study the works of God, his first step must necessarily be that he league himself with the devil.

Yet another weapon was found effective. The Arabs had made noble discoveries in science. Hence Bacon was called a "Mahommedan," imprisoned for fourteen years, and released at the age of eighty, to die uttering the heartrending words: “Would that I had not given myself so much trouble for the love of science."

Anatomy and Medicine.-To recount the treatment these sciences received at the hands of the Church, Roman Catholic, and Protestant alike, would only weary the reader with constant repetitions. We will allude to two cases only, as of late occurrence. The blessed discovery by Jenner of Vaccination. In 1798 an anti-vaccine society was formed by clergymen and physicians, calling on the people of England to suppress vaccination as "bidding defiance to heaven itself -even to the will of God," and declaring that "the law of God prohibits the practice."

Coming down to the very latest times, we find in 1847 James Young Simpson advocating the use of anesthetics in obstetrical cases. Chloroform was at once denounced from the pulpit as impious as "avoiding one part of the primeval curse on woman.

"My opponents forget," said Simpson, "the twentyfirst verse of the second chapter of Genesis. That is the record of the first surgical operation ever performed, and that text proves that the Maker of the universe, before he took the rib from Adam's side, caused a deep sleep to fall on Adam!" This was an unexpected and crushing blow.

Geology. The struggles of this science are still fresh in the memory of many of us. Fossils were at first declared to be lusus naturæ; then real animals thrown up and left by the Deluge; then, at last, admitted to be what they are. The six days of Genesis have at last yielded to a wider interpretation, but not without the advocates of science bearing torrents of abuse, misapplied Scripture, and all the old rusty armoury of the middle ages, which has been again and again directed at Buckland, Sedgwick, Lyell, and

others.

Evolution. There yet remains a last and still lingering warfare between science and the Church; the battlefield is the doctrine of development or evolution. Darwin, Huxley and the present writer (a priest of the Church of England withal) have been each called Atheists: but we do not

suffer much! The old weapons of authoritative reprimand, of ecclesiastical threats, of temporal punishment or eternal damnation no longer carry weight. The arm of the law protects us in part, supreme indifference covers the rest.

There is a society in London whose first object is "to investigate fully and impartially the most important questions of philosophy and science. . . . with the view of reconciling any apparent discrepancies between Christianity and science. Yet, when a paper was read in favour of evolution, it was asked by members :-" Why do we hear any one speak in favour of Darwinism here? Are we not a society to oppose and not to support such views?" More than twenty papers more or less connected with, and opposed to Darwinism were brought before that society. Much, very much opposition has been expressed by members of the Church of England, as well as by the laity, but Darwinism still exists, and evolution is rampant.

Abuse is let us hope-diminishing; the universal acceptance of evolution by all young naturalists as well as old is beginning to tell; and some clerical opponents have been led to confess that there may be something in it; but what is most astonishing is that men who have had no training whatever in science feel perfectly competent to "demolish both Darwinism and evolution in a few octavo pages. It is rarely that they attempt to do so with astronomy; though the late Mr. J. Reddie (see De Morgan's Paradoxes) completely overthrew Newton's Principia (at least to his own satisfaction). His conviction of the fallacy of evolution was profound. Another writer undertook to prove that a belief in Darwinism and in revelation is incompatible and irreconcilable; while Bishop Perry declares the "object" that Huxley and Darwin have in view is "to produce in their readers a disbelief of the Bible."

What further opposition may be in store for science it were premature to assert; but if we may argue from the past we may safely say, as far as scientific knowledge is based upon objective facts, and theories are held with a light hand-necessary stepping stones as they are to further advances, but ready to be given up on more extensive and correcter knowledge-then science need have no fear of ultimate success and of the ascendancy of Truth, for which she ever and solely labours.

On the other hand, theologians should remember that the actual Scriptures themselves, and their interpretation of them,

are not necessarily identical; but are perhaps very far from being so; that abuse is not argument; that the only way for them to understand scientific questions and then to argue against them, if they still think it necessary, is to study nature for themselves; not merely to read scientific books, but the Book of Nature as well.

Then, and then only will their arguments be worthy of attention.

Finally, if we believe in a Personal God of truth, and Who has given us a Revelation; then, if we also believe Nature and her Laws to have issued from the same Divine Origin, come what may, they must, by the very nature of the case, be in harmony.

Let us search them both for agreements, not for discrepancies. Starting with that rule as the goal before us, the goal of Harmony and Truth will assuredly be won.

GEORGE HENSLOW.

THE ENDLESSNESS OF FUTURE PUNISHMENT NO PART OF THE CATHOLIC FAITH.* (Continued from April number.) IV.

