The living witness : a lawyer's brief for Christianity

tlbe %ivin$ Witness

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A Lawyer's Brief for Christianity

COLL. CH)H$TI REGIS sx

BIB. MAJOR

TOHONTO

ST. LOUIS, MO., 1912

PUBLISHED BY B. HERDER

17 SOUTH BROADWAY

FREIBURG (BADEN) I LONDON, W. C.

GERMANY I 68, GREAT RUSSELL STREET

NIHIL OBSTAT
Sti. Ludovici, die 20. Nov. 1911

REV. F. G. HOLWECK,

Censor Libromm

IMPRIMATUR
Sti. Ludovici, die 21. Nov. 1911

©JOANNES J. GLENNON,

ArcMepiscopus Sti . Ludovici ,

Copyright 1911, by Joseph Gummersbach

Becktold Printing and Book Mfg. Co., St. Louis, Mo.

PREFACE

THERE is nothing in these pages that has
not been said, and better said, a thousand
times before, but the subject is one that can
never lose its interest, and there are many who
have never considered it from the point of view
here discussed. I have thought that a brief pre
sentation of this view in the plain language of
everyday life might arrest the attention of some
who would never read more elaborate and schol
arly works, and thus lead to further inquiry.
This plan of treatment has to some extent ne
cessitated a sacrifice of that precision of state
ment which would otherwise be desirable, but I
have written for the " Man in the Street," and
not for the scholar or critic.

As a layman I have endeavored to avoid, as
far as possible, all dogmatic statement. Where
this has not been possible, as in all else, I have
written in humble submission to the judgment of
that Church of which I am an unworthy mem
ber.

THE AUTHOR.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

I THE SUPREME QUESTION I

II THE LIMITATIONS OF THE HUMAN INTELLECT 6

III OUR SOURCES OF KNOWLEDGE 13

IV How SHALL WE KNOW THE TRUTH ... 20
V THE INFALLIBLE AUTHORITY 26

VI THE TESTIMONY OF HISTORY 37

VII THE TESTIMONY OF PHILOSOPHY .... 49

VIII THE TESTIMONY OF SCRIPTURE 64

IX THE FATAL HERESY 84

X THE PROVINCE OF REASON 92

XI THE BASIS OF FAITH . . 101

THE LIVING WITNESS

CHAPTER I

THE SUPREME QUESTION

A VERY large number of the wisest and
best of the human race in all ages have
believed, and yet believe, that our present life
is but a preparation for another life beyond the
grave, which is to continue through all eternity,
and that whether we shall spend that eternity in
happiness greater than the mind can conceive,
or in misery the most unspeakable, is to be de
termined by ourselves during the present life.
The existence of this belief is a fact which must
impress itself upon our attention. Another fact
which cannot be ignored is that the duration of
the present life is for each one of us most un
certain. No one of us has any assurance that
he will live to see the light of another day. This
latter fact — the uncertainty of life — is im
pressed upon us in a thousand different ways.
Whether or not we heed the lesson to be drawn
from it, we are reminded of the fact itself daily
I

2 The Living Witness

and hourly. This being so, how can we, as
reasonable beings, neglect to inquire what foun
dation exists for the belief, so widely and per
sistently held by such a large number of our
fellow men, that our eternal destiny, for weal
or for woe, is to be determined by ourselves
during the uncertain but certainly brief period
of our natural lives? It is certain that this be
lief has influenced the whole course of human
history. Hundreds of thousands have given their
lives for their faith in it. Hundreds of millions
have been enabled to cheerfully endure poverty,
suffering and misery of all kinds by the hope of
happiness beyond the grave. If this belief is
well founded, then the question of what we shall
do to attain the eternal happiness promised on
the one hand, and avoid the eternal misery
threatened upon the other, is certainly the most
important that can ever present itself to us.
The attainment of fame or fortune, the love of
our fellow creatures, and everything which this
uncertain but certainly brief existence can offer
us sinks to insignificance beside it. That this is
true, no reasonable person will deny. Every
person of ordinary intelligence must admit that
the two questions above stated are more im
portant than any other that can engage our at
tention. This being true, it is certainly remark
able that so many persons, who are diligent and
prudent in the ordinary affairs of life, manifest

The Supreme Question 3

an utter indifference to these most momentous
questions. The causes of this indifference are
various, but some of them may suggest them
selves in the course of our discussion.

With reference to the primary question: I
think we are warranted in saying that belief in
a future life beyond the grave is the normal at
titude of the human mind. Every soul that
comes into being bears within itself the con
sciousness of its own immortality. Belief in the
immortality of the soul, and a sense of de
pendence upon and responsibility to a higher
power, appears to be natural to all mankind. It
is found in all races, however low in the scale of
mental development. No savage tribe has yet
been found without some form of religion. The
man who absolutely denies his immortality, and
believes that his soul, or whatever it may be
that animates his body, will perish with the body,
if any such man really exists, is the product of
culture and education. I say if any such man
really exists, because I doubt that any man is
ever really convinced that he is distinguished
from the beasts of the field only by a higher de
gree of intelligence.

The philosophical arguments in favor of the
immortality of the soul are beyond the scope of
our present discussion, and I rest the argument
upon the proposition that every human being, of
normal intelligence, feels within himself the con-

4 The Living Witness

sciousness that he himself, the spirit which ani
mates the body and controls its actions, as dis
tinguished from the matter of which the body is
composed, will not perish with the body.

The really important question is the second:
Whether we have it in our power to determine
our destiny, whether for weal or woe, in the life
beyond the grave? With reference to their at
titude toward this last question, civilized people
may be broadly divided into three classes: those
who believe, those who deny, and those who have
no opinion. Those who deny are comparatively
few. By far the greater number of those who
do not believe simply say : " I do not know."
Whether this attitude, which has come to be
known by the name of Agnosticism, is justified,
is a question which every one who holds it is
bound at his peril to ask himself. It is a maxim
of human law that ignorance of the law is no
excuse for its violation. This is a rule founded
upon necessity, and its application in many cases
leads to unjust results. But if it be true that
for all our actions in this life, our thoughts, as
well as our words and deeds, we will be held
accountable to a higher power, which will have
before it the facts and administer strict justice,
committing no error in its conclusions either of
law or fact, that power, which will be able to
search out the inmost secrets of the heart, will
determine whether our ignorance was excusable,

The Supreme Question 5

or whether it was wilful and culpable. In view
of such a possibility, he who expects to rely
upon the plea of ignorance may well examine
his position with fear and trembling. It is an
other maxim of human law that every person
is chargeable with notice of such fact as he
might have learned by such inquiry as a person
of ordinary prudence would have made under
the same circumstances. This is a perfectly
just and reasonable rule, and if it should be ap
plied to the subject now under discussion, are
we not bound to exhaust all the sources of knowl
edge open to us before the plea of ignorance can
avail ?

CHAPTER II

THE LIMITATIONS OF THE HUMAN INTELLECT

RELIGION in its broadest sense is the
belief in and worship of a higher power,
omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent, who
knows all things, foresees all things and directs
all things, and to whom we are responsible for
all our actions, and who will reward the good
and punish the wicked, a being whom we desig
nate by the name of God. This belief proposes
to us certain mysteries which it is beyond the
capacity of the human mind to understand, and
the further we progress in mental development
the more difficult these mysteries become. To the
mind of a child or an unlettered savage the
teachings of religion present no difficulty. They
are accepted along with a thousand other facts
concerning the visible world around us, which,
to such a mind, are equally mysterious and inex
plicable. It is only when we have progressed in
knowledge, and learned to inquire into the why
and how of things, and have learned that the
world of matter around us appears to be con
trolled by unvarying natural laws, that it be-
6

Limitations of Human Intellect 7

comes difficult for us to conceive of anything
taking place otherwise than in accordance with
those laws. The greater our progress in learn
ing, the more apt we are to forget that our
knowledge differs from that of the child only in
degree and not in kind. We have traveled fur
ther than the child, but it is along the same road,
and we have by no means reached its end. Na
ture still holds her secrets, and many of her
laws are still to us a sealed book.

To say that we will not believe in what we do
not understand, is both philosophically absurd
and false in fact. We may take a grain of corn
and analyze it and determine its chemical com
position. A skillful artist could probably make
an artificial grain which could not be distin
guished from the natural one, having the same
elements combined in the same proportions, and
having the same outward form and appearance.
But there is something in the natural grain
which no human power can reproduce ; the prin
ciple of life which causes the natural grain, un
der the influence of heat and moisture, to germi
nate and draw from the soil and atmosphere
the necessary elements from which to create a
full-grown plant with its stalk, leaves and flow
ers, and in time to reproduce other grains, each
containing the same vital principle. The full-
grown plant, with all the characteristics which
distinguish the species to which it belongs, is, in

8 The Living Witness

embryo, somehow contained in the grain, but no
eye can perceive it, no analysis can detect it, and
no intelligence can conceive its form or charac
ter. The most learned scientist can no more ex
plain the nature of this vital principle than the
child can explain why the pressing of a button
on the wall causes the electric burners on the
ceiling to flood the room with light. Neverthe
less, we all believe in the existence of this vital
principle in the grain of corn, and depend upon
it for our daily bread.

Not only do we constantly accept as true and
act upon propositions which we cannot under
stand, as in the case of the grain of corn, but
there are in the visible universe around us facts
which our minds are incapable of comprehend
ing. It is impossible for us to conceive of space
without limit, and on the other hand it is equally
impossible to conceive of a limit to space.

We look at the stars in the heavens, and learn
that astronomers have measured their distance
from us. These figures are so vast that we have
no standard of comparison to enable us to re
alize what they mean, but they are at least defi
nite, and fix the boundary of the visible universe.
But what lies beyond? Space. But what is
space? The widest ocean must have a shore.
The longest straight line must have a beginning
and an end. A railroad train starting from the
earth and travelling at the rate of sixty miles an

Limitations of Human Intellect 9

hour would require 4,000,000 years to reach the
nearest of the fixed stars, and at the end of
the journey the traveler would be no nearer the
limit of space than when he started, because there
is and can be no limit to space. This is a prop
osition entirely beyond the comprehension of
the human intellect. The mind is utterly unable
to grasp it. The human intellect is equally un
able to form any conception of eternity. We
cannot conceive of the beginning or end of time,
or of the existence of anything which had no
beginning and will have no end.

We cannot undertake to define the limit of
man's intellectual power, but these illustrations
show that there are limits, and that there are
problems in the presence of which the most
highly-developed human intelligence is as help
less as that of the little child.

It is equally impossible for us to form any
definite conception of an object which has no
form, dimensions or substance, and which is not
cognizable by any of our bodily senses. Such
an object is the soul which animates and con
trols our bodies, and constitutes our real selves.
Something which possesses definite character
istics, so that when we speak of a person's char
acter, we refer to his soul, and not to his body.
Something which is capable of receiving, through
the senses, impressions of material objects, and
retaining these impressions, and thus acquiring

io The Living Witness

knowledge. Something which is capable of
classifying and comparing and drawing conclu
sions from the knowledge derived from the
bodily senses, and thus acquiring other knowl
edge. Something which is capable of planning,
ordering and directing the movements of the
body to the accomplishment of desired results.
Something which is capable of feeling emotions,
such as love and hatred, hope and fear, anger,
joy and sorrow. Something which is so far dis
tinct from the body that, up to a certain point,
the body may be mutilated and portions of it
destroyed without in any way affecting the
identity of the person, or changing what we call
his character.

The relations between the soul and the body;
the manner in which they are united, and the
manner in which they act upon and affect each
other; why mental disease sometimes affects the
body, and why an injury to or disease of certain
organs of the body affects the mind, are wholly
unknown to us after thousands of years of ob
servation and study. Whatever it is, this myste
rious something which we call the soul is wholly
outside of and distinct from the material world
which is cognizable by our bodily senses, with
whose laws we are more or less familiar, and of
which we may reasonably expect to learn more.
It is so different from any object belonging to
that world that any definite conception of it is

Limitations of Human Intellect n

utterly beyond the capacity of the human intel
lect.

When we consider that God is likewise a spirit,
so far similar in nature to the human soul that
he exists outside of and beyond the material
world known to us; that being the creator of
that world, and the author of the laws that gov
ern it, he is in nowise bound by those laws, but
may suspend them at his pleasure ; that he is in
finitely superior to the human soul in power, and
is not bound by the limitations which fetter and
hedge it around at every turn, it is obvious that
it is beyond our capacity to form any concep
tion of his nature, power and attributes, except
in so far as he may have chosen to reveal them
to us, and enlighten our understanding as to
them.

Considering the limitations of the human in
tellect, and the impossibility of our comprehend
ing the nature of God, it is not surprising, but
rather to be expected, that religion, which deals
with the relations between man and God, should
propose to us mysteries which we are unable to
comprehend. But the fact that we cannot know
anything of God, except what He may choose to
reveal to us, does not justify us in saying that
we do not know and cannot know anything what
ever about him; because it is in his power to
reveal to us what he desires us to know. That
the knowledge thus revealed may present mys-

12 The Living Witness

teries beyond our comprehension does not justify
us in rejecting it, any more than we would be
warranted in rejecting the testimony of our
senses as to the material world because it pre
sents similar mysteries.

The little child on the way to school does not
know what makes the trolley car move, but it
knows that it does move, and will carry it to its
destination, and this knowledge is sufficient to
enable the child to effect its purpose of getting
to school. If the propositions presented for our
acceptance by religion are supported by evidence
sufficient to produce in our minds a conviction
of their truth, it would be as unphilosophical to
reject them on account of the mysteries which
they contain as it would be for the farmer to
refuse to plant corn because he cannot under
stand the mysterious vital principle contained in
the lifeless grain, which causes it to germinate
and reproduce the plant from which it came.

