ciples of scholasticism to defend the Thomist cosmology in its details, and to declare that nothing therein ought to be changed; but we must acknowledge that apologetics have by no means appeared to be the sole object of the congress. On one hand, many of the conclusions discussed or even admitted had no relation, however remote, to Catholic orthodoxy; they were grounded on properly scientific arguments, which were entirely foreign to any dogmatical prepossession. On the other hand, one might often wonder why this or that mathematical or physical question was treated in this congress, in what way its solution could concern the faith.

It would be absurd to insinuate that the organizers of the enterprise desired to demonstrate that there is a Catholic physics, a Catholic chemistry, a Catholic anthropology, a Catholic physiology. They would be the first to laugh and to shrug their shoulders at such an accusation. But this very fact renders still more enigmatical the fact just noted by us; we have no right to state it without endeavoring to make out the reason of it. Men as enlightened as M. d'Hulst, rector of the Catholic Institute of Paris, Cardinal Richard the Archbishop of Paris, and their eminent collaborators, do nothing haphazard. The scientific congress of Catholics was devised on a deeply meditated plan; why has it shown so little dogmatic preoccupation? Why has it affected so high and intelligent a measure of scientific disinterestedness? This question is well worth proposing, but it cannot be resolved singly. A little attention soon shows that it comes out on this other: Why have the Catholics established this congress of savants? Why does the Pope lavish his encouragements on this new work? What results are expected from this enterprise? Let us approach this problem; in studying it we shall enter into the inner thoughts of many of our contemporaries.

II.

There is a text on which Catholic preachers love to preach: Custos, quid de nocte? Custos, quid de nocte? (Isaiah xxi. 1.) It expresses marvelously well a constant preoccupation of the Roman Church, that of questioning the signs of the times and of incessantly adapting its tactics to the exigences of the moment. Now it has come to apprehend in the younger generations new necessities, and makes haste to meet them by taking an unexpected attitude.

And in effect, the least attentive observers agree that we may distinguish in the students of our schools, general and special, the symptoms more or less serious of moral and religious aspirations. Note in what terms Professor Ernest Lavisse, who makes no profession of being a Christian, but who lives in intimate intercourse with students, last year signalized this phenomenon: "Our youth are no longer Voltairians. Irony and negation have been dragged down in the ruins of the affirmations of other times. However they may have continued their trumpetings, after they had wound up the work of necessary destruction; however they may have employed themselves in drying up the sources of the moral life; however gayly they have wrought on this melancholy task, they are to-day detested. Hence it comes that a part of our youth, the lesser part, gathers in serried ranks around the church. Another part, also small, demands of the church that she renovate herself. . . . Another part, in fine, more considerable, seeks a 'plus ultra'

in science and democracy, without knowing what it is, knowing only that it is, and that we are to tend thither. In truth, one of the distinguishing marks of the youth of our time is the nostalgia of the Divine." Now the Quartier Saint-Sulpice, in which are cantoned the clerical forces, is not far from the Quartier Latin. The church has not been slow to perceive that many youthful souls regret their lost faith and long for fresh religious convictions; she has decided to plead her cause before the enlightened youth just as she pleads it before the working classes.

Catholicism, on the other hand, in its propaganda, has been obliged to renounce proceedings which it has never repudiated. When Louis Veuillot published in 1838 "Les Pélerinages de Suisse," it contained these words (vol. ii. p. 203): "As for me, let me say frankly and distinctly, if anything appears to me worthy of regret, it is that they did not burn John Huss sooner, and that they did not burn Luther as well. This is because there was not found, at the commencement of the Reformation, a prince pious enough and politic enough to set on foot a crusade against the countries infected by it." To those who reproached him with these extravagances, he answered (in 1881): "The heresiarch, examined and convicted by the church, was given over to the secular arm and punished with death. Nothing appeared to me more natural and more necessary. What I wrote in 1838 is what I still think." Many Ultramontanes among us still maintain these principles of the Middle Ages, and Père Monsabré has not shrunk from giving forth from the pulpit, in 1882, a fiery eulogy upon the Inquisition. But practically the church is constrained to dismiss her pleasing dream of a dominion of force; the secular arm is no longer at her service.

From this fact results a grave consequence. The church cannot content herself with hurling the anathema against the doctrines that displease her. Excommunication without the support of the secular arm is but a vain formality. There is henceforth only one efficacious mode of combating error: it is to dispute with it, opposing argument to argument. The champions of Catholicism have need of ideas in default of the stake.

