XI. On Progress

When a boy, I remember reading a book which had a great name nearly a century ago, in which one of the chaptors was headed: ' Our hero talks of what he does not understand.' I have no doubt I shall hear that I am talking of what I do not understand; but in my defence I think I may say, I am about to talk of what I do not understand for this reason: I cannot get those who talk about it to tell me what they mean. I 'know what I mean by it, but I am not at all sure that I know what they mean by it; and those who use the same words in different senses are like men that run up and down the two sides of a hedge, and so can never meet. That perhaps will happen to me in talking about Progress. I have tried all I can to find out some definition or description to give me an idea of what is meant by Progress. The perpetual repetition of the word stuns and deafens us day by day. At the feet of newspaper editors and article-writers, the great teachers of the day — philosophers and sophists are gone — at the feet of these we sit, and hear constantly a great deal about Progress, of which, if I could under stand it to be something true and good, I should become one of the preachers; but these apostles of the nineteenth century will not tell us their meaning. They leave us in a state of blank amazement. I have tried to find some authorities to depend upon, and have found two — one the present Prime Minister of England, who, in a speech in Liverpool four years ago, says that Progress is what the police say to the people on the pavement, 'Move on!' My other authority is the leader of her Majesty's Opposition, who, in one of his hooks, introduces his hero talking with a stranger from the other side of the Atlantic, who held very cheap our great commercial towns with their machinery and manufactures, saying that they were nothing at all compared with the States. At parting he presents his card to his companion, on which was written, ' Mr. G. 0. A. Head.' These are the only two authoritative meanings 1 can gather from our two political parties as to what Progress means. It is talked of by most people as if it were a Holy Grail of which people are in quest. Some of them spend their lives in great energy to promote Progress; but unfortunately they appear to me to verify what S. Augustin said about men who make great speed after truth without finding the right way to it. He said: You are making great strides, but are out of the road. And when I see people making for Progress in different directions, we are quite sure they cannot all be right. Some people tell us Progress means Liberalism. It is difficult again to know what that is — and when you do get their definition of it, it seems to be the emancipation of the human will from every kind of law. 1 do not think that is Progress, or that it leads to a good result. Then, again, plebiscites, or universal suffrage, are taken to be one of the tokens of Progress, and the results of plebiscites do not seem to me to be the ultimate good of society — at least they are so frequently given in different directions, and one is so speedily necessary to correct another, and build up what another throws down, that neither does this seem to me Progress, unless Progress means perpetual motion, swaying to and fro. Again, we are told that material improvements, such as gas, railroads, and the abolition of intramural burials the other day, come among the evidences of Progress; trades which are what we call roaring trades; steamboats, races between them, with the steam shut in, and excited passengers stamping upon the paddle-boxes — this is taken by some people as evidence of Progress. One thing, however, I see. In every country of Europe there is what is called a ' party of progress,' but, unfortunately, this party of progress has a trail behind it like certain reptiles, and that trail is revolution. We have not, therefore, as yet arrived at a very clear notion of Progress from the popular teachers of the day; I will therefore venture to give my own humble conception of what Progress is.

I will say, then, that Progress with us simple people means the growth and ripening of anything from its first principles to its perfection. We distinguish between Progress which is growth, and Progress which is decay; because decay is the reverse of growth, and it is a departure from first principles. It is the dissolution of perfection; and therefore we distinguish between growth and decay as between ripeness and rottenness — and growth wre call progress, but decay we call ruin. Now I want to show what may be classified under progress or growth, and what under decay or ruin — that is my subject.

The growth of an oak is a very intelligible thing. The acorn planted in the clay strikes its tap-root, then rises into a stem, and spreads into branches; and in the whole tree completes its symmetry, stature, and perfection — this is an example of progress from a germ in nature. But when that oak has attained its maturity, and has run through its period of time, it begins to decay, which reverses this process. The sap sinks to the root, the leaves begin to fall, the sprays wither, the branches decay and fall from the trunk, the rot in the substance of the tree gradually spreads,' the trunk be comes hollow, and the tree disappears in dust: this is, then, the reverse of progress. The same is true of every fruit we hold in our hands; so Shakespeare tells.us of man:

' And so, from hour to hour, we ripe and ripe; And then, from hour to hour, we rot and rot; And thereby hangs a tale."