CHAPTER III

OUR SOURCES OF KNOWLEDGE

THE sources from which our religious knowl
edge is derived are two, Conscience and
Revelation. Conscience is that interior sense
which approves of certain acts as being right,
and condemns certain others as being wrong.
That sense which produces a feeling of guilt and
shame when we have done wrong, and a feel
ing of satisfaction when we have done right.
Closely connected with this sense, and indeed
forming a part of it, is a sense of responsibility
to some power above and beyond ourselves,
whose displeasure we dread, and whose appro
bation we desire. That this sense exists in every
normal individual, and that it is natural, and ex
ists independent of any external teaching, is a
proposition to the truth or falsity of which each
individual must be his own witness. Conscience
is like an alarm clock, which ceases to awaken
us when we cease to respond to its call. As con
science does not enforce its own mandates, and
we have the power to obey or disobey them as
we choose, it results that when we persistently

14 The Living Witness

disregard them, its voice becomes less and less
distinct, and finally is hardly heard at all. For
this reason conscience speaks with varying force
to different persons, and in some its existence ap
pears to be forgotten. In the material world
those whose bodily senses, such as sight and
hearing, are not perfect, may often call upon
others for confirmation of the impression pro
duced by their own impaired senses. In like
manner when conscience speaks to us with a fee
ble and uncertain voice, we may appeal to others
to learn what it teaches them. Thus we find
that the sense of responsibility to a higher power
has existed in all mankind, in all ages, and has
manifested itself in all countries and among
all races in some form of appeal to that power
for assistance and the pardon of sin. That this
sense may have sometimes been perverted and
manifested itself in forms of religion which are
abhorrent to our conscience, does not alter the
basic fact that the sense exists. If conscience
comes from God, its teachings must be every
where and at all times true, and must be the
same to all persons. But conscience does not of
itself offer a system of religion, which is left to
be supplied by Revelation. That persons and
peoples attempting to construct a system of re
ligion without the light of revelation have reached
divergent and erroneous results is what might
have been expected. The universal belief in and

Our Sources of Knowledge 15

appeal to a higher power is a witness to the fact
that such a belief is natural to man. In other
words, that such is the teaching of conscience.

By Revelation we understand the direct com
munication by God to man of truths additional
to and beyond those which he knows without
learning, that is to say, those supplied by Con
science, and likewise additional to and beyond
those which he is able to learn by any means at
his command.

There is no philosophical difficulty in the way
of such a communication. The practical diffi
culty is to determine its authenticity; in other
words, to be sure that it really comes from God.
Nothing has been more common in the world's
history than the appearance of self-styled proph
ets, each claiming to be the bearer of a divine
message to mankind. These alleged messages
are often contradictory, and this fact furnishes
one test which is of some assistance in deter
mining their truth or falsity. There can be no
such thing as contradictory truths. Every truth
must be consistent with every other truth.
Hence, all genuine communications from God
must be consistent with each other, and every
part must be consistent with every other part.

If God has seen fit to communicate to us other
truths in addition to those which he has im~
pressed upon our consciousness and those which
we are able to learn ourselves, that is to say, to

1 6 The Living Witness

make a revelation of himself and his will, it is
not unreasonable to expect that he should make
it in such a manner and under such circumstances
as to evidence its authenticity. If he has com
missioned messengers to speak to us in his name,
it is reasonable to expect that he shall in some
manner attest their authority. What form
these evidences of authenticity may take, we are,
of course, unable to anticipate. There being no
particular form of attestation to be expected, it
follows that any form which carries conviction
of the authority of the messenger, or of the truth
of the message, is sufficient to require credence.
Also it seems not unreasonable to expect that
the form of the communication and the manner
of its attestation will vary with the circumstances
of the time, the class of persons to whom the
communication is addressed, and the purpose for
which it is made.

These reflections naturally lead us to the con
sideration of the subject of Miracles. A miracle
is commonly defined as an occurrence contrary
to the laws of nature. To deny the possibility
of miracles is to deny the omnipotent power of
God. The power which hung the stars in the sky
and set the sun and moon upon their courses,
and established the laws of their motion, which
created all things, animate and inanimate, and
ordained the laws of their being, must have power
to suspend or reverse these laws at his pleasure.

Our Sources of Knoidedge 17

In determining the miraculous character of an
event, the first difficulty is to be certain that the
event actually occurred, and that the circum
stances of its occurrence are known to us. The
second difficulty is to be sure that the occurrence
was really contrary to the laws of nature, be
cause those laws are but imperfectly known to
us. These considerations do not, however, dis
prove either the possibility of miracles or the
fact of their occurrence. The restoration of life
to a dead body in which decomposition had al
ready begun would be so clearly contrary to the
laws of nature that there could be no question
as to the miraculous character of the event, and
the only question would be as to the fact of its
occurrence. Skeptics argue that it is more prob
able that the testimony as to the occurrence of
a miracle is false than that a miracle has oc
curred. Whatever weight this argument may
have in the case of any particular alleged mir
acle, it has no weight at all in support of the
proposition that miracles never have occurred.
There is no antecedent probability that miracles
will not occur, and it may be readily conceived
that the weight of evidence may be such as to
make it more probable that miracles have oc
curred than that the testimony is false.

" It is hardly necessary to say that when
I speak of "Evidence," "Testimony" and
" Proof," I do not use these words in any techni-

1 8 The Living Witness

cal sense, but as embracing any and all sources
of information and inferences to be drawn from
ascertained facts, which inform the mind and
tend to produce a conviction as to the truth of
the matter under consideration. Evidence has
been defined by an eminent law writer as " That
which tends to prove or disprove any matter in
question, or to influence the belief respecting it.
Belief is produced by the consideration of some
thing presented to the mind. The matter thus
presented, in whatever shape it may come, and
through whatever material organ it is presented,
is evidence." In this broad sense I use the word.
Pretermitting any question as to the meaning
of the words " Natural Laws " as used in the
definition of a miracle above given, it will not
be denied that men are governed and influenced
in their actions by certain general principles or
tendencies to which we have given the name of
Laws of Human Nature. Thus we say : " Self-
preservation is the first law of nature," meaning
human nature. These laws are not unvarying
in the sense that they influence every individual
in the same way, and the exceptions are so many
that their operation cannot be relied upon in any
particular instance with the same certainty as
the laws governing material things. Thus we are
absolutely certain that a stone thrown into the
air will fall to the ground, and that water will
not run up hill, but we cannot, with the same con-

Our Sources of Knowledge 19

fidence, predict what a particular person will do
in a given set of circumstances. But the greater
the number of persons in question, the more cer
tainly we can anticipate their action. Thus it
is contrary to human nature that a mother should
abandon her child or put it to death. So well
established is this law that we have no hesitation
in saying of any particular mother, although a
stranger, that it is not probable that she will
abandon her child or put it to death. But it is
not impossible that she will do so, because we
know that some mothers have so acted. Taking
a thousand mothers together, it is not only im
probable that they will destroy their children, but
we feel certain that they will not do so. We act
upon knowledge of human nature in all the af
fairs of life with the same confidence that we
act upon the laws of inanimate nature. It is a
necessary part of the equipment of every pro
fessional man, and lies at the foundation of every
successful business enterprise. Although modi
fied to some extent by individual and racial pe
culiarities, in a broad and general sense human
nature is the same at all times and in all places.
As applied to mankind as a whole, its laws are as
invariable in their operation as those which gov
ern the material world.

CHAPTER IV

HOW SHALL WE KNOW THE TRUTH?

WE find in the world different religions, each
claiming to be based upon divine reve
lation, and teaching contrary doctrines. It is ob
vious that so far as their teachings are at vari
ance with each other, such teachings cannot all
be based upon divine revelation. As to some of
them, the supposed revelation was not genuine,
or it has been misinterpreted. Every truth must
be consistent with every other truth, and it is
philosophically impossible that revelations from
God, who is the source of all truth, should be
inconsistent with each other. On the other hand,
it is not impossible that all or a considerable num
ber of these different religions may hold some
doctrines in common. For example, they may
differ widely in their teachings upon other points,
and agree upon the unity of God. Nor is it an
tecedently impossible that as to a considerable
number of these religions, the revelations upon
which their doctrines purport to be based are
genuine. But if that be the case, it is certain
that some of them have misinterpreted the reve-
2O

How Shall We Know the Truth? 21

lations. Our knowledge of human nature would
lead us to anticipate that however clear and def
inite the revelation might be, men would differ
as to its meaning. This anticipation is realized
in the fact, which we have before us, that men
agree that certain statements in certain words
are divine messages to mankind, but differ as
widely as the poles as to the meaning of these mes
sages. It is therefore obvious that the inter
pretation is as important as the message itself.
The message is of no practical value to us un
less we can ascertain its meaning. It is familiar
to us that human laws require an authority to
interpret them, and without such an authority
society would fall into anarchy. When a statute
is enacted by the legislature, however plain and
simple its language, some question always arises,
regarding which we are in doubt, until the court
of last resort has decided the construction to be
placed upon the statute. It may be said that this
is due to the imperfection of human nature, and
that there is no analogy between human laws and
those framed by a divine lawgiver. But we find
the fact to be that the imperfection of human
nature manifests itself in varying and contradic
tory interpretations of human and divine laws
alike. I shall not deny that it was within the
power of God to have so enlightened our under
standing that we could have read his message
and made no mistake as to its meaning, but that

22 The Living Witness

he has not done so is plain, otherwise all men
would agree in their interpretation of what they
agree to be the language of his message. For
his own wise purposes he has made us what we
are.

The facts being as we find them, and assuming
that God has made a revelation of his will, and
has prescribed laws to be obeyed, not only by
those to whom they were communicated, but by
all mankind and by all succeeding generations ;
that the persons to whom this revelation was
made were comparatively few in number, and
have long since passed away, it seems a reason
able anticipation, consistent with our conception
of the wisdom and justice of God, that he would
have made provision for the preservation and
safe-keeping of the truths revealed, the inter
pretation of the revelation, and its dissemination
among mankind. It must also be expected that
whatever provision was made for the carrying
out of these ends shall be sufficient for their ac
complishment, and shall not fail of its purpose.
As we are now in fact reasoning from effect to
cause, there is no presumption in saying that
it might reasonably be expected that the Divine
Lawgiver would have established, as it were,
an agency on earth for the carrying out of these
purposes, and that such agency would be fur
nished with credentials of authority. Such an
agency, if it exists, must be conscious of its

How Shall We Know the Truth? 23

agency, and must proclaim its mission. It must,
so to speak, hang its sign outside the door, so
that those having business with it may know
where to apply. It must speak as one having au
thority, and its utterances must be consistent one
with another ; those of to-day must not contradict
those of yesterday or those of to-morrow. It
must not speak with the voice of a Delphic ora
cle, but its teachings must be practical and plain
as to all the truths which it is necessary for us to
know in order to please God.

The fact above noted, that religions differing
widely in some of their doctrines may yet agree
upon others, has led some well-meaning men to
seek refuge from the condition of spiritual an
archy which surrounds them in the idea of a
simplified creed, embracing only those points upon
which they agree. It is evident that this process
of elimination might be carried to the point where
only one article of faith would remain. It is ex
tremely doubtful, however, whether even this
would secure unity of belief, on account of the
difficulty of stating even a single truth in such
a manner that men will not differ about it. It
would be difficult to conceive of a plainer and
more definite statement than this : " This is my
body." Just four short, common, everyday
words, such as any child might use. There is no
question as to what is meant by the first, which
forms the subject of the sentence, yet for cen-

24 The Living Witness

turies fierce controversies have raged over the
meaning of the last three, forming the predicate.

A recognition of this difficulty has led others
to propose the abolition of creeds altogether.
This means the abolition of religion for religion
implies belief, and a creed is the expression of
that belief. If this is the solution of the prob
lem, then revelation has failed of its purpose.
If we know nothing concerning God and our
relations to him that can be expressed in words,
we are no better off than the pagan Athenians,
who delicated an altar to the unknown God ; and
the position of the agnostic is justified. This is
the end to which the theory that revelation needs
no interpreter has brought numbers of well-dis
posed minds who have sought earnestly for
truth. It is the end to which the denial of an
infallible authority in matters of faith must in
evitably lead, if followed to its logical conclusion.

It has been argued that as progress is the law
of human existence, religion should progress
along with other sciences ; that we have outgrown
the old creeds, and they are no longer adapted
to the conditions of modern society. The first is
an inference not warranted by the premises. The
laws of nature have not changed. Water still
runs down hill as certainly as it did when the
armies of Cyrus entered Babylon by changing
the course of the Euphrates. The combination
of saltpeter, sulphur and charcoal would have

How Shall We Know the Truth? 25

made gunpowder in the days of Alexander as
well as it did in the days of Napoleon. We have
progressed in our knowledge of nature and na
ture's laws, and by means of that knowledge have
achieved results undreamed of in former ages,
but those results have been attained by the ap
plication of principles as old as creation. Science
cannot pierce the veil which conceals the mys
teries of the infinite. We can learn nothing of
God, except what he chooses to reveal to us, and
without further revelation progress in religion
is impossible. The assertion that the old religion
is not adapted to modern conditions is an as
sumption in support of which no proof is offered.
Human nature remains unchanged. It is still
subject to the same weaknesses, and capable of
exhibiting the same virtues. Vice may have as
sumed new forms, but it is still within the pro
hibition of the old laws. Such a conception of
religion must apply to one founded upon the
shifting sands of human opinion, and not upon
the enduring rock of Divine Revelation. If the
old creeds were ever true, they are still true, for
truth is eternal.

That the Creator has made a revelation of his
will, that he has established an agency on earth
to preserve, interpret and disseminate that reve
lation, and that this agency exists among us, as a
Living Witness to the Truth, are the propositions
which I desire to maintain.

