speak authoritatively in the things of Faith. That the majority of the scientific writers of the present day have manifested a spirit of determined hostility to the teaching of the Catholic Church is a fact which few who are conversant with the scientific literature of the time will deny. By a combination of circumstances, which it would be interesting to examine, the leaders of modern progress, those who are considered the best representatives of the intellectual advancement of the age, are generally outside the Church and decidedly adverse to her. Of course the enemies of Catholicism discover in this phenomenon a proof that the Church is the enemy of enlightenment, and enslaves the minds of her followers. Perhaps we may be able at another time to suggest an explanation of this fact less injurious to the dignity of the Church, and more in accordance with the title of patron of learning which she long held. For the present we are concerned with this fact merely, inasmuch as it explains the anti-Catholic, and, very often, antiChristian tone which pervades the literature of modern science. This spirit of irreligion manifests itself in various ways. At one time it is expressed in terms of measured and formal contempt for the dogmas of Faith; at another, in wild and reckless theories directly opposed to the teachings of revelation, built upon faulty deductions and vague analogies, and in which the "bold thinkers" of the day indulge without concerning themselves about the fears or hopes which their doctrine may excite or destroy.*

We are not of the number of those who would restrict the legitimate liberty of scientific research. We are so confident of the truth of the teachings of our Church, that the attempt or even the wish to safeguard her doctrines by obstructing the unlimited discovery of natural truth, seems to us an absolute want of faith in her infallibility. Truth is never opposed to truth; the dogmas of Faith being true, no scientific discovery can ever imperil their integrity.

This profession of our sympathy with the progressive sciences will secure us against the reproach of being hostile to the cause of true advancement, and will perhaps ensure for our remarks an indulgence which some friends of science might otherwise refuse them;

* See the concluding remarks of Mr. Darwin in his second volume on the "Descent of Man."

nor shall we be charged with a wish to restrict the sphere of scientific inquiry when we condemn what we must consider the extravagance of many modern scientists.

The domain of theological inquiry does not, as some of the older theological schools seemed to have believed, embrace the whole circle of human knowledge. It is restricted to the great questions of the existence and nature of God, and of His relations to the created world. Natural theology conducts its researches on these points by the means which are at the disposal of the unaided human reason. A higher theological science is formed by the examination of the various revelations which God has made of His nature, and of the relations which it has pleased Him to establish with the creatures whom He has made. Outside of this sphere, the opinion of the theologian has only the importance which his acquaintance with the subject on which he ventures to speak secures him. The errors which the forgetfulness of this principle has occasioned, and the unseemly display of an intolerant ignorance of physical science to which it has occasionally led, have often pained those who, while firmly attached to their faith, at the same time warmly sympathise with the cause of advancing knowledge. The dogmas of the Catholic Church are by no means identified with the philosophico-theological theses defended at Salamanca and Coimbra three centuries ago. The question of the nature of the music produced by the revolution of the spheres, or the equally interesting and instructive inquiry as to whether the rosebushes of Eden bore thorns or not, has no bearing whatever on her infallible teaching, and it is unfair to represent them as examples of orthodox science.

We repeat it; in matters which regard mere natural science, no amount of theological learning gives its possessor a claim to be considered an authority. Theological reasoning could never establish the binomial theorem, or demonstrate the circulation of the blood; and therefore in the mathematical or experimental sciences no one who is a theologian, and nothing more, may dispute the conclusions of Newton or Harvey.

But if we would confine the theologian within the limits of his own science, much more rigidly would we forbid the excursions of the student of natural science into the domain of theology. The study of physical nature is but the study of the laws which rule the material world. It is indeed true that "the heavens show forth the glory of God;" that the earth, too, teaches the same lesson, that the evidences of His being and His perfections are legible in every department of creation-in every rock piled up on the rugged surface of the mountains, in every organism, animal or vegetable, which contributes to swell the vast mass of created life. All this is true; but all this does not prove that there is anything in the studies of the astronomer, the geologist, or the physiologist, which enables them to read with peculiar clearness the lesson which creation was designed to teach to all. An intimate acquaintance with the movements of the planets does not peculiarly qualify the astronomer to appreciate the arguments which demonstrate the existence of a necessary Being