Let us apply this to human things, and first to an individual man. The idea of physical progress in man is first of all the growth from childhood to manhood, the complete expansion and development of the whole man in stature, symmetry, strength, and countenance; the whole human being filling up as it were the outline and type which belongs not only to man in general, but to that particular individual — that is what we call Progress. Then there is the moral progress in every man; that is, the progress of his character, which begins in the self-control of the will and in obedience; then in the rectitude of conduct; and then again in prudence and the whole range of duty, and, finally, in excellence — that is, in surpassing others according to the capacity of that which is in him by nature. For men are not all equal, they are variously endowed, and some have capa cities and qualities and energies far heyond others; and each individual has a progress of his own, which means, as I said before, the filling up of that which is not only due to the type of race to which he belongs, but also to his own individual gifts and capacities. In like manner of intellectual progress: there is a passive intellect in us all, which first receives the instruction of teachers, and then becomes an active intellect, whereby we educate and form ourselves; and then that active intellect becomes reflective, and has a power of research and discovery. The whole intellect of the man is thus matured and ripened according to his capacities and circum stances, and that from very small beginnings.

For instance, it is said in the life of S. Gregory VII., the greatest ruler the world ever saw, the loftiest of all legislators, the justest of all judges, and the most intrepid of all Pontiffs, who ruled over the whole Christian world with a sway which for wisdom and fortitude has never been excelled — it is said that in his childhood he was kneeling at the feet of a carpenter who was hewing wood; and the chips, so traditions say, formed themselves into the words from the Book of Psalms, ' He shall reign from sea to sea.' This was taken as an indication of his future, which he fulfilled to the letter. The movement which connected this small beginning with his mighty end was a progress of the whole man, moral and intellectual. Take also the example of Fergusson, the astronomer, who, when a shepherd's hoy, would lie on his back, and with a string of heads over his eye measure the distances or intervals of the stars, and then mark them down with his pencil —this was the beginning of his progress in astronomy. So again take another instance in the familiar anecdote of Nelson, who was perhaps one of the most intrepid and fearless of men. Wnen a b°y '1U Norfolk, he left his father's house, and was lost for the whole day, not coming home till after dark. His father said he won dered fear did not drive him home, upon which the boy asked: ' Who is fear? I do not know him.' I suppose that was the index of his genius, which progressed into the heroic fearless character which is written in history. That is my notion of progress in the individual man — a consistent growth of the same principles from first to last. The next example shall be the progress of a people.

I do not know whether any of you have read Carlyle's Chartism; if so, you will find me a plagiarist, but I shall only take his outline, not his words. He says of the British Empire, there was a time when we were Druids; and I recollect that somebody in the House of Commons attacked Mr. Pitt for speaking in favour of the abolition of slavery, on the ground that it was useless to emancipate the negro, for he was of a lower and baser race than the white man; in proof of which it was said that they sold their children into slavery, sacrificed human beings to idols, covered themselves with paint, and I know not what. Mr. Pitt answered that such was precisely the state of our British ancestors — they painted themselves with woad, sold their children into slavery, and offered human sacrifices under their oaks. There is no doubt there was a time when we were in that unprogressive state. After that came Hengist and Horsa, in their leathern boats, upon the mud of Thanet, and springing from them came the seven kingdoms of the Heptarchy, which are described by Milton as « the flocking and the fighting of crows and kites' — and that was pretty nearly the history of the internecine wars of the seven Saxon kingdoms. After that came an agency which was not of this world S.