CHAPTER V

THE INFALLIBLE AUTHORITY

IT is not my purpose to formulate a creed, or
make a profession of faith, further than may
be necessary to amplify and make more clear
the propositions stated at the end of the pre
ceding chapter. With this end only in view,
and avoiding any dogmatic statement not neces
sary to the purpose, I proceed to state those
propositions as follows :

There is one God, in three persons, Father,
Son and Holy Ghost. That is to say : " He
has three personalities, and is at once, accord
ing as we view him in one or the other of them,
The Father, The Son and The Spirit — a di
vine three, who bear towards each other the
several relations which these names indicate,
and are in that respect distinct from each
other, and in that respect alone." (Newman,
Grammar of Assent, p. 124.)

In the beginning of time, God created the

Earth and all things therein. In the early

ages of the history of the human race, God

frequently manifested himself to men, and

26

The Infallible Authority 27

spoke directly to them. At other times he
spoke through inspired teachers called proph
ets, and gave to certain men power whereby
they performed miracles. At other times he
delivered his messages through spiritual be
ings called angels. These facts are truly re
lated in the collection of inspired writings
known as the Old Testament.

In the fullness of time, God the Son assumed
human form and nature, being born of a vir
gin, as the result of miraculous generation.
He passed through the usual stages of infancy,
childhood and youth, and grew to man's estate.
He was named Jesus, and is known in history
as Jesus Christ. He united within himself
both Divine and Human nature, being pos
sessed of all the power and attributes of God,
together with the physical weakness and ca
pacity for suffering, both mental and physical,
of a man.

The two dogmas of the three-fold personality
of God and the dual nature of Christ are
among the mysteries which our intelligence is
unable to comprehend, but which, upon suffi
cient assurance, we accept as true.

After reaching man's estate, our Lord Jesus
Christ announced his character and mission,
and spent several years in teaching and in
structing his disciples, both privately and pub
licly, attesting his divine character and mis-

28 The Living Witness

sion by the performance of many miracles.
When the appointed time had arrived, he was
apprehended by the civil authorities upon
charges preferred by his enemies, and was put
to death by being crucified, and being dead, he
was laid in the tomb. On the third day he
arose from the dead and appeared again as a
living man, eating and drinking with his dis
ciples, and conversing with them, and was seen
by many persons. After the lapse of forty
days, having given to his disciples his last
solemn commands, he ascended into Heaven.

The principal events of our Lord's life upon
earth, his death, resurrection and ascension, as
well as some of his discourses and instructions,
but not all of them, are truly related in the col
lection of inspired writings known as the New
Testament.

In the exercise of his mission upon earth, our
Lord Jesus Christ, besides expounding to his
disciples the divine truths revealed to mankind
in former ages, revealed to them other truths,
additional to and supplementing the former
revelations. He commanded his disciples to
propagate these truths by teaching them to
others, and promised that after his departure
from earth he would send them the Holy
Spirit, who would remain with them forever
and guide them to all truth. This promise
was not limited to those to whom it was com-

The Infallible Authority 29

municated, but extended to their successors
from generation to generation. Our Lord pro
vided for the organization of this body of
teachers, together with those who should be
lieve and follow their teaching, by appointing
one of their number to be its head, and con
ferring upon him certain special powers and
enjoining upon him special duties. To the or
ganization thus created, to which he gave the
name of his Church, he promised that the pow
ers of evil, or, to use his exact language, " The
Gates of Hell," should never prevail against it.
In compliance with his instructions, the dis
ciples, after his ascension, remained together
and awaited the coming of the promised guide.
A few days thereafter the promise was visibly
fulfilled by the descent of the Holy Spirit upon
them in the form of tongues of flame. Being
thus equipped for the discharge of their mis
sion, the apostles separated and went forth
into various parts of the earth, and proclaimed
the message with which they were charged.
In accordance with the divine promise, and
by a duly ordered form of consecration, the
power of the Holy Spirit was transmitted from
those upon whom it had descended on the day
of Pentecost to others, and by them to others,
from generation to generation, down to our
own day. Peter, who had been appointed
chief of the apostles, and head of the newly

30 The Living Witness

organized church, chose as the scene of his la
bors the City of Rome, then the center of the
civil power and undisputed mistress of the
world. When Peter had sealed his testimony
to the truth of the gospel which he had come
to Rome to proclaim, by the sacrifice of his
life, the primacy and power of which he had
been possessed passed to his successor, and so
on in an unbroken line to Pius X, now reign
ing.

From the day of Pentecost to this day, the
apostles and their successors, as an organized
visible body, known as the Catholic Church,
with Peter and his successors at its head, have
continued to proclaim to mankind the divine
message, being miraculously preserved from
error, preserving unimpaired the original de
posit of truth, adding nothing and taking
nothing away, teaching everywhere and in all
ages the same doctrine without variableness
or any shadow of turning.

Such in brief and imperfect outline is the
method provided by the Divine Lawgiver for
the preservation and transmission to all genera
tions of those truths concerning himself and
our relations to him which he wills us to know.
Philosophically beautiful in conception, simple
in its operation and marvelous in its results, it
is in every way worthy of its divine author.

The Infallible Authority 31

It is hardly necessary to explain why I have
said nothing of the mission of our Lord Jesus
Christ as Redeemer of mankind from the guilt
of sin, or of the priestly office of the church as
minister of his grace. These subjects, although
of supreme importance, are outside the scope of
my purpose.

In speaking of the office of Peter and his suc
cessors as head of the church, it is to be under
stood that this refers to the visible church on
earth, Christ himself being the spiritual head.

There are one or two points upon which some
further explanation is perhaps necessary. A
divinely inspired teacher must necessarily be an
infallible teacher, but the prerogative of infalli
bility does not belong to the individual members
of the church, but to the church as a whole. In
dividual members of the church, even those com
missioned by her to teach, may and do sometimes
fall into error. When such an unfortunate event
occurs, the church promptly exercises her power
by calling the offender to account, and if he
persists m his error she casts him out of her
communion and forbids her children to listen to
him. The prerogative of infallibility is exer
cised by the church in general council of its bish
ops, whose judgments are confirmed by the Pope,
or by the Pope alone, in his character as head of
the church. The prerogative of infallibility ap
plies only to such subjects as are within the

32 The Living Witness

proper jurisdiction of the church as guardian of
faith and morals. Upon other branches of knowl
edge she claims no authority and pronounces no
infallible judgment, so long as they do not af
fect those subjects. It is not every utterance of
the Pope, even upon subjects within the jurisdic
tion of the church, that has the character of in
fallibility. It is only when he pronounces a sol
emn judgment in his official capacity, as head
of the church and Vicar of Christ on earth, that
the Holy Spirit guides him to a correct judgment
free from the possibility of error.

There is a certain analogy between the action
of the church in her judicial character and that
of a court of last resort in human law. When
the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the
United States, for example, in his private char
acter, expresses an opinion upon a question of
law, it is entitled to such consideration as may
be due to his learning and high standing as a
lawyer, but no more. It binds no one, and is
not conclusive of the question. But when he
ascends the bench, and, as the organ of the court,
pronounces judgment upon a case regularly
brought before it, such judgment establishes a
precedent by which all future cases involving the
same question of law are to be decided, and all
inferior courts and officers of government are
bound to respect and follow the law as thus de
clared. The analogy is not perfect, because the

The Infallible Authority 33

judges of the civil court are not infallible, and
sometimes reach the conclusion that their former
decisions were erroneous, and in later cases de
cide the law to be otherwise than as formerly de
clared. On the other hand, the divinely consti
tuted and guided tribunal can never err in its
judgments, and can never reverse, modify or in
anywise alter them.

There is a further analogy. The Supreme
Court can make no new laws, but only interprets
and declares the existing law, and must decide
each case coming before it in accordance with the
statutes enacted by the legislative authority, or
in the absence of express statutory provision upon
the subject in hand, by that body of principles
and precedents known as the common, or un
written, law. In like manner, the church in her
judicial character makes no new laws, but ap
plies to new questions, as they arise, those laws
which, in the beginning, were committed to her
by the Divine Lawgiver for the government of
mankind in all future time. Here again the
analogy is imperfect, because it is not to be ex
pected that the foresight of human lawmakers
will enable them to provide for every possible
contingency which may arise, and questions may
come before the civil court in which there is
neither statute nor precedent to control the de
cision, whereas the Divine Lawgiver must have
foreseen every question that would ever need to

34 The Living Witness

be determined. The analogy is, however, suffi
ciently close to illustrate and explain what some
have supposed to be the promulgation by the
church of new doctrines, or articles of faith.
When the Supreme Court decides that the Con
stitution gave Congress the power to regulate
telegraph lines engaged in the transmission of
messages from one State to another, it added
nothing to the Constitution. The framers of that
fundamental grant of power had never heard of
a telegraph line, and made no mention of them,
but they did give to Congress the power to regu
late commerce between the States. The court
decided that the exchange of telegraph messages
was commerce, and hence that Congress had the
power to regulate it. The court, in effect, de
cided that Congress had always possessed the
power to regulate telegraph lines doing an in
terstate business. The power existed before tele
graph lines existed. It was not until the time
came for its exercise that any question was raised
as to the existence of the power, and until the
question was raised there was no occasion for the
court to decide it.

In somewhat the same manner the church ex
ercises her judicial power in matters of faith.
She does not act hastily, or concern herself with
every idle speculation, but when an erroneous
opinion is being propagated, upon a point which
has not been previously expressly decided, and

The Infallible Authority 35

the matter has assumed such importance as to
require action, she pronounces her judgment. As
the condemnation of error includes a declaration
that the opposite is true, her declarations of the
truth usually take a negative form by condemning
the contrary proposition. These declarations are
not additions to the faith, but simply authorita
tive declarations as to what the faith has always
been.

In saying that the church makes no laws, I have
reference to her character as guardian and in
terpreter of the faith. In her character as shep
herd of the flock committed to her charge, she
makes such disciplinary regulations as may be
needful, such as the observance of fasts, etc.
These regulations, which she makes herself, she
may alter or suspend as she sees fit, and may
make them of universal application, or limit them
to particular countries or classes of persons.

Infallibility does not mean impeccability. Our
Lord promised to preserve his disciples and their
successors from error in their teaching, but did
not promise to preserve them from sin. It is
possible for a pope to be a great sinner, and yet
render infallible judgments on matters of faith.

No one who admits the omnipotent power of
God will deny the possibility of such an agency
as that above described. That its successful oper
ation is inconsistent with the fallible human na
ture of the instruments employed is not an

36 The Living Witness

objection, for the plan itself presupposes a con
tinuing miracle. Will anyone who believes in the
inspiration of the Epistles of St. Paul deny that
the same Holy Spirit which guided the pen of
St. Paul can also guide the pen of Pius X? Has
the power which filled the mouths of the unlet
tered fishermen of Galilee with words of divine
wisdom ceased to exist?

That an institution, claiming to be such an
agency and proclaiming such a mission, exists
among us to-day, is a visible fact. Its sign
hangs upon the door for all the world to read.

CHAPTER VI

THE TESTIMONY OF HISTORY

I HAVE heretofore stated the sense in which
I use the words " Evidence," " Testimony "
and " Proof/' as being that which tends to pro
duce belief as to the truth of the matter under
consideration. In like manner, I use the word
" History " as including all sources of authentic
information concerning past occurrences.

Jesus Christ is easily the most imposing figure
in human history. His shadow falls across its
every page. Whether their inspiration be ad
mitted or not, the Jewish Scriptures are docu
ments of unquestioned antiquity. The earliest
pagan writings, the results of archaeological re
search, and everything else which has come down
to us from the early ages, all tend to confirm
their historical accuracy. It is at least certain
that, as far back as their history can be traced,
the Jews were a peculiar people, believing them
selves to be in a special manner set apart and
separated from the rest of mankind, and under
the direct government and guidance of God.
They believed that one of their race was to be-

37

3^ The Living Witness

come a great conqueror, and lead them to the
empire of the earth. The ancient prophecies
pointed, with more or less certainty, to the time
of his appearance, and when they had lost their
national individuality and fallen under the sway
of the Roman conquerors, they consoled them-
•selves with the thought that the coming of their
deliverer was near at hand. The existence of
this belief on their part is attested by the Roman
historians. The prophecies themselves have
come down to us. There is no doubt of their an
tiquity, and they foretell his coming in unmis
takable language.

Leaving out of view the gospel narratives, we
are able to learn from Jewish and Roman writers
that Jesus was of the Jewish race. That he was
a teacher, and reputed to be a worker of mira
cles. That he was believed by his disciples to
be the promised deliverer, and thus received the
name of Christ, i. e., the Anointed, or Messiah.
That after his death he was reported to have
risen again from the dead. That he was the
founder of a new sect, called after his name,
Christians. That so far from being discouraged
by his death, his disciples manifested the greatest
zeal in propagating the new faith. That in a
short time it gained adherents by thousands, and
spread into all the surrounding countries, and
even gained a foothold in the imperial city itself.
That the followers of this new faith were so

The Testimony of History 39

convinced of its truth that no amount of pun
ishment, torture, and even death itself, could in
duce them to relinquish it.

Consider the circumstances of the time when
Christ appeared. The Latin community upon
the banks of the Tiber had established itself as
the undisputed ruler of the world then known to
it. The great Oriental monarchies, the Assyrian
and the Persian and the great empire founded by
Alexander upon their ruins, had passed away,
and their territories and people owned the rule
of Caesar. Egypt, that land of mystery, had be
come a Roman province. The learning and art
of Ancient Greece existed only as a trophy of
the conqueror. The Jewish theocracy no longer
governed the chosen people. Its priesthood prac
ticed their sacred rites only by the sufferance of
the petty satraps who ruled the ancient kingdom
of David and Solomon as the legates of Rome.
The haughty Roman regarded the Jew and his
religion with unconcealed contempt. The God
of the Hebrews was to him only one of the in
numerable deities worshiped by the many peoples
who composed his mighty dominion. The in
ternecine struggle which attended the downfall
of the republic and the establishment of the em
pire had come to an end, and, for the first time
perhaps in its history, the world was at peace.
A new epoch had opened, and the stage seemed
fitly set for the occurrence of a great event.