The church, therefore, is now proceeding to lay out her strength in the field of apologetics. Now a serious apologetic must correspond to the moral state of those whom it is desired to convince and to bring to the foot of the altar; and it would be a grave error to suppose that our youth of to-day, desirous as they may be of a religion, are weary of science. The students who throng to our various departments of study have confidence in thought; they would give no heed to a preacher of obscurantism. "Without doubt," say they with M. de Vogue, who is their favorite interpreter, "without doubt Time will act the reviser. Not impossibly it may cause a collapse, from top to bottom, of some of the results of contemporary science. Our systems of synthesis will not last any more than those of our predecessors have lasted. But our methods of analysis, our rational view of the world, the general orientation of the scientific spirit, these are acquisitions which henceforth can never perish except by a complete collapse of civilization. Whatever we may rebuild, we shall rebuild upon this impregnable substratum." The church, then, finds herself between two alternatives, either she must renounce the hope of conquering our cultivated youth, or she must prove that she does not repudiate reason and the results gained by science.

To the foundation of so extended an apologetic, the theologian, reduced

simply to his own lights, would not be adequate. What, in effect, shall be his attitude in face of scientific theories which he has had neither the time nor the means of sounding to the bottom? Does he not run the risk of spending all his strength against theories which, sooner or later, would vanish away of themselves, which would disappear like any other transient fashion? Does it never happen to him, on the other hand, to skirt the sides of theories the most subversive, without perceiving their dangers? And how many times, moreover, he is ignorant of this or that scientific truth, which would have aided him in his contest with error! The savant, therefore, will render to the theologian a triple service: He will indicate to him the hypotheses which it behooves him to contemn, those which it behooves him to combat, and those which it behooves him to take seriously, and not to treat with too lofty a superiority. I am simply summing up a thesis which has been maintained in more than one sitting of these two congresses, and which the Pope himself has underlined in his brief of May 20, 1887.

Everything coheres together, and when one begins to apply a principle he soon sees how it evolves its implications. The church calls the savants to her aid; it is reasonable that she should give them encouragement in return. And this, doubtless, is an essential object of the congresses which she organizes. It is not their sole object to enrich apologetics; they are useful especially to communicate strength to Catholic savants. Very often these are isolated in a corner of the province; if they are university men, they encounter the more or less disguised hostility of surrounding society. Doubtless they are well aware that they are not alone in cultivating the sciences while declaring themselves submissive sons of Rome; but they are unacquainted with those men in whose scientific passion and religious faith they share. They have never met with them, they discern them as it were through a cloud, and do not feel themselves really united with them. . . . One can now divine what kind of service the congresses render to the Catholic savants. When each of these returns to his home and resumes his daily task, he has brought away in his remembrance the living images of men who think with him, who believe with him; he is no longer alone, he is strong. The governors of the Roman Catholic Church are psychologues of the first rank; they understand the needs of their workmen, and this is why the organizers of these congresses take extraordinary pains to explore all the secluded nooks of France in order to discover in them all the Catholic savants. Each bishop charges an influential man of his diocese with this novel species of recruiting service. And the better to encourage these savants, who are often somewhat timidly retiring, to give them a still more decisive sensation, one is not content to assemble them, to bring them to make acquaintance with each other: one brings them in presence of a great number of foreigners. The international character of these congresses is still another stroke of politic ability.

I need hardly add that the encouragements given to science may develop scientific vocations. The organizers of this enterprise know this, and they found great hopes on the moral effect of these congresses. Care has been taken to assemble them at the seat of the Catholic Institute at a time of year when the students are all at Paris; and the Catholic circle of the Luxembourg (a circle of students) has had the honor of receiving the members at a soirée. Eloquent appeals have been addressed to cultivated youth to seek in science the influence which politics refuses it. We shall be surprised if they remain unheeded.

The congress which we have endeavored to describe had, then, for its object to strengthen apologetics while encouraging savants and inciting to scientific vocations; and, indeed, it was itself an apologetic act. It had as its special object to show by the very fact of its meeting that there is no divorce between the church and science. Let us explain ourselves. The object was to prove, not that this or that Christian truth has not been destroyed by science, but that the dogma of the church in no way finds fault with the liberty of scientific researches. The theoretical demonstration of this thesis is not easy; some believe it impossible. Therefore the effort is made to substitute for it the argument of a fact which strikes men's minds, the sight of men noted for the boldness of their thinking, who nevertheless humbly bow before the church. She sometimes, it is true, finds their theories a little heretical, but she is very little inclined to harass those whose submission is so precious to her. She has never said what she thought of the speculative ideas which M. Lachelier has developed, during a number of years, at the Superior Normal School; she has chosen rather to find her advantage in the at least apparent contrast which there is between his religious beliefs and his philosophical opinions. She knew that a professor so much loved and venerated is never accused of dissimulation; it pleased her to see the pupils of this master pause in astonishment before this psychological mystery of a believer at once so hardy and so humble, and seek in all his words the logic which presides over all movements of a great mind.

