CHAP. IV.]THE FAILURE OF THE EXPERIMENT. 219

however, that this Natural Church did its best to fill the void caused by the disappearance of the Christian religion. It even went so far as to provide substitutes for the Sacraments of Catholicism. At the rite which took the place of baptism, the father himself officiated, and, in lieu of the questions prescribed in the Roman Ritual, asked the godfather, "Do you promise before God and men to teach N. or M. from the dawn of his reason to adore God, to cherish (chérir) his fellows, and to make himself useful to his country?" And the godfather, holding the child towards heaven, replied, "I promise." Then followed the inevitable "discourse," and a hymn of which the concluding lines

were:

or,

"Puisse un jour cet enfant honorer sa patrie,
Et s'applaudir d'avoir vécu."

So much must suffice as to the Natural Church during the time that it existed among men as a fact, in the words of the author of Ecce Homo, as "an attempt to treat the subject of religion in a practical manner." But, backed as it was by the influence of a despotic government, and felix opportunitate as it must be deemed to have been in the period of its establishment, very few were added to it. Whereupon, as the author of Ecce Homo relates, not without a touch of gentle irony, La Reveillère confided to Talleyrand1 his dis1 The author of Natural Religion says, Talleyrand; I do not

appointment at his ill-success.

"His propaganda

made no way,' he said, 'What was he to do?' he asked. The ex-bishop politely condoled with him, feared indeed it was a difficult task to found a new religion-more difficult than could be imagined, so difficult that he hardly knew what to advise! 'Still' -he went on, after a moment's reflection-'there is one plan which you might at least try: I should recommend you to be crucified, and to rise again the third day'" (p. 181). Is the author of Ecce Homo laughing in his sleeve at us? Surely his keen perception must have suggested to him, as he wrote this passage "mutato nomine, de me." It may be confidently predicted that, unless he is prepared to carry out Talleyrand's suggestion, the Natural Religion which he exhibits "to meet the wants of a sceptical age" will prove even a more melancholy failure than it proved when originally introduced a century ago by La Reveillère-Lepeaux.

Are we then thrown back on Pessimism-"the besetting difficulty of Natural Religion" (p. 101), know on what authority. Grégoire writes :-" Au Directoire même on le raillait sur son zèle théophilantropique. Un de ses collègues, dit-on, lui proposait de se faire pendre et de ressusciter le troisième jour, comme l'infaillible moyen de faire triompher sa secte, et Carnot lui décoche dans son Mémoire des épigrammes sanglantes à ce sujet."-Histoire des Sectes Religieuses, vol. i. p. 406. Talleyrand was never a member of the Directory.

CHAP. IV.] ARE WE REDUCED TO PESSIMISM?

221

as the author of Ecce Homo confesses? Shall we put aside the Gospel, through which Jesus Christ has cast light upon life and immortality, for the Buddha's doctrine of the supreme evil of separate existence? Or if that is discredited by modern thought, as holding of the supernatural, shall we say that, after all, Schopenhauer's atheistic Nihilism is the key to the enigma of life? And is the prospect before the world that "universal darkness" which is to supervene, when, in the noble verse of the great moral poet of the last century-the noblest he ever wrote

Religion, blushing, veils her sacred fires,

And unawares morality expires;

Nor public flame, nor private, dares to shine,

Nor human spark is left, nor glimpse divine.

I venture to think otherwise. And even at the risk of wearying by a twice-told tale, for I shall have to go over well-worn ground, I shall proceed to state the reasons why I think so, in the way in which they present themselves to my own mind. I shall be genuine, if not original, although indeed I might here shelter myself under a dictum -profoundly true it is-of Mr. Ruskin : "That virtue of originality that men so strive after is not newness, as they vainly think, (there is nothing new), it is only genuineness."

. In discussing with me, not long ago, the subject upon which I am now engaged, Cardinal Newman

suggested the pregnant inquiry, "Which is the greater assumption? that we can do without religion, or that we can find a substitute for Christianity?" I have hitherto been surveying the substitute for Christianity which the author of Ecce Homo has been at the pains of providing and exhibiting to the world. I shall now briefly consider the question whether the need for such a substitute does in truth exist. Natural Religion, as I have already more than once noted, assumes that it does. It takes "the scientific view frankly at its worst as throwing discredit upon the belief "that a Personal Will is the cause of the Universe, that that Will is perfectly benevolent, that that Will has sometimes interfered by miracles with the order of the Universe," which three propositions are considered by its author to sum up the theological view of the universe. "If," he writes, "these propositions exhaust [that view] and science throws discredit upon all of them, evidently theology and science are irreconcilable, and the contest between them must end in the destruction of one or the other" (p. 13). I remark in passing, first, that no theologian-certainly no Catholic theologian-would accept these three propositions as exhausting the theological view of the universe; and secondly, that if we were obliged to admit that physical science throws discredit upon that view, it would by

1 Preface to the second edition.

CHAP. IV.] IS CHRISTIANITY DISCREDITED?

223

no means necessarily follow that physical science and theology are irreconcilable. Ampler acquaint ance with the facts might remove the discredit.

Why then, the scheme your better knowledge broke
Presently readjusts itself, the small

Proportioned largelier, parts and whole named new:
So much, no more, two thousand years have done.

But is it true, as a matter of fact, that physical science throws discredit upon these three propositions? Let us examine this question a little. I must of necessity be brief for I am writing, not a treatise, but a chapter. And I must use the plainest language, for I am writing not for the school but for the general reader. Brevity and plainness of speech do not, however, necessarily imply superficiality, which, in truth, is not unfrequently veiled by a prolix parade of pompous technicalities.

First, then, as to causation. The shepherd in the play, when asked by Touchstone, "Hast any philosophy in thee ?" replies, "No more but that I know that the property of rain is to wet, and fire to burn: that good pasture makes fat sheep: and that a great cause of the night is lack of the sun," and upon the strength of this knowledge is pronounced by the clown to be "a natural philosopher." Well, is not in truth the "science" of the mere physicist, however accomplished, in pari materia with that of honest Corin ? He observes certain sequences of facts, certain antecedents and consequents, but of the nexus between them he