40 The Living Witness

Consider the circumstances of the life of
Christ, the man. He was of humble origin, and
passed his life in comparative obscurity. He did
none of those great things for which men are re
membered. He led no armies, and swayed no
senates by his eloquence. He wrote no books,
painted no pictures, and wrought no sculpture.
The great ones of the earth never heard of him
until after he had passed away. His own peo
ple rejected him, because he promised to them
none of those things which they expected from
the looked- for deliverer, the restoration of their
nation, victory over their enemies, and earthly
dominion. Yet, before the generation which saw
him in the flesh had passed away, his name was
held in reverence by unnumbered thousands in
distant lands, to whom the God of the Hebrews
had been unknown.

When the new gospel was first preached in
the capitol the Romans looked upon it as only
an extreme and fanatical form of the despised
Jewish religion, but as it grew and gained adher
ents among their own ranks, their attitude
changed from contempt to suspicion and alarm.
The whole force of the mighty power which had
reduced the kingdoms of the earth to the rank of
Roman provinces was exercised to suppress it,
without success. The prisons were filled with
its followers. The circus arenas ran red with
their blood. They were destroyed by wild beasts

The Testimony of History 41

in the presence of assembled thousands. They
were nailed to crosses, saturated with pitch and
burned in public places. All these measures
availed nothing. Such was the faith of the Chris
tian converts that they counted life itself as
nothing compared with the new-found truth.
Their zeal, constancy and undying faith impressed
the beholders with the truth of their cause. The
result has been crystallized into proverb : " The
blood of the martyrs was the seed of the Church."
Despite the fierce persecutions of the first three
centuries, the new religion continued to grow,
and before three hundred years had passed from
the day of Pentecost it captured the citadel of
the civil power. The Emperor himself became
a Christian. The erstwhile symbol of degrada
tion, the cross of the despised Nazarene, became
the battle standard of the Roman legions. The
first stage in the fulfillment of the Jewish prophe
cies had been accomplished: The son of David
had come into his own.

These facts are as well attested as anything
in history. Let us consider their full significance.
Here we have a handful of obscure and ignorant
men, belonging to a despised race in an out of
the way corner of the empire, starting out to
proclaim a new philosophy of life. Preaching
a new and strange doctrine, wholly antagonistic
to the principles upon which the existing society
was based, a society whose achievements in men-

42 The Living Witness

tal philosophy, literature and art have not been
surpassed in our own day. Preaching self-denial
and chastity to a society given over to luxury
and licentiousness. Preaching the sacredness of
marriage to a society in which the husband di
vorced his wife at will. Preaching the sacred-
ness of human life to a society wherein the life
of the slave in the eyes of his master, and that
of the master in the eyes of his sovereign, was of
no more account than that of an ox or a sheep.
How vain and hopeless would have been their task
had not a supernatural power supported them
and assured their victory. How impossible it is
to account for their success by any other means,
is shown by the utter insufficiency of all the
reasons by which skeptics have attempted to ac
count for it.

In her character as a watchful guardian of
the truth, the Church has but recently placed
the seal of condemnation upon an insidious and
dangerous form of attack upon Christianity,
known as Modernism. Self-styled critics, wise
in their own conceit, have assumed to dissect the
gospel narratives, and reject parts as false and
accept parts as true. Eliminating those portions
which prove his divinity, they profess great ad
miration for Christ the man, the sublime beauty
of his moral teaching and the transcendent virtue
of his character. Calling themselves Christians,
yet denying his divine character, they hold him

The Testimony of History 43

up as the perfect example of humanity, and his
system of ethics as the perfection of human wis
dom.

The divinity of Christ is the cornerstone of
Christianity, and nothing but his continued pres
ence and inspiration can account for its mar
velous success. Will any student of human
nature believe that moral sentiments, however
sublime, nerved the apostles and their converts to
endure persecution and death, or that admira
tion for his perfect human character conquered
the Roman empire for Christ? Is such a con
clusion more probable than the occurrence of a
miracle?

Let us apply to the gospel narratives a test of
a different character. It is an established prin
ciple of jurisprudence that the best test of the
credibility of a witness is his manner of testifying
and the consistency of his statements. It is uni
versally held that the members of a jury, who
have seen the witness on the stand and noted his
manner, the expression of his countenance and
the inflections of his voice, while delivering his
testimony, are better judges of his credibility than
the more experienced appellate judges who read
the written record of his testimony. There can
be no doubt that Peter and his associates told
their prospective converts the same story which
some of them afterwards committed to writing,
with innumerable details and circumstances not

44 The Living Witness

mentioned in the brief written narratives. It
is not unreasonable to suppose that something like
a cross-examination frequently took place. In
credulous or curious hearers would ask ques
tions upon certain points which occurred to them.
The verdict of those jurors who heard the oral
testimony of the eyewitnesses is written in his
tory.

Peter and his associates were in a position
to know the truth, and they attested their faith
in the divinity of Christ with their lives. All but
one of the original disciples died the death of a
martyr.

The resurrection of Christ from the dead is
the touchstone by which the truth or falsity of
Christianity is to be tested. St. Paul says : " If
Christ be not risen from the dead, then is our
preaching vain, and your faith is vain also."
But the converse of the proposition is also true.
If he was dead and rose from the grave a living
man, then we are bound to say, with the Roman
centurion at Calvary : " Indeed this man was the
son of God." And it follows that the religion he
taught is of divine origin.

Let me not be misunderstood. The truth of
the Christian religion depends upon the fact
of the resurrection, but not upon the sufficiency
of the evidence to prove it. The sufficiency of
all evidence depends upon the mental attitude of
those to whom it is addressed.

The Testimony of History 45

If Christ did not rise from the dead, Peter and
his associates invented the story of his resurrec
tion. They could not have been deceived. They
distinctly tell us that they saw him and talked
with him, not once, but many times, and that, in
their presence, Thomas, the doubter, examined
the hands of their risen master, and saw the
print of the nails therein, and put his hands into
the wound in his side. Does our knowledge of
human nature teach us that it is more probable
that these eleven men conspired together to
propagate a falsehood, and all adhered to it at
the cost of their lives, than that a miracle oc
curred?

The conversion of the Emperor Constantine,
in the year 313, is one of the landmarks of his
tory. Upon that day Christianity became and
has ever since been the controlling force of civil-
zation. When the Roman empire went down
under the barbarian invasions, Christianity sur
vived it, and in turn conquered the invaders.
Slowly but surely it civilized the barbarians who
had overwhelmed the empire and established its
own empire over their hearts. Whatever re
mains to us of the Greek and Roman civilizations
was preserved by Christianity. During the long
centuries following the fall of the empire — those
centuries which are known as the dark ages
— the Christian monasteries were the centers
where learning was preserved, and from which

46 The Living Witness

it was gradually diffused over a darkened
world.

The Christianity that gained these triumphs
was that of which the successors of St. Peter
were the visible head and the center of unity.
Through all the mutations of time, the shifting
of the seats of empire, the migrations of races
and the rise and fall of nations, the church that
was organized in Jerusalem on the day of Pente
cost has survived unchanged and unchangeable.
It has seen its vicissitudes, and time after time
its enemies have thought its end at hand, but
even the storm that threatened its destruction has
passed away and left its foundations as firm as
ever. From time to time, pride of opinion and
impatience of authority have led to heresy and
schism, and great bodies of its followers have
separated themselves from it, but no sooner have
they done so than they have lost that mysterious
power which has won for Christianity its vic
tories. No body of Christians, who have sep
arated themselves from the center of unity, have
continued to retain that vital force and power
of growth which the Catholic church has man
ifested from the beginning, and still preserves
in undiminished vigor. In western Asia and
northern Africa there still exist small bodies of
Christians, separated from the Catholic com
munion as the result of the heresies of the early
centuries. They belong to nonprogressive

The Testimony of History 47

races, and their existence proves but little to the
point either way. The same is true as to the
great Greek schism of the eleventh century. The
line of division there was racial and national,
but however the fact may be accounted for, it
remains true that all these bodies have stood
still and made no progress since their separation
from the mother church. Although surrounded
by and in direct contact with non-Christian peo
ples, they have but barely held their own, and
have made no conquests. The so-called Ref
ormation of the sixteenth century separated
from the church a large section of the flower of
her children, races and nations as intellectual
and progressive as any the earth has ever known,
but the same result has followed. They have
progressed in other directions as no people have
ever done before, but Christianity among them
has lost ground rather than gained.

From these facts we reach the conclusion that
the vital principle of Christianity is that Holy
Spirit which descended upon the apostles on the
day of Pentecost, and was transmitted by them
to their successors, through the sacrament of
Holy Orders, and inures to the church unity of
faith and freedom from error, as well as the
due administration of the sacraments, which are
the channels of God's grace to the penitent sin
ner.

There is probably not a single statement of

48 The Living Witness

fact in this chapter which has not been denied
by some writer. None have been denied with
more vehemence than the statement that the
church has never varied in her teaching. Her
enemies have realized its importance. If she
has ever contradicted herself, her claim to infal
libility is gone, and her character as a witness to
the truth is destroyed. False witnesses appeared
at the trial of Christ, accusing him of saying
that which he had not said. His church has not
been spared similar calumnies. Her record is
open to examination. Let the impartial seeker
after truth study it for himself, and form his.
own conclusion.

The laws of human nature forbid that an or
ganization composed of weak and fallible men,
prone to error and difference of opinion, and by
nature impatient of authority, should, without
supernatural assistance, exist for ages, preserv
ing unimpaired the same original deposit of
faith, proclaiming century after century, through
all the mutations of time, to every race and in
every tongue, the same message. But it is also
true that this organization, composed of such
men, has done this wonderful thing.

Those are the premises. The first established
by the universal experience of mankind. The
second written in indelible letters on the pages
of history. What conclusion follows?

CHAPTER VII

THE TESTIMONY OF PHILOSOPHY

IT has been said that the expectation of a rev
elation from God has led men to fancy that
one has been made. This saying is an admis
sion that men do expect a revelation. Whence
comes this expectation? Is it not a part of that
consciousness of the existence of God, and of
our responsibility to and dependence upon him
which is implanted in the hearts of all mankind?
Those who deny that a revelation has been
made offer no proof of its impossibility, and, in
the nature of things, no such proof can be made.
As we have seen, the only knowledge of God
that we can have, aside from revelation, is that
given by conscience. We may infer his exist
ence from the evidence of order and design mani
fest in creation, but this leads to no definite con
clusion concerning him. There is no hope that
human science can ever learn anything of him,
for science has to do with created things. It
follows that without a revelation we have and
can have no knowledge of God, except that given
by conscience, and conscience leads us to expect
49

50 The Living Witness

a revelation. So far, then, as the evidence
goes, it is in favor of the existence of a revela
tion. I have heretofore said that there is no
antecedent probability that miracles will not oc
cur. The only argument against the occurrence
of miracles is that drawn from experience, viz.,
that so far as our personal observation has ex
tended, the laws of nature are invariable. To
admit the possible existence of a God by whom
all things were created, and by whom the laws
of nature were established, is to admit the pos
sibility that he may, at his pleasure, suspend or
reverse the operation of these laws. How can
we undertake to say that he has never suspended
them, or when and under what circumstances he
may suspend them? It follows that to say that
the occurrence of miracles, or a revelation from
God to man, is impossible, is a pure assumption,
based upon no evidence whatever. To say that
they are philosophically impossible is false. A
denial that those things have occurred can rest
upon no higher ground than a denial of the suf
ficiency of the evidence of their occurrence. As
I have heretofore remarked, the sufficiency of
all evidence depends upon the mental attitude
of those to whom it is addressed. Some skeptic
has said that if God had made a revelation, it
should have been written upon the sun. It is
doubtful whether, even in that case, there would
not have been found those who questioned its

The Testimony of Philosophy 51

truth. Such is the liberty which, for his own
mysterious reasons, the Creator has given us.

The Christian religion is an existing fact, hav
ing its roots as far back as we are able to trace
the history of the human race. Christianity is
itself but the continuation of the old Jewish re
ligion. The two together form but one whole,
which must stand or fall together. It is either
all true or all false. If this religion is not based
upon a divine revelation, it is a stupendous im
posture, beginning away back in the dawn of
history and continuing down to our own day.
The historical evidence in favor of its divine ori
gin is so strong that if the matter is to be deter
mined upon a balance of probabilities alone, the
evidence must be received as true. It is more
probable that it is true than that all this array
o'f evidence is false. We receive this evidence
at second hand, and there is of course a possi
bility of its being false, but the probability of its
truth is greater than that upon which we act in
the ordinary affairs of life. The evidence is
the best of which the nature of the case is sus
ceptible, which is all that is required by the com
mon law rules of evidence. As said by an emi
nent writer :

" The knowledge acquired by an individual,
through his own perception and reflection, is but
a small part of what he possesses ; much of what
we are content to regard and act upon as knowl-

52 The Living Witness

edge having been acquired through the perception
of others. It is not easy to conceive that the
Supreme Being, whose wisdom is so conspicuous
in all his works, constituted man to believe only
upon his own personal experience, since in that
case, the world could neither be governed nor
improved; and society must remain in the state
in which it was left by the first generation of
men. . . . Skeptical philosophers, incon
sistently enough with their own principles, yet
true to the nature of man, continue to receive a
large portion of their knowledge upon testimony
derived, not from their own experience, but from
that of other men, and this even when it is at
variance with much of their own personal ob
servation. Thus the testimony of the historian
is received with confidence in regard to the oc
currences of ancient times ; that of the naturalist
and traveler, in regard to the natural history and
civil condition of other countries; and that of
the astronomer respecting the heavenly bodies;
facts, which upon the narrow basis of his own
' firm and unalterable experience,' upon which
Mr. Hume so much relies, he would be bound to
reject as wholly unworthy of belief." (i Green-
leaf on Evidence, Sections 7—8.)