The effect which M. Lachelier produced at the Normal School, possibly without observing it, the Catholics have received express commission to produce in every circle into which they are able to penetrate. It has been remarked that for some years, at the meetings of learned societies which regularly assemble at the Sorbonne, many excellent papers are presented by ecclesiastics. "You see there nothing but cassocks," says a satirical journalist. This is an exaggerated sally; but it may be truly said that, among the laymen who take part in these meetings, many are fervent Catholics. A word of command is circulating in all the Catholic world; it is admirably received and obeyed.

But the propaganda which results from it is slow. At the present juncture there is a call to impress men's minds by blows that tell. The waverers are numerous; they are weary of the negations of a criticism à outrance, and they are not yet ready to cross the threshold of the church. It is for them that the need is felt of organizing great manifestations which shall deeply impress them, and extort the consent of their wills. M. d'Hulst, who is rector of the Catholic Institute of Paris, and who preached the last Lenten course of sermons at Nôtre Dame, has very distinctly avowed this opinion. In the words which I am about to cite he has been the interpreter of all the initiators of the scientific congresses: "It is good that Christian savants should be, as it were, lost in the ranks of scientific workers who do not share their beliefs, to show these that no obstacle withholds them. But it is good also, in our view, that they should sometimes break ranks; that they should form themselves into a sacred battalion; that every one, in seeing them, may observe at once their double character of savants and of Christians. Then only will the cause of Catholic science be won at the bar of public opinion. The masses used to be told, You must choose between faith and science. And behold, there defiles before our eyes a compact group of men who have won their laurels in all the provinces of knowledge; VOL. XVI. - NO. 94.

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irreligious Science herself has been obliged to do homage to the value of their methods, to the fruitfulness of their labors. We cannot withhold recognition from them as authentic men of science. Yet all these men of science believe in God, adore his Christ, listen to his church, find themselves at ease in their faith, chant with one voice the time-honored creed of Nicæa. All, therefore, have realized in themselves that accord which was declared impossible between knowledge and belief. And this is no longer an isolated fact, without notoriety and without results; it is a collective fact, visible to all eyes, and carrying with it that sort of demonstration which no one can refuse, the demonstration of the philosopher who proved the possibility of movement by walking."

What does the future reserve for us? Will the projects we have just set forth be crowned with success? Will the hopes of the Ultramontane leaders be deceived? It appertains not to us to play the part of prophets. We will simply remark this: The signs of the times observed by the Catholics are real; it is perfectly and exactly true that many unquiet souls would fain return to Christianity. But these souls are asking themselves whether they are to abdicate the independence of their thought, and this question troubles them; so long as they shall not have resolved it, they will not decide. The church exhibits consummate skill in showing to these seekers of religion the imposing spectacle of Christian scientists. M. d'Hulst and his friends do not deceive themselves; and the Pope has been well advised.

The whole question is this: Will these men whom it is hoped to seduce content themselves with demanding the liberty of science, and consent to bow before the dogmatic authority of the church? Will they proclaim the rights of the religious conscience? In this case they will not be long in discovering that the examination of certain problems is formally interdicted to them, and they will come into collision with the doctrine of infallibility. All the politic address of the church will have been displayed to absolutely no effect. But how many men are capable of virile vindications of their full right?

In such circumstances French Protestantism has noble and glorious obligations to fulfill. Is it not to it that the honor belongs of denouncing all spiritual tyrannies, and of inscribing on its banner the truly Christian formula, "Gospel and Freedom"? But we must not content ourselves with sterile declamations. The men of our time demand facts and not phrases. Are we supplying to them in our churches the sight of men who know how to unite in an ineffable harmony science and faith? May God put in the heart of our young students of theology those missionary ambitions which will bring them to discern in slothful ignorance a sin and in scientific culture a duty!

UNIVERSITY OF PARIS,

PARIS, FRANCE.

Raoul Allier.

NOTES FROM ENGLAND.

THE last few months have been full of interesting and significant events in our country. Not least of these in point of significance has been the International Council of Congregationalists, the meetings of