AS THE growth of popular opinion on the question of the future punishment of the "lost" is largely due to inaccurate statements (I use a mild word), literary and theological as well as historical, I will now call attention to one or two such inaccuracies" which appear in the essay to which this paper refers. (a) At p. 96, the essayist refers to a quotation made by Mr. Jukes (Restitution, p. 182) from S. Jerome, and he says, "S. Jerome is stating, without endorsing, an opinion very generally maintained before the time of Peter Lombard that the sensible sufferings of the lost may after a time be diminished or relieved." S. Jerome, however, tells a very different story for himself. In the opening words of the very sentence here referred to, S. Jerome expressly tells us what that "opinion" is, which he is "stating without endorsing :" it is, he says, the opinion of those "who hold that punishments will at some time or other

* We think this title is ill-chosen. If the Catholic Faith means the Faith of Catholics, then the title is, as a matter of fact, not correct.-EDITOR.

cease, and torments have an end, even though it be after long ages"-" qui volunt supplicia aliquando finiri, et licet post multa tempora tamen terminum habere tormenta!" Something considerably more than "sensible sufferings" being "diminished or relieved."

Is it possible that the essayist omitted to read the beginning of the sentence from which he quotes the end? It is certainly not possible that any intelligent person could read what S. Jerome says, and then imagine for a moment that he means what the essayist says he meant.

(8) At p. 94, the essayist is again unfortunate in his attempt to set Mr. Jukes right. "Mr. Jukes," says the essayist, "evidently misunderstands, and, in the case of Irenæus, also mistranslates the passage on which he relies. Perseverantia does not mean "continuance for ever," which would be perseveratione, but perseverance in good, of which, Irenæus says, the wicked render themselves for ever incapable, i.e. they can never be restored." Now on this unfortunate piece of criticism I would remark (i) that as Irenæus wrote his treatise (Contra Hæres.) in Greek, he of course did not use "perseverantia" or "perseveratio❞ to mean "continuance for ever," or any thing else; and why his translator should be condemned to use a dog-latin word like "perseveratio," when he had a good classical word at hand, it would be hard to say. (ii) If any one will take the trouble to read the whole chapter from which Mr. Jukes quotes, he will find, to say the least, some reason to doubt whether it is Mr. Jukes, or his critic, who "misunderstands" and "mistranslates" the word in dispute. The words " "perseverantia" and its cognate "perseverare" occur twelve times in the course of this chapter. "Perseverantia" might possibly bear the meaning "perseverance in good," which the essayist assigns to it, in the single instance of the clause which he quotes; but to translate it so all through the chapter would be to spoil entirely the argument of Irenæus, and to make simple nonsense of the whole chapter. (iii) The Benedictine editors of Irenæus have curiously displayed in their notes on this chapter a sample of the inconsistency and assumption to which the defenders of endless punishment are so frequently driven. In a note on "perseverantia," the first time it occurs in sec. iii. of this chapter, they warn their readers that "perseverantia" does not mean (what the essayist says it does mean) "perseverance in good," but that it means "continued existence," "permanentia et perennitate"-this indeed

is sufficiently obvious to any intelligent reader-but then, when they come to the statement that evil men will be deprived of "perseverantia in sæcula sæculi," they turn round and say (in effect), "This cannot mean that the wicked will cease to exist, because they are certainly going to be punished for ever and ever; so it must mean perseverance in good!" "Non quod destruendam et in nihilum redijendam ejus animam velit Irenæus, qui toties asserit sempiternas fore reproborum pænas: sed quod impii suis delictis æterna felicitate et beata sanctorum perseverantia (quæ sola vera perseverantia est) se privent, et mortem sibi æternum adsciscant."

(7) The two next inaccuracies to which I shall call attention I note mainly because they are inaccuracies, and because they exemplify a mode of literary procedure much to be deprecated, viz., that of representing some author as saying precisely the reverse of that which he does say. At p. 39, the essayist, who is engaged in accumulating testimonies in favour of the Roman Catholic doctrine of Purgatory, writes: "Thus, for instance, Swedenborg, whose theological system was mainly shaped by his repulsion from the Lutheran theory of justification, and is, to quote a modern writer, 'unquestionably that of a profound thinker'-though it comprises errors more fundamental than those he combated -is most explicit in his teaching on Purgatory." No doubt he is "most explicit," and this is what he says: "The spiritual world consists of heaven and hell. Between heaven and hell is a great interstice. This interstice

. is called the world of spirits; for it is full of spirits, being the first common receptacle of every man after death, where each is prepared for his final abode either in heaven or in hell, and where he lives in consort with spirits, as he had before done with men in this world not that there is any such place as purgatory there, which is a mere fiction invented by the Romish Church!"*

Dealing with authors, not very well known to most readers, after this fashion, it would be quite possible to produce a startling concensus of testimony in support of any doctrine, however false and absurd, which you might please to invent. Whether the essayist's view of Purgatory or Swedenborg's is most near the truth is of course entirely another question. (8) Again at p. 116, where the essayist is more than commonly reckless in his assertions, he writes, "The epithet

* True Christian Religion, cap. viii., sec. iii., par. 475.