Truth has a power of its own that is well ex
pressed by the poet's lines:

" Truth, crushed to earth, shall rise again,

The eternal years of God are hers ;
But error, wounded, writhes in pain,
And dies among its worshipers."

The Testimony of Philosophy 53

Truth is always harmony. Every fact fits
into and harmonizes with every other fact.
Falsehood is a note of discord which must be
sooner or later detected. It is the unanimous
testimony of those who have had long experience
in the administration of justice that no matter
how carefully and skillfully a falsehood may be
constructed, there is always somewhere a flaw
in its armor, somewhere a faulty link in the chain
of circumstances, which apparently support it,
some place where it should connect with the
known truth and does not fit. There is always
some circumstance, perhaps trivial and irrele
vant, which has been overlooked, and which
brings about the downfall of the whole structure,
and which patient search and close study will
always reveal.

No story was ever subjected to such unsparing
scrutiny as that of the gospels. It was first
promulgated under the eyes of critics as keen
and hostile as those of our own day. The
Greek and Roman philosophers were intellec
tually the peers of the ablest of modern ration
alists. Others than Demetrius, the silversmith,
had a sordid motive for opposing the new re
ligion. The priests of the pagan temples, the
corrupt Jewish priests, and many others, found
their power and influence threatened. A thou
sand jealous eyes were focused upon the scene
of the marvellous events said to have occurred

54 The Living Witness

in Judea. If the story had been false, it is in
conceivable that the imposture should not have
been detected and exposed during the generation
which saw its origin. There has never been a
time since when hostile critics have not scanned
the evidence of its truth. In modern times,
every scrap of contemporary writing, every in
scription, every oral tradition which might throw
the faintest light upon the question, has been
patiently studied by those anxious to demonstrate
its falsity. If the story were not true, some
where, somehow, some fact which did not har
monize with it would have been brought to light,
and the whole fabric overthrown.

Besides the historical evidence of the truth
of the Christian religion, there is other evidence
which lies under our own observation, and
which we are able to verify for ourselves.
When we compare the teachings of Christianity
with those elemental standards of right and
wrong which exist in our own hearts, and which
we call by the name of conscience, we find them
to exactly agree. At every point Christianity
rings true. More than this, Christianity
satisfies those longings and aspirations which are
natural to the human heart, and which nothing
else can satisfy. It offers the only philosophy of
life which enables us to meet every misfortune
and bear every pain.

Christianity is so interwoven into the struc-

The Testimony of Philosophy 55

ture of our society that those who attack it do not
realize what a condition of chaos would result
were it destroyed. Would you know what hu
man society would be without Christianity?
Study the social condition of Rome in the reign
of Nero, when the pagan civilization had reached
its highest point. Look around you at those
people who live nearest the Christian ideal, and
at those who live farthest from it. Imagine a
society composed entirely of one or the other
class. Which would you prefer to live in? The
most confirmed skeptic, if he be honest and
truthful, must admit that Christianity makes the
world a better and happier place to live in.
Grapes do not grow upon thorns or figs upon
thistles. That innate perception of the proper
relation of things which we call common sense
revolts at the idea of such a system being the
product of falsehood and imposture.

So far, then, as we have any means" of test
ing them, the teachings of Christianity are ab
solutely true. So far they attest the credibility
of the witness upon whose testimony we receive
them. That is to say: Leaving out of view
the miraculous occurrences which history records
as attesting the divine origin of the message and
the commission of the messenger, that part of
the message which we have the means of testing
appears to be true, and to that extent is a war
ranty of that part which relates to things be-

56 The Living Witness

yond our knowledge, and which we must accept,
if at all, upon the testimony of the messenger.
We have now reached the proposition to which
all that I have written has pointed, viz. :

The Church of Christ is a continuing and
visible miracle, and by her existence and char
acter attests the truth of her message to man
kind.

I have said in a former chapter that it is
reasonable to expect that if the Creator has
made a revelation of himself and his will, he
will, in some sufficient manner, have authenti
cated his message, and furnished his messenger
with credentials of authority, and that the form
of attestation will vary with the circumstances
of the time, the nature of the message, and the
persons to whom it is addressed.

Accordingly we find the fact to be that in the
early history of the race, God appeared visibly
to men and spoke directly to them. At other
times he sent angels — beings of supernatural
character — to convey his messages. Again he
spoke by Prophets, whose authority was attested
by occurrences of miraculous character, and by
their ability to foretell future events. When
God the Son appeared in human form, he at
tested his divinity by the performance of many
miracles, and especially by the supreme miracle
of his resurrection from the dead. After his de-

The Testimony of Philosophy 57

parture from earth, his apostles in many in
stances performed miracles. For the generation
which saw the foundation of Christianity these
miracles were a sufficient warranty of its truth,
and during many succeeding generations the
memory of these great events remained in the
minds of men. The faith of those who received
the Gospel from the first Apostles was deep and
strong, and they transmitted a like faith to their
children. We may imagine that oral tradition
preserved among the faithful for many genera
tions, innumerable details as to the life of our
Lord, and the great events of his ministry and
the foundation of his church, which are entirely
lost to us. In those early days, while the mi
raculous events which attended her birth were
yet fresh in men's minds, the supernatural char
acter of the church was not so apparent as it is
to us, nor was the perception of that super
natural character so necessary to attest to the
world her divine commission. Looking back as
we do upon these events through the mists of
nineteen centuries, we see them only by the faint
light of history, and they have lost that sharp
ness of outline and wealth of detail with which
the people of the first centuries saw them. To
us they are merely history. To them they were
actual scenes enacted almost under their own
eyes and witnessed by their immediate progeni
tors. On the other hand, as the colors of the

58 The Living Witness

historical picture fade with the passage of time,
the supernatural character of that witness who
saw those events, and yet remains among us to
relate them, stands out more clearly with each
passing century.

This is the proper place to quote the cele
brated passage from Macaulay on the perpetuity
of the Church, but I refrain. The brilliant Eng^
lish essayist assumed that the church was of
human origin, and was unable to account for
its continued existence. Many others have
made the same attempt and failed.

Here we have an organization founded while
Tiberius Caesar sat upon the imperial throne,
which spans by its life all the ages between, and
still exists in the twentieth century as young
and vigorous as ever. A corporation organized
in Jerusalem two thousand years ago, transact
ing its business here in America to-day as suc
cessfully, and as much at home, as the Western
Union Telegraph Company. An organization
which has adapted itself to every condition of
society, from barbarism to the highest civiliza
tion, to every form of government from absolute
monarchy to a democratic republic, and yet re
mains itself unchanged in any essential feature.
In a world where all human institutions have
their period of growth, their period of life and
their period of decay, it alone is endowed with

The Testimony of Philosophy 59

perpetual youth; immortal among the mortals;
unchangeable in a world of change.

This quality of unchangeableness in the church
is more marvellous than its perpetuity. The
very arguments by which her enemies seek to
impeach her supernatural character tend to
prove it. They say some popes have been men
of bad character, wicked, worldly, avaricious
and zealous for their personal advantage rather
than the interest of religion; that their private
lives have been scandalous and their public con
duct inconsistent with the exalted character of
Vicar of Christ. Granting all this to be true, is
it not a proof of supernatural influence that not
one of these weak and erring men has ever
yielded a single point of the faith which was
committed to their charge? Great pressure has
been brought to bear upon them. More than
once it has appeared to human eyes as if their
" obstinacy " and " intrangeance " (to use a
word lately much in vogue), threatened the de
struction of the church itself. But no prospect
of worldly advantage to worldly minded popes,
no threat of disaster to weak and timid popes,
has availed when there has been question of
preserving unimpaired the original deposit of
truth.

One of the characteristics of truth is the
eternal enmity between it and falsehood. All

60 The Living Witness

that is evil in the world is the foe of the church,
and all its forces are arrayed to compass her
destruction. In all ages she has been a shining
mark for the envenomed shafts of the liar. In
the days of Nero she was accused of sacrificing
living children upon her altars. It is not so
long ago that it was popularly believed in our
own country that she maintained a regular scale
of prices for permits to commit sin. Even yet,
many otherwise well informed persons believe
her to be so thoroughly corrupt that when a Cath
olic lives a decent and virtuous life, it is in spite
of his religion, and not because of it. The sol
diers in the trenches, the men on the firing line
in the battle against sin — her priests, who have
given up family ties, the opportunity of fortune,
and all that life offers to the ambitious, to lead
lives of hardship and toil, and often of actual
privation in the service of God, are accused by
lying tongues of spending their lives in indolence
and debauchery. The foul tongue of the slan
derer has not spared even the noble women who
give their lives to the service of God and hu
manity in her religious communities. Does not
falsehood, by this unrelenting war upon the
church, prove her to be its mortal enemy, and
thus vindicate her claim to truth ?

The charities of the church are the admiration
of the world. There is no form of human suf
fering for which she has not made special pro-

The Testimony of Philosophy 61

vision. Her hospitals, her orphan asylums, her
homes for the aged, etc., are carried on by men
and women whose services are rendered for the
only consideration that insures perfect service
— the love of God. Such fruits as these do not
grow upon a tree whose roots are planted in
falsehood and imposture.

Nothing connected with the church has been
more bitterly assailed than the Sacrament of
Penance — the Confessional, and nothing more
clearly attests both her holiness and her super
natural character. Look around at the Catho
lics of your acquaintance, and you will find that
those who lead the purest and most upright
lives are those who are most frequent in their
attendance at the confessional. Whenever you
find a Catholic leading a bad life, you will find
that he has given up the practice of confession,
and the progress of his departure from virtue
may be traced on parallel lines with his abandon
ment of the sacraments. The supernatural in
fluence in this sacrament is shown by the fact
that no priest was ever known to betray a secret
heard in the confessional. Priests are but hu
man, and some of them have been men of bad
character. Priests have lost their faith and
sunk to the lowest depths of degradation.
Priests have renounced their religion and pub
licly calumniated the church ; they have even
written books and lectured on the " horrors of

62 The Living Witness

the confessional," but not one of them has ever
revealed what he heard there. This statement
will, of course, be denied, and the contrary has
been a favorite theme for fanciful romancers;
but no authenticated case can be produced where
a real priest has betrayed the secrets of the con
fessional. This is so contrary to all our ex
perience of human nature that it is an absolute
proof of supernatural influence.

To sum up the argument: The Christian re
ligion and the Catholic Church are inseparable.
They must stand or fall together. Their exist
ence is a fact which can only be accounted for
in one of two ways. Either they are of human
origin, created and sustained by falsehood and
imposture, or they are of divine origin, and are
sustained and preserved by supernatural power.

The history and character of the church are
wholly inconsistent with the theory of its human
origin. On such an extended field as is here in
question, the laws of human nature are as cer
tain and invariable in their operation as those
which govern the material world. Our knowl
edge of those laws forbids us to believe that such
an institution could have been established by
human devices upon a false foundation, and
have survived the vicissitudes of two thousand
years, and yet stand unchanged and impregnable.

On the other hand, the history and character
of the church are entirely consistent with her

The Testimony of Philosophy 63

claim to divine origin and preservation. There
is no philosophical objection to the truth of such
a claim. On the contrary, so far as we, in our
natural ignorance of the character and designs
of the Creator, are warranted in speculating upon
the manner in which he will carry out those de
signs, it seems reasonable and fitting that he
should have created and maintained such an
agency to inform us of that which he wishes us
to know concerning himself and his will.

CHAPTER VIII

THE TESTIMONY OF SCRIPTURE

IF my little essay shall be so fortunate as to
find any readers among persons who have
been trained in the Protestant tradition that the
Bible is the beginning and end of our knowledge
of God, they will probably think it strange that I
should have undertaken to argue in favor of the
truth of Christianity without saying more of the
Bible. To me such a course of proceeding seems
entirely logical, and in accordance with the rules
of evidence. The Bible is an ancient document,
but before it is accepted as evidence its custody
must be accounted for. The Bible was not sent
down from Heaven as a complete whole, like the
tables of the law delivered to Moses upon
Mount Sinai. It comes from the custody of the
Catholic Church. She is the witness to its au
thenticity. If her testimony is not credible, the
authenticity of the Bible is not proven. If her
character as a faithful custodian is not above
reproach, suspicion is cast upon the document.

The Protestant arguing with an unbeliever is
in the position of a party in court who impeaches

The Testimony of Scripture 65

his own witness. He produces the Bible and
says : " Here is the inspired word of God. It
contains all the truth necessary to salvation.
Nothing is to be believed concerning God and
his will except what is therein contained." His
opponent examines the book, and finds it to con
sist of a collection of some seventy documents,
none of which are dated, and to many of which
no authors' names are affixed. He carefully
examines it page by page, and finds nowhere
any reference to the book as a complete whole,
or any statement that it is the sole rule of faith.
He asks : " This is not one book, but many.
How do you know that they are equally to be
received as the word of God? They appear
from internal evidence to have been written at
different times, through a period of many cen
turies. Who collected these various documents
into one whole, and who certifies to their in
spired character ? There are many things in this
book that are hard to be understood. How
shall I ascertain the right meaning ? " The
Protestant, if a truthful man, must answer:
" I receive this book upon the authority of the
Catholic Church. She collected the various docu
ments of which it is composed. There were
many other purported gospels and epistles in cir
culation in the early days of Christianity. She
selected these and declared them to be true, and
rejected the others as spurious." " But," says

66 The Living Witness

his opponent, " I find that many of these docu
ments do not contain any statement that they
are inspired. How did the Catholic Church as
certain their inspired character? What author
ity had this church to select these as true and
reject the others as false?" The Protestant
can only answer : " She claimed to have acted
under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit herself,
so that she could make no mistake in the matter.
She claimed and still claims to be the authorized
interpreter of this book, but her claims are false,
and her pretended authority is a usurpation.
She, somehow, happened to be right in her judg
ment as to the authenticity and inspiration of the
Bible, but she is wholly wrong in her interpreta
tion of it, and her pretended infallibility is a hu
man invention."