from the existence of an order of things contingent because changeable. The study of the elaborate organisms of the animal and vegetable kingdoms will hardly enable the naturalist to realise better than his less instructed neighbours the force of the argument from design. Natural science deals only with the proximate causes of physical phenomena; the arguments by which we deduce the existence and nature of a primal cause are outside of its sphere, and remain unaffected by its progress. Nay, on the great questions of the existence of the human soul, its nature, and its destiny-questions on which physical science might seem to have some bearing-advancing knowledge throws no light whatever. We do not, of course, dignify by the name of science the vagaries of Vogt, Moleschott, Büchner, and writers of the same school, who have done so much to bring the study of physical nature into contempt. The mysterious substance which pervades this body of clay, and is, indeed, the better part of ourselves, still eludes the dissecting knife and the microscope; the manner of its union with the body must still be expressed in the vague phraseology of the theses of medieval philosophy. Its presence is still proved by the long-known phenomena of life and consciousness; no discovery of medicine has added anything to our knowledge of its nature. What may be its destiny when it shall have parted company with the clay which it animates on earth, physical science cannot guess, nor do scientists, except such as M. Figuier, stop to inquire.

But if natural science is unequal to the solution of the higher questions of physiology and the fundamental ones of natural theology, much more remote is its bearing on and its connection with the problems which grow out of the revelations which God has made to his creatures. The dogmas of revelation belong to an order of truth, of which the student of the law of nature can know nothing, and with which the reasoning peculiar to the studies in which he is engaged can never make him acquainted. There are, indeed, points on which particular tenets of revealed doctrine might seem to be out of harmony with the established laws of physical nature; but the philosopher who has made progress enough to understand that even physical laws are but very imperfectly understood, and that the inner nature of the physical world is still a mystery to man, will not easily assert that to be impossible which a certain revelation declares to have been realised. He will be ready to admit that there may be vast realms of knowledge far beyond the range of human vision, and that if, at times, a beam from that distant land of brightness finds its way to these more gloomy regions, it would ill become us to shroud our eyes to its light because it outshines the tiny lanterns which we ourselves have lighted to guide us in the darkness. The senseless philosophy, that what our eyes can see, our hands feel, and our other organs of perception grasp, is the only legitimate subject of human investigation, that the existence of another world is problematic, and its communications with the inhabitants of this, if it exist, altogether impossible; that the laws of physical nature are an immutable, eternal code, the execution of which no power can suspend, is repugnant to

the feelings and aspirations of man, and can only live as a monument of the age in which it found corruption enough to flourish on.

We protest, then, in the name of science, against the attacks made by her pretended votaries on the doctrines of revelation; and we repeat that those who make them usurp an authority to which they have no claim. Revealed truth lies outside of the sphere of their reasonings, and consequently beyond the range of their weapons.

It is, indeed, matter of regret that progressive knowledge is so often identified with men whose intolerance of doctrines of which they know but little, estranges many from the cause which they so unworthily represent. But whatever science may lose in the contest, of this we are certain, Faith will come out of it, as she has come out of many others, renewed in her beauty and strengthened in her immutability. T. F.

T1

ON THE ROCKS.

ALICE ESMONDE.

HERE'S scarce a breeze on all the green hill-sides,
And scarce a breath upon the sultry sea,

As from a boat that o'er the water glides

A song in foreign tongue comes up to me:
A mellow voice, full, plaintive, rich, and deep,
'Mid sounds of breaking waves that sigh along,
And still their low, complaining chorus keep,
Like memory's tones, through all the sailor's song.

Great peaks of cliffs loom eastwards far around,
And hide these lonely rocks and shelving seats;
At certain hours each eve I catch the sound

Of distant strains from out the busy streets;
On restless wings wild flocks of sea-birds fly,
As now they flit o'er yellow sands,--and now,
With evermore that strange and painful cry,

They bathe their white breasts in the billow's brow.

One cloud-one only-tinged with gold to-day,
And moving slow, on towards the western verge,
To fade, as brighter things have done, away,

Where sky and wave in purple glory merge.
Oh! lone and grand those seas so vast and strange,
That bring deep, solemn thoughts this hour to me,
As purple shades upon their bosom change,

And fill my soul with awe and mystery.

The fishing-boats their white sails homeward bend,
The foreign flags from tall masts deck the bay,
Two stately ships their outward course slow wend,
O'er trackless wastes to distant lands away.
Unchanged, the seabird's restless wail floats by,
And from the shore rush weary waves in fear;
The gold-tinged cloud has dropped down from the sky--
And still that song in foreign tongue I hear.