Now, the facts are that the Jewish Scriptures
— the Old Testament — were all in existence
long before the birth of our Lord, and both he
and his disciples constantly referred to and
quoted from them. When they speak of the
Scriptures they refer to the Old Testament.
The church was in existence and in the active
discharge of her mission before a line of the
New Testament was written. She was preach
ing the gospel, delivered to her orally by her
divine founder, and administering the sacra
ments which he had ordained for the channels
of his grace, before the first of the evangelists

The Testimony of Scripture 67

put pen to paper. According to tradition, the
Gospels were written in the following order:
That of St. Matthew about six years after our
Lord's ascension; that of St. Mark about ten
years ; that of St. Luke about twenty-four years,
and that of St. John about sixty-three years after
the ascension. Before the last mentioned date
churches had been established all over northern
Africa, western Asia and southern Europe.
The great persecution under Nero had occurred,
and many thousands had died martyrs to the
faith. It was not until near the close of the
fourth century, after the conversion of Con-
stantine, that the church established the canon
of scripture — that is, the list of books to be re
garded as inspired.

The church has always held the Bible in rev
erence, and no Protestant has ever insisted more
firmly than she upon its inspired and sacred char
acter. She stands to-day almost alone as its
defender against the attacks of the so-called
higher criticism. The Gospels and Epistles
which compose the New Testament are the work
of her first Bishops and their disciples.

" She saw them written. She took them from
the hands of her own Holy Fathers. She treas
ured and defended them. She transmits them
to her children of the latest generation. She is
the witness to their inspiration. She alone can
give the key to their meaning, and she, to whom

68 The Living Witness

the complete revelation was given in the begin
ning, knows just how much of the faith com
mitted to her keeping has been transcribed into
their blessed pages." (Invitation Heeded, p.

i48.)

While the church encourages the reading of
the Bible by the laity, she does not allow it to
usurp her place as the teacher of religion, and
reserves to herself the right to interpret its
meaning, bearing in mind what was said by her
first Bishop of the Epistles of St. Paul :

" In which are certain things hard to be un
derstood, which the unlearned and unstable
wrest, as they do also the other scriptures, to
their own destruction." (2 Peter, III; 16.)

The Bible does not purport to be a complete
statement of the Christian faith, nor do the gos
pels purport to contain all the truths delivered
by our Lord to his disciples. On the contrary,
St. John says :

" But there are also many other things which
Jesus did; which, if they were written every
one, the world itself, I think, would not be able
to contain the books that should be written."
(John, XXI; 25.)

When the so-called reformers of the six
teenth century rejected the authority of the

The Testimony of Scripture 69

teaching church, all that was left to them of
Christianity was the Bible, and they took refuge
in a doctrine for which no foundation is found
in the Bible itself. There is not a word in the
Bible to indicate that it was intended to take the
place of the church as the teacher of truth.
This notion was an invention of the reformers,
born of necessity, in consequence of their revolt
against the authority of the church. It may
readily be conceived that such a theory would
have received scant acceptance before the inven
tion of printing. Imagine St. Peter, on the day
of Pentecost, addressing the thousands who
asked : " What shall we do, men and breth
ren ? " and saying to them : " Wait until the
Bible is published, and each of you get a copy
and read it, and you will find therein all that you
need to know."

The Protestant theory of religion is not only
unphilosophical and illogical, but it stands alone
among all the religious systems of the world.
In striking contrast to the Jewish religion, which
Protestants believe to have been of divine ori
gin, it rejects all idea of prophet or priest, altar
or sacrifice, and leaves the believer alone in the
world with nothing but a lifeless book, which
he cannot understand, and no one to explain it to
him. The experiment has had a fair trial. It
was not made until the invention of printing and
the diffusion, of learning had made the cheap and

70 The Living Witness

rapid multiplication of the book and its general
reading possible. It was made among the most
intellectual and progressive peoples of the earth,
in whose hearts the great truths of Christianity
were already firmly implanted. Its complete
failure is manifest in the condition of religious
anarchy to which those same peoples are re
duced to-day.

What our Lord said to the unbelieving Jews
of his day, referring to the Old Testament, the
church may say to the Protestants of our day,
referring to the new :

" Search the scriptures, for you think in them
to have life everlasting ; and the same are they
that give testimony of me." (John V ; 39.)

Our Lord here referred his hearers to the
prophecies of the Jewish scriptures which fore
told his coming. In like manner, the church may
refer those outside her communion to those pas
sages of the New Testament which record her
foundation and the conferring of her commis
sion.

" And Jesus came into the quarters of
Cesarea Philippi: and he asked his disciples,
saying: Whom do men say that the Son of
man is? But they said: Some John the Bap
tist, and other some Elias, and others Jeremias,
or one of the prophets. Jesus saith to them:

The Testimony of Scripture 71

But whom do you say that I am? Simon Pe
ter answered and said: Thou art Christ, the
Son of the living God. And Jesus answering,
said to him: Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-
Jona: because flesh and blood hath not re
vealed it to thee, but my Father who is in
heaven. And I say to thee: That thou art
Peter; and upon this rock I will build my
church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail
against it." (Matt., XVI; 13-18.)

Pretermitting any discussion of the disputed
question, whether the " rock " referred to was
Peter himself, or the faith he had just pro
fessed, we have here a distinct assertion by our
Lord that he would build a church, and that the
gates of hell should not prevail against it.
Private interpretation substitutes the profession
of faith as the rock, instead of Peter, but that
is as far as it can go. It cannot explain away
the promise itself. The words are too plain,
even for Protestant ingenuity. " I will build
my church." These were the words of the Liv
ing God. Who that believes in the divinity of
Christ can doubt that the promise was fulfilled,
and the church built? It must still exist. If it
does not, the powers of evil have prevailed
against it and destroyed it. But the promise of
its perpetuity was as plain as the promise of its
foundation. " The gates of hell shall not pre-

J2 The Living Witness

vail against it." Where is that church to-day?
It is impossible that the many antagonistic bodies
of Christians in the world, taken collectively,
are the church established by Christ. Under no
construction of the word " church " can they be
considered as one body. The church of Christ
must teach the truth. No matter what the truth
may be, it is certain these bodies do not all teach
it, because their teachings contradict each other,
and the truth can never contradict itself.

Historically, there can be no doubt that the
Catholic Church is the only organization now in
existence which traces its origin back to the
days of the apostles. The schismatic churches
of the East admit her to be their mother. None
of the various Protestant bodies can trace their
origin further back than the sixteenth century.
Some of them indeed admit that the Catholic
Church of the first centuries was the true church
of Christ, but claim that she became corrupt and
fell into error. If this is true, then the gates of
hell prevailed against her, and the promise of
her divine founder was not kept.

The Catholic Church is the only organization
which claims those powers which were promised
by our Lord to his church. It will not be ques
tioned that the disciples, who were chosen by
our Lord himself, and to whom he committed
his doctrines, were the first members of his
church, and the ministers whom he commis-

The Testimony of Scripture 73

sioned to preach his gospel. Upon the eve of
his ascension into Heaven, in that solemn hour
when they looked upon him for the last time
with mortal eyes, he said to them:

" All power is given to me in heaven and in
earth. Going therefore, teach ye all nations;
baptizing them in the name of the Father, and
of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Teaching
them to observe all things whatsoever I have
commanded you : and behold I am with you all
days, even to the consummation of the world."
(Matt., XXVIII; 18-29.)

" Go ye into the whole world, and preach
the gospel to every creature. He that believ-
eth and is baptized shall be saved ; but he that
believeth not shall be condemned." (Mark,
XVI; 15-16.)

" Then he opened their understanding that
they might understand the Scriptures. And
he said to them : Thus it is written, and thus
it behoved Christ to suffer, and to rise again
from the dead the third day: And that pen
ance and remission of sins should be preached
in his name, unto all nations, beginning at
Jerusalem. And you are witnesses of these
things. And I send the promise of my Father
upon you : but stay you in the city, till you be
endued with power from on high." (Luke,
XXIV; 45-49-)

74 The Living Witness

" It is not for you to know the times or mo
ments which the Father hath put in his own
power: But you shall receive the power of
the Holy Ghost coming upon you, and you
shall be witnesses unto me in Jerusalem, and
in all Judea, and in Samaria, and even to the
uttermost part of the earth." (Acts, I ; 7-8.)

Previously, on the eve of his suffering, he had
said to them:

" These things I have spoken to you, abiding
with you. But the Paraclete, the Holy Ghost,
whom the Father will send in my name, he will
teach you all things, and bring all things to
your mind, whatsoever I shall have said to
you." (John, XIV; 25-26.) "I have yet
many things to say to you: but you cannot
bear them now. But when he, the Spirit of
truth, is come, he will teach you all truth."
(John, XVI; 12-13.)

The fulfillment of the promise of the Holy
Spirit is recorded in the Acts of the Apostles,
written by St. Luke:

" And when the days of the Pentecost were
accomplished, they were all together in one
place: And suddenly there came a sound from
heaven, as of a mighty wind coming, and it
filled the whole house where they were sitting.

The Testimony of Scripture 75

And there appeared to them parted tongues as
it were of fire, and it sat upon every one of
them: And they were all filled with the Holy
Ghost, and they began to speak with divers
tongues, according as the Holy Ghost gave
them to speak." (Acts, II; 1-4.)

To whom was the command to preach ad
dressed, and to whom the promise of the Holy
Spirit? He promised to be with them even to
the consummation of the world, but when the
last of those who heard the words from his lips
had passed away, the consummation of the
world was yet far distant. It was physically
impossible that these eleven men, in the short
span of their mortal lives, should preach the gos
pel to all nations in the uttermost parts of the
earth. Our Lord did not command or expect
impossibilities. We are not warranted in put
ting such a construction upon his words. It is
rather our duty to put such a construction upon
them as makes both the command and the prom
ise possible of fulfillment, viz., that they were
addressed not only to those who heard the
words, but to their successors also, from gen
eration to generation; in other words, to that
church of which they were the first members.

St. Paul, shows how the truths of the gospel
and the power of the Holy Spirit were to be

76 The Living Witness

transmitted. Addressing his disciple Timothy,
he says:

" Neglect not the grace that is in thee, which
was given thee by prophecy, with imposition
of the hands of the priesthood." (i Tim., IV;
14.)

" I admonish thee, that thou stir up the
grace of God which is in thee by the imposi
tion of my hands." (2 Tim., I ; 6.)

" Hold the form of sound words, which thou
hast heard of me in faith, and in the love which
is in Christ Jesus. Keep the good thing com
mitted to thy trust by the Holy Ghost, who
dwelleth in us." (2 Tim., I ; 13-14.)

" And the things which thou hast heard of
me by many witnesses, the same commend to
faithful men, who shall be fit to teach others
also." (2 Tim., II; 2.)

Again, in his Epistle to Titus, he says:

" For this cause I left thee in Crete, that
thou shouldst set in order the things that are
wanting, and shouldst ordain priests in every
city, as I also appointed thee." (Tit., I ; 5.)

Here we have a clear and unmistakable refer
ence to the Sacrament of Holy Orders, just as it
is administered in the church to-day, by which
the Holy Spirit, which descended upon the

The Testimony of Scripture 77

apostles on the day of Pentecost, is transmitted
to their successors from generation to genera
tion. As it visibly descended upon the apostles
in the form of tongues of flame, so it is trans
mitted by an outward and visible act, viz., the
imposition of hands.

The reformers, in order to justify their revolt
against the authority of the church, were obliged
to explain away this testimony of the scriptures.
In order to do this, they adopted the only course
open to them, and placed a construction upon it
which would never have occurred to any person
not seeking a loophole of escape from an un
tenable position, viz. : That the promise of the
Holy Ghost, the guide to truth, was made only
to the immediate disciples of our Lord. This
is only one of the inconsistencies resulting from
the false position in which they had placed
themselves. Every commandment, every word
of warning and exhortation, uttered by our
Lord to his disciples, and recorded in the gos
pels, is taken by Protestants as addressed to all
mankind, save and except these promises, which
they limit to the lifetime of the apostles them
selves.

Nothing is more clearly set forth in the New
Testament than the primacy of St. Peter. In
the passage from St. Matthew above quoted,
our Lord, after the promise of the foundation
and perpetuity of the church, still addressing

78 The Living Witness

Peter, whom he had declared to be the rock upon
which he would build his church, continued:

"And I will give to thee the keys of the
kingdom of heaven. And whatsoever thou
shalt bind upon earth, it shall be bound also in
heaven; and whatsoever thou shalt loose on
earth, it shall be loosed also in heaven."
(Matt, XVI; 19.)

Again, on the eve of his passion, when he
stood already in the shadow of the cross, he said
to Peter :

" Simon, Simon, behold Satan hath desired
to have you, that he may sift you as wheat:
But I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail
not: and thou being once converted, confirm
thy brethren." (Luke, XXII; 31-32.)

St. John relates that on the third appearance
of our Lord to his disciples, after his resurrec
tion:

" Jesus saith to Simon Peter : Simon, son of
John, lovest thou me more than these? He
saith to him: Yea, Lord, thou knowest that I
love thee. He saith to him: Feed my lambs.
He saith to him again: Simon, son of John,
lovest thou me? He saith to him : Yea, Lord,
thou knowest that I love thee. He saith to
him: Feed my lambs. He said to him the

The Testimony of Scripture 79

third time: Simon, son of John, lovest thou
me? Peter was grieved, because he had said
to him the third time: Lovest thou me?
And he said to him: Lord, thou knowest all
things; thou knowest that I love thee. He
said to him: Feed my sheep." (John XXI;
I5-I7-)

The passage above quoted from St. Luke must
strike the fair-minded reader as being conclusive
of the question of Peter's primacy, since to him
was given the charge of confirming his brethren.
The same appears in the passage quoted from
St. John, where he is told to feed the master's
sheep. To whom is this charge given, but to
the shepherd of the flock?

The fact of Peter's primacy stands out clearly
in the first record of the infant church, the Acts
of the Apostles. In the first recorded meeting
of the disciples after the ascension, it was
Peter who took the lead and proposed the elec
tion of a successor to the apostate Judas.
(Acts, I; 15-22.) It was Peter who first
preached the new gospel on the day of Pente
cost. (Acts, II; 14-36.) It was Peter who
performed the first miracle (Acts, III; 1-8), and
made it the occasion of another sermon, with
wonderful results. (Acts, III; 12-26; IV, 4.)
It was Peter who spoke for Christ before the
Jewish authorities the next day. (Acts, IV;

8o The Living Witness

8-12.) So on through the entire book of Acts,
and yet, in the face of this plain testimony, men
claiming to be students and believers of the
Bible gravely tell us there is nothing in the sa
cred volume to show that Peter was given any
pre-eminence over the other apostles. The
same line of argument which questions the au
thority of the church because some of her pon
tiffs have been weak and erring in their private
characters, assails the character of Peter, be
cause, in the moment of peril, he manifested his
weak human nature by denying his Lord. But
it was this same Peter who was made shepherd
of the flock, and fulfilled his trust by dying for
his sheep, as had been foretold by his master.
(John, XXI; 18-19.)

Consistency is a characteristic of truth, and
inconsistency that of error. In nothing is the in
consistency of Protestantism more clearly shown
than in its position regarding the scriptures. It
begins by rejecting all tradition and declaring
that nothing is to be received but scripture, and
accepts scripture itself on the authority of tradi
tion. Protestants may deny that they accept the
Bible on the authority of the church, although
they do in fact so accept it. But upon what
ever authority they receive it, it is, after all,
but tradition, since the Bible itself proves neither
its authenticity nor its inspiration. They are

The Testimony of Scripture 81

bound to take somebody's word that this collection
of documents has always been regarded as the
inspired word of God, and has not been mutilated
by copyists. Having received it, they place a
strained and artificial construction upon it, which
nullifies and makes impossible of fulfillment the
solemn promises of God. The Protestant theory
leaves absolutely no room for a priesthood or
ministry of any kind. If the powers given to
the apostles expired with them, and were not
transmitted to others, it necessarily follows that
when the last of them had passed away, all men
were on an equal footing, and no one had au
thority to teach anyone else. If anyone chose
to preach, he did so as a mere volunteer, with
out commission or authority of any kind. Prot
estantism, however, does not accept this logical
consequence of its own contention. All but a
few of the minor sects have some form of or
dination by which certain persons are set apart
as preachers and teachers. But the command
to preach the gospel and the promise of divine
guidance are inseparable. Both were addressed
at the same time to the same men. " Going
therefore, teach ye all nations, . . . and be
hold I am with you all days, even to the con
summation of the world." Protestant theolo
gians accept the command to preach as addressed
to them, but they say those to whom the promise

82 The Living Witness

was made are dead. The Catholic Church, the
historical successor of the apostles, alone claims
both the command and the promise.

No one is warranted in placing such a con
struction upon our Lord's words as to make him
to do a vain thing. The generations yet unborn
were as dear to him as those then in the flesh,
and his solicitude for their salvation was equally
as great. When he said to St. Peter : " I will
give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of
heaven," he foresaw, with the vision of omnis
cience, that after Peter had gone to his reward,
ages would pass away, during which the need
of a center of unity and a visible head to his
church would be as great as during Peter's life
time. When he appointed Peter to be the shep
herd of his flock, did he intend the flock to be left
unfed and unguarded when Peter's mortal life
was ended? When he said to his disciples:
" Going therefore, teach ye all nations . . .
and behold I am with you all days, even to the
consummation of the world," he knew as well
as we know now that the world would exist for
ages after their voices were heard no more. He
knew that his presence and " the power of the
Holy Ghost coming upon them " would be as
necessary to their successors as to them. The
Catholic construction, that the commands and
the promises spoken to Peter and his associates
were addressed likewise to his and their sue-

The Testimony of Scripture 83

cessors, makes them consistent and worthy of the
wisdom and foresight of their divine author.

It is a familiar principle of law that the con
struction placed upon a written instrument by
the parties to it is to be looked to in order to
ascertain their intention. There can be no doubt
that the apostles themselves understood what
our Lord intended. They had lived with him in
familiar intercourse, and had heard all those dis
courses and instructions of which they have re
corded only a few. Their first act after his
ascension was to elect a successor to the traitor
Judas. Every page of the Book of Acts shows
that they had no thought that the ministry of the
gospel was to be confined to themselves alone,
or to cease after their deaths. The history of
the early church shows that the apostles and
their immediate successors understood the com
mand to teach, and the promise of continued
guidance to be addressed, not to the apostles as
individuals, but to the corporate body of which
they were the first members, that church against
which the gates of hell should never prevail, and
which was to be a witness for her divine founder
in the uttermost part of the earth until the con
summation of the world.

CHAPTER IX

THE FATAL HERESY

THE great religious movement of the six
teenth century, known as the Reformation,
presents a question of totally different character
to those who look at it from opposite standpoints.
The Protestant, who sees in it the emancipation
of the human intellect from ignorance and su
perstition, is at a loss to understand why the
movement should have progressed so far and
then stopped. Fifty years after the tide had be
gun to rise, it reached its flood and began to ebb.
If it was the revolt of truth against error, why
did truth lose its power in the hour of victory?
The hardest part of the battle had been fought,
and a secure vantage ground had been gained
from which to prosecute other campaigns and
win other victories. Whole nations had thrown
off the yoke of Rome and adopted the " pure
gospel." Why was that gospel, which had con
quered pagan and anti-christian Rome, unable
to overcome the errors and corruptions which
had grown up in papal but still Christian Rome?
Surely the battle of the sixteenth century, al-

The Fatal Heresy 85

ready half won, was more hopeful than the battle
of the first century. Why is it that the supposed
truth of the sixteenth century has not only failed
to make further conquests, but has long since
ceased to be an aggressive force? From the
Catholic point of view, the question is easily
answered. The supposed truth was not a truth
at all, and has but met the common fate of error.
The question that puzzles the Catholic is why
the movement ever went so far as it did, and
how a religious system was ever built up upon
a simple negation? To answer this question
from the standpoint of human reason would in
volve an historical inquiry into which it is not
my purpose to enter. We can safely say, how
ever, that the movement owed such success as
it attained very largely to political considera
tions. It was primarily a revolt against the au
thority of the church, which princes were in
clined to favor for two reasons: (i) The spir
itual authority of the church was a restraint upon
the civil rulers, which was often exercised to
protect their subjects from oppression. The new
doctrines removed this restraint, and by making
the State supreme in spiritual as well as in tem
poral affairs, added immensely to the power of
the sovereign. (2) The donations of land and
other property made by pious sovereigns and
feudal lords to the religious orders, and the
labors of successive generations of their mem-

86 The Living Witness

bers all working for the common benefit, had
greatly enriched these communities, enabling
them to extend to the poor and needy that charity
which, in those rude days, was not to be found
elsewhere. Princes and courtiers looked with
covetous eyes upon this wealth, and lent a will
ing ear to the new doctrines which pointed it
out as legitimate spoil. Every schoolboy
knows that in England the reformation was ef
fected by the power of a despotic king and a
servile parliament, and that the acceptance of
the new creed was enforced by the halter and the
headsman's axe, while the wealth of the religious
orders was parcelled out among the royal favor
ites. Thus the princes of northern Europe un
dertook to divide among themselves the earthly
kingdom of Christ, over which he had set his
vicegerent to rule.

The church is so far a human institution that
her work is performed through human instru
ments. Her divine founder promised to pre
serve her from error in her teaching, but he did
not promise her members exemption from those
weaknesses which belong to human nature. If
all that Luther and his associates and their apol
ogists have asserted as to the corruption of the
clergy at the beginning of the sixteenth century
had been true, it would not have justified their
rebellion against the spiritual authority of the
church. Christ had promised that the gates of

The Fatal Heresy 87

hell should never prevail against his church.
Upon no other authority than their own human
judgment, they boldly proclaimed that the promise
had not been kept, and that the powers of evil
had overcome the church and taken possession
of it. Having determined that the church
founded by Christ had been captured by the
evil one, they proceeded to erect for themselves
not another church, but as many others as suited
their different views as to the proper plan upon
which a church should be built.

The reformers professed to appeal from the
authority of the church to the authority of the
Bible, but the profession was a mere subterfuge.
The experience of four hundred years has proved
that the Bible is like a mirror, in which he who
looks, sees reflected therein the notions already
formed in his own mind. The professed appeal
to the Bible was really a negation of authority,
because the Bible is authority for whatever we
choose to find in it, and the appeal is at last to
our own judgment.

The new doctrine proclaimed by the reformers,
that the Bible is the only rule of faith and the
only authority in matters of religion, is a fatal
heresy which strikes at the very root of Chris
tianity, because it is a denial of any certainty as
to God's will. It is practically a denial of revela
tion itself, because it asserts that the only reve
lation we have is one that speaks with an uncer-

88 The Living Witness

tain and ambiguous voice. It is the most dan
gerous of all heresies, because, while other here
sies pervert the faith, this one, if universally
accepted, would finally destroy all faith.

But although the reformers professed this
doctrine in order to justify their denial of the
authority of the church, they denied it in prac
tice. For the authority of the church they sub
stituted their own. The infallibility which they
denied to the church they claimed for themselves,
and enforced the claim so far as they were able,
by the sword. They denied the right of the
church to interpret the Bible, and proceeded to
enforce their own interpretations by drawing up
creeds and professions of faith to which they
compelled adherence by the authority of the civil
power wherever they could. They denounced the
authority of the church as an usurpation, and
proceeded to organize other churches for which
they claimed equal authority. All this would
have been sufficiently presumptuous if they had
agreed among themselves, but no two of the lead
ers were agreed as to the principal points of
faith, or the form of church government. All
this is unquestioned history, and its results are
visible around us to-day.

In the beginning, the reformation involved no
denial of those cardinal dogmas of the Christian
faith, the Trinity of God, the Divinity of Christ,
the doctrine of original sin, and the necessity

The Fatal Heresy 89

for redemption through the merits of Christ, the
necessity of faith and repentance, and the in
spiration of the scriptures. The revolt was
against the authority of the church as an in
spired teacher, and only those doctrines and forms
of worship were denied which depended upon
or were intimately connected with that authority.
The denial of authority necessarily involved the
denial of the continued presence in the church
of the Holy Spirit transmitted by the apostles
to their successors. This necessarily led to the
abandonment of the sacraments, which could only
be administered by an ordained priesthood.
These changes were only the beginning. So far
as the operation of the Holy Spirit promised by
the Saviour as a guide to truth was admitted
at all, it was confined to the individual believer,
guiding him to a correct interpretation of the
scriptures, but in practice it led to varying and
contradictory conclusions. There is not a single
dogma of Christianity which has not been denied
upon the supposed authority of the scriptures.
There is not a single one of the hundreds of Prot
estant denominations in the world to-day whose
members all agree upon every point of belief.
Probably there are not two persons in the world
who have formed their own opinions from a
study of the scriptures, who agree upon every
point. The necessary result of this confusion of
opinion has been to minimize the importance of

90 The Living Witness

faith. Luther began by preaching that men were
saved by faith alone. The tendency of Protes
tantism in our day is toward the directly opposite
conclusion that it matters not what one believes,
so long as he leads a good life. The end of that
road is Agnosticism.

The abolition of the sacraments has deprived
the people of those ever present helps to re
pentance and amendment, fortification of faith
and safeguards against temptation. Especially
has the abolition of the great sacrament of the
Eucharist — the real presence of Christ — robbed
the church building itself of its life and sanctity,
and made it a cold and cheerless place, where
people meet to hear moral discourses by men who
claim no authority but their own fallible judg
ment, and to join in prayers which might as well
be offered in the privacy of the home. Can we
wonder that such churches remain unfilled in
spite of sensational devices to attract congrega
tions? The fact that under these circumstances
real and fervent faith still exists among Prot
estants, that they still practice the Christian vir
tues, and that preachers are still found among
them full of zeal for the spread of the gospel, is a
testimony to the inherent power of those truths
which their forefathers took with them out of
the mother church. On the other hand, no im
partial student will deny that those truths are
losing their hold upon the hearts of those who

The Fatal Heresy 91

reject the authority of the witness upon whose
testimony they were originally received. The
fatal principle of private interpretation is sap
ping the foundations of their faith, and the
Protestant religions are dying before our eyes.

CHAPTER X

THE PROVINCE OF REASON

IT is often said that the Catholic Church is
the enemy of free thought; that it shackles
men's consciences and forbids them the use of
their reason. If free thought means liberty to
hold any opinion we please, all truth is the enemy
of free thought. So long as we have no knowl
edge upon a subject, we are at liberty to speculate
about it as we please, but each fact we learn
about it reduces the range of our speculation.
To illustrate: Suppose a man, of whom the
public has never before heard, becomes promi
nent in politics, writes a successful book, makes
a great invention, or otherwise attracts public
attention, and is much talked about. We natu
rally form some notion as to the kind of a man
he is, his age, personal appearance, etc., more or
less definite according to the degree in which we
each possess the imaginative faculty. Then we
hear that he is a man of middle age. We can
no longer think of him as an old man or a young
one. We hear that he is a small, slight man, and
we can no longer think of him as a tall, stout one,
92

The Province of Reason 93

and so on. Each item of information reduces the
range of our conjecture as to his appearance,
until at last we see the man himself. After that
we can no longer form any mental picture of
him differing from that received through the eye
and impressed upon the memory.

A schoolmaster who should teach his pupils
that two and two make five, that the sun revolves
around the earth, or that the State of Colorado is
an island, would hardly escape dismissal from his
situation by pleading the " God-given privilege of
free thought."

Reason is the faculty by which we draw con
clusions from facts ascertained through the me
dium of the bodily senses, and from the conclu
sions thus formed draw other conclusions, and
thus arrive at knowledge. No truth is learned
except by a process of reasoning — that is, by
associating the impressions conveyed by the
senses with others already existing in the mind,
and drawing conclusions therefrom. Usually we
are not conscious of this mental process, but it
nevertheless takes place. When Robinson Cru
soe saw the footprint of a man upon the sand,
he was at once certain that his island had been
visited by a stranger, yet this knowledge was a
conclusion arrived at by a process of reasoning.
His sense of sight conveyed to his mind the fact
that the footprint existed in the sand. He as
sociated this fact with the knowledge, already

94 The Living Witness

existing in his mind, that nothing but a human
foot could have made such an impression as that
which he saw. From this association he drew
the conclusion that a human foot had made the
impression in the sand, and a further conclusion
that a strange man had been upon the island.
Crusoe was probably not conscious of this pro
cess of reasoning, the conclusion was probably
simultaneous with the sight of the footprint, but
it nevertheless took place ; and in like manner all
truth is arrived at by a process of reasoning,
consciously or unconsciously, as the case may be.
The truth of Crusoe's conclusion as to the pres
ence of the stranger upon the island depended
upon the truth of his major premise that nothing
but a human footprint could have made the im
pression which he saw. If this was erroneous,
his conclusion may have been wrong.

When a mother tells her child the earth is
round like a ball, the child accepts the statement
and believes it, although it contradicts the evi
dence of the child's own senses, which indicate
it to be flat like a floor. This belief of the child
is the result of a regular process of reasoning,
the major premise being the conviction already
existing in the child's mind that its mother is
much wiser than itself, and that whatever she
says is true. The minor premise is the mother's
statement. The complete syllogism stands thus:

Whatever my mother tells me is true.

The Province of Reason 95

My mother tells me the earth is round.

Therefore the earth is round.

Thus the belief of the child that the earth is
round, instead of being a blind, unreasoning faith,
is a logical conclusion, based upon correct reason
ing from sufficient premises.

The province of reason is the ascertainment of
truth. When the truth has been ascertained, rea
son has performed its function, and the result is
belief. The conclusion may be wrong, either be
cause the premises are not true, or because the
reasoning has been faulty. If we are not con
vinced of the truth of the premises, we can never
be certain of the truth of the conclusion, no mat
ter how correct the process of reasoning may be.

The Protestant believes certain propositions
concerning religion to be true. This belief is a
conclusion based upon these premises : ( i )
The Bible is the word of God. (2) The Bible
says so and so. Therefore so and so is true.
This reasoning is correct, and if the conclusion
is erroneous, the fault is with the premises. The
infidel denies the major, and says the Bible is
not the word of God. Other Protestants deny
the minor, and say the Bible does not say so
and so.

The Catholic reaches his conclusion by the
following reasoning: (i) The church is com
missioned by God to teach the truth. (2) The
church teaches so and so. Therefore so and

96 The Living Witness

so is true. In this case, there is no question as
to the minor premise. Unlike the teaching of
the Bible, there is no uncertainty as to what
the church teaches. Those who deny the Cath
olic's conclusion, infidel and Protestant alike,
deny the major premise. Hence all the Catholic
has to do is to establish that premise, and the
conclusion follows. Thus the belief of the Cath
olic, like that of the little child, is not a blind,
unreasoning faith, but a logical conclusion from
premises which he accepts as true.

When the Catholic has satisfied himself of the
infallible authority of the church, reason has
performed its function, and his search for truth
is ended. Thenceforth he has an unvarying
standard by which to test every proposition pre
sented to him. When the Protestant has satis
fied himself of the infallible authority of the
Bible, his search has just begun. Having no
authoritative standard by which to test the con
clusions to which his interpretation of the Bible
leads him, and seeing that others as well qualified
as himself have reached different conclusions, he
must always feel that there is a possibility of his
being wrong, and those who differ with him
right. This, if he is a fair-minded man, makes
him tolerant of the opinions of others, and the
Catholic, who admits no such possibility as to
his faith, appears to him bigoted and intolerant.
This is a necessary result of the differing methods

The Province of Reason 97

by which the two arrive at their respective con
clusions. Each admits the authority of an in
fallible teacher. To the Catholic, the teacher
whom he accepts speaks with no uncertain voice,
and there is no question as to its meaning. How
ever firm the faith of the Protestant in the in
fallibility of the Bible, it always speaks to him
with an uncertain voice, and his whole life is
spent in an effort to ascertain its meaning. He
refers every proposition presented to him to the
Bible, but can never be entirely certain of the
result. This eternal questioning becomes a habit
of mind which makes it extremely difficult for
a genuine Protestant to become a Catholic. His
constant impulse is to test each article of Catholic
belief by his own interpretation of the Bible. In
thus proceeding, he can never reach the same
conclusion as the Catholic, because he has not
reached the premise from which the Catholic be
gins. It is one thing to accept the Bible upon the
authority of the infallible church, and quite an
other to accept the infallibility of the church upon
the authority of the Bible. There have been
cases of persons who were received into the
church and left it because they could not accept
certain doctrines. Such persons were never
Catholics at all. They tested some, perhaps the
greater part, of the Catholic doctrines by the
Protestant standard, and found them true, but
they did not accept the doctrine of the infalli-

98 The Living Witness

bility of the church, and without that they re
mained Protestants. A person might, upon the
authority of the Bible, believe every doctrine
which the Catholic Church teaches without being
a Catholic. His belief would still rest upon the
uncertain ground of his own interpretation of
the scriptures, which would always be liable to
change, and not upon the teaching of the church,
which can never change. He would believe so
and so, because he understood the Bible to teach
so and so, and not because the church teaches it.
The difference is radical and fundamental, and is
the real dividing line between Catholicity and
Protestantism. On the other hand, a person
who is convinced that the church speaks with
the voice of God and is willing to hear and obey
that voice, is already at heart a Catholic, al
though he may know nothing else of Catholic
doctrine. Belief in the infallibility of the
teacher includes belief in whatever she teaches.
All he needs to do is to make his formal sub
mission and receive instruction preparatory to
baptism. In doing this, instead of surrendering
his reason, he is acting upon the conclusion to
which his reason has led him.

Speculation, or conjecture, and reason are en
tirely different things. Where knowledge be
gins, free thought ends, and the matter enters
the province of reason. Without knowledge
reason has no place, because it has nothing upon

The Province of Reason 99

which to operate. Reason is the mental process
by which we draw conclusions from accepted
premises, that is, from facts, or what we suppose
to be facts. Something must be accepted as
true before we can reason at all. Otherwise we
can only speculate or conjecture. We may
speculate as to whether the planet Mars is in
habited, but without some fact from which to
reason, we can never arrive at any certain con
clusion. If the improvement of telescopes
should enable us to ascertain that the so-called
canals are of artificial construction, and serve
the purpose of distributing the water supply
upon the planet, we would then have a fact from
which we might reason that the planet was in
habited by intelligent beings. We would still
have left a wide field for speculation as to
whether those beings were men like ourselves,
but without further information we could never
arrive at any certain conclusion upon the point.
Now, when the Catholic accepts the teaching
of the church as true, he does not abandon his
reason. On the contrary, he has a sure and
firm foundation upon which to exercise it.
This gives him an advantage in the search for
truth in other departments of knowledge. It is
a touchstone by which to test the truth of con
clusions to which his researches apparently lead.
He is not tossed to and fro by the shifting cur
rents of human opinion, or disturbed by the

COLL. CHRIST! REGIS SI

RIB. MAJOR

TORONTO

ioo The Living Witness

alleged startling discoveries of so-called scien
tists. He knows that if they are true, they will
not conflict with the truth he holds. If they do
conflict with it, they are themselves false.

While it is true that when truth has been as
certained, reason has performed its function, it
is true only as to the particular truth ascertained.
That truth becomes in its turn a basis for fur
ther reasoning. Facts are the foundation upon
which reason builds, and each additional fact
acquired broadens the scope of its operation.
Certainty as to religious truth, instead of con
tracting the domain of reason, enlarges it.

CHAPTER XI

THE BASIS OF FAITH

WOULD not have it thought, because of
what I have said as to the weakness of Prot
estantism as a system of religion, that I have
aught to say against Protestants themselves. I
have among them many dear friends and kins
men whose feelings I would not willingly wound.
I have a very sincere admiration and respect for
those whose faith in the basic truths of Chris
tianity remains firm in spite of the difficulties
under which Protestants must hold them, and I
have cited the fact that they do so hold them as
a proof of the reality of those truths. But there
are many whose faith is not equal to such a
strain, and their number is increasing daily. For
them I write — for those who are weary with
questioning and ready to despair of an answer,
for those who are heartsick and sore with long
ing for the certainty that never comes.

America is still a Christian country. Our peo
ple have inherited from their fathers a reverence
for God and respect for his religion, but to the
greater number of them religion means " The
101

IO2 The Living Witness

Bible and the Bible only." It comes to them as
a problem too difficult for any mind to work out
unaided, and from which the ordinary mind is
prone to shrink. If the quest be hopeless, why
begin the search ? And thus indifference is born.
The evil in the world is a real and tangible
thing. It is not to be overcome by intangible
abstractions. The Christian religion is more
than a mere sentiment. It imposes duties and
demands sacrifices. It restrains our natural in
clinations, and curbs our strongest passions. To
do this requires faith — a faith as definite as the
duties it imposes, a faith as strong as the pas
sions it must conquer.

The greater number of persons reared outside
the Catholic Church have no conception of that
church as resting upon any different foundation
than do the Protestant sects. To them it is only
another interpretation of the Bible. To the
logical mind which reasons the matter out to a
final conclusion, there is no resting place between
the Catholic religion and unbelief. To such a
mind, unable to accept Christianity upon the
illogical grounds offered by Protestantism, and
uninformed of any other, the only alternative is
Agnosticism. The number who are driven to
that alternative is increasing with fearful rapid
ity. The fatal heresy, " The Bible and the Bible
only," is destroying Christianity among the de
scendants of the original Protestants. Agnosti-

The Basis of Faith 103

cism is the peril of the age, the enemy that
threatens our civilization.

To combat this peril, so far as my feeble pow-
.ers may permit, I have endeavored to show that
the errors and contradictions of Protestantism
are not a part of Christianity. That Chris
tianity stands upon a firmer and safer founda
tion, and that certainty of religious truth is not
unattainable. I have endeavored to show : ( I )
That the truths proposed to our acceptance by
Christianity are consistent with that natural re
ligion which we call conscience, and not incon
sistent with any truths which we are able to
learn from the visible world around us. (2)
That the miraculous events which prove the di
vine origin of Christianity are attested by evi
dence sufficient to warrant belief in their
occurrence. (3) That the character and teach
ings of Christianity are inconsistent with its
origin in falsehood and imposture, and (4) that
the commission of the church as the custodian
and teacher of the truths of Christianity is au
thenticated by the same facts which attest the
divine origin of Christianity, and by the facts of
her history and character. Whether this evi
dence is sufficient depends upon the reader him
self. Here we touch the mystery of Man's
Free Will. A mystery so profound that it is
with hesitation and many misgivings I approach
its consideration — a mystery which to human

IO4 The Living Witness

reason is the most difficult of all those which
religion proposes to our acceptance, and yet in
another view becomes perfectly simple. This
is the difficulty : How can man, the creature of
God, resist his will? God wills that we shall
obey his laws ; how can our disobedience be rec
onciled with his omnipotent power? The an
swer is this: In asking the question, we are
really putting a limit upon his power, instead of
admitting it in all its fullness. He has chosen
to give us the liberty of free action. If this ap
pears to us to involve a contradiction, it is
because our finite intelligence is unable to
comprehend the infinitude of his power. It is
another instance of the inability of the finite to
measure the infinite. There can be no doubt of
the existence of this free will. It is as certain
that I am free to obey or disobey as that I am
living. No sophistry can obscure the fact that I
am a free moral agent, and responsible for my
actions.

It is also true that whether we believe or deny
depends upon our own will. Prejudice — pre
conceived opinion — unwillingness to accept the
conclusion, will withstand any evidence short of
mathematical demonstration. The basis of faith
is the will to believe. The will to believe, co
operating with the grace of God, produces faith.
God will not force you to believe, but if you

The Basis of Faith 105

ask for it, humbly and sincerely, he will give you
the grace of faith.

Reason and argument have carried thousands
to the point where, as from a mountain top, they
looked down upon the City of Truth in all its
beauty, but they entered not in. They saw its
perfect proportions, the grandeur of its archi
tecture, its shining spires, its solid walls, but
tressed by the everlasting promises of God,
against whose unyielding base the waves of er
ror have dashed in vain through all the ages that
have passed, and will dash in vain through all
the ages yet to come until time shall be no more
— those walls within whose shelter is to be
found that " peace which passeth understand
ing." They saw all this, but without the magic
password, " I will," they could not pass the
golden gates, and they turned away to wander
again in the dreary desert of doubt, beyond which
lies the fathomless abyss of despair.

Dear Reader, if you have traveled to that
point, the city's gates are open wide. The
church of God, the church of the apostles, the
church of your ancestors, calls you to enter.
She claims you as one of the flock committed to
her charge, one of the sheep she was commanded
to feed. She has long mourned your absence.
With the loving voice of a faithful shepherd she
calls you back to that fold from which your

io6 The Living Witness

fathers went out four hundred years ago. He
who died for you on the cross calls you:
" Come unto me, all ye that are weary and heavy
laden, and I will give you rest." But no power
on earth or in Heaven will force you to enter.
The free choice is yours; yours the awful re
sponsibility.

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