Augustin breathed Christianity into the Saxon race. Dioceses, churches, and parishes were formed before the tithings, hundreds, and shires had any existence. Christianity began to shape the community, which, under Alfred, gathered together in one the whole Saxon people; and from Alfred to S. Edward the Confessor England attained a state of high Christian civilisation. It is a history full of luminous beauty. In those days it is said that along the high-roads there were drinking fountains. We of the nineteenth century imagine our drinking fountains to be the last perfection of humane and civilised invention, but our ancestors had them along their roads; and it is said that so strong was the reign of law in that time that a poor mother carrying her child might walk in safety from the Humber to the southern sea. Well, then, Progress had been made since the Druids. After that came the Normans introducing the feudal system of the continental kingdoms, consolidating and strengthening the simpler, more primitive, and, I may say, pastoral government of the Saxon kings. England became one of the mightiest monarchies of Europe. The three kingdoms were at least united together hy the Norman conquest of Ireland and Scotland. This was the first outline of the British Empire. This unity has endured and confirmed itself from that day to this. The civilisation of the Normans was far higher than that of the Saxons. They introduced a refinement and literature and a higher grade of culture. This is to he traced in our language, in which, for the most part, the simple terms describing individual things are Saxon, but the more abstract terms which describe kind and species are from the Norman-French. At least this rule may be so extensively verified in English as to show that a wave of a higher civilisation passed over a lower civilisation and elevated it. After this,. from age to age, came the introduction of manufactures. Then commercial towns began to grow: London, which once was surrounded by a single wall with its one tower, has never ceased to grow till it has reached its three millions of men; Liverpool has exceeded in its magnificence the docks of London, which were thought to be the wonder of the world; Glasgow sprang up suddenly into an enormous manufacturing world, with half a million of human beings; and Manchester, which in the memory of living men was a single parish with its parish church, has half a million likewise. I cannot omit to say, in passing, that only the other day a good old venerable Catholic went to her rest in Manchester, who remem bered the time when she and her family came to

Manchester and found there a humble priest and eight Catholics. The immigration of her family raised the Catholics of Manchester to seventeen. One poor church, one priest, and a flock of seventeen, was the slender beginning which she lived to see expanded to a diocese. It has now a Bishop, twelve or fourteen magnificent churches, many priests, and 100,000 Catholics. Well, this is an example of progress which I can under stand.

In the seventeenth century Great Britain acquired its West Indian colonies, and in the eighteenth century it acquired the East Indies and Canada— it already possessed the plantations of America. It became therefore a colonial empire. The American plantations in the year 1775, by a happy law of progress, began to work out their own independence, and became a vast confederation. The North American Union, the greatest creation of civilised life, perhaps, in the world, sprang from Great Britain. The English tongue has gone with it throughout its whole breadth. The English tongue is more widely spread than any language, and the Anglo-Celtic race covers a wider surface of the earth than any other tongue or people. It may be very well said, then, that those leathern boats, which lay upon the mud of Thanet, brought over with' them a very notable burden. When we look at the colonial empire of Great Britain, with England as its heart and centre, at the United States as its offspring and sister, it is true to say that here has been an example of true progress, and progress so grand, that perhaps in the history of the world it cannot be exceeded.

Well, now let me take another example, that is, the progress of Christianity. I will not dwell upon this, because it is so obvious; I need only give its outline. You remember the prophecy of Daniel, of a stone which became a great mountain and filled the earth; and the parable of our Lord, of the mustard-seed which took root and became a great tree. Christianity has fulfilled those two prophecies. If you consider for a moment what the faith was when it was received only by the Jews who believed, what it became when it was spread to the Greeks of the Synagogue — the Jews who spoke the Greek language, and were dispersed abroad — when from them it passed to the pure heathen of the Roman Empire; how the very word ' pagan' signifies ' the peasantry' who lived out in the country, as distinguished from the cities which first became Christian; how Christianity spread itself over the whole mass, like the prophet Eliseus, who communicated his warmth to the body of the dead child, and so communicated the warmth of life to the populations of the world, that they lived with a new and vital spirit; then how over the whole population the Universal Episcopate began to extend its sway, and to organise it into the distinct divisions and flocks which constitute the dioceses and pastoral cure of the Catholic Church; then how the faith and morality of Christianity began to work in domestic life, and how from the homes and families of men it spread into the public life of cities, and how gradually it took possession of Rome, until the world accepted it, and was penetrated through and through with the light of Christianity; how, after that, the literature and laws, customs, and even the very warfare of the Christian world, was guided and mitigated by the effects of Christianity; how thenceforward the Universal Church spread itself, the line of its Pontiffs continuing unbroken as its supreme rulers, the line of its Councils legislating continuously, from age to age, for the necessities of the world; how, in its office of teacher of faith and judge of morals, the Church has continually governed the Christian nations of the world, and is there still, standing imperishable, immutable, and ever progressive, always extending, always maturing and perfecting the work which it has in hand, — there is the most perfect example of Progress the world has ever seen, or ever will see.

Now let us take an example or two from the progress of science. There was a time when science hardly existed. It began by observation and reflection. A very learned and good man unhappily was lost to us some years ago by a fall from his horse, and a more lamented death among scholars these later days I have hardly known. I mean Whewell, the head of Trinity College, Cambridge. He was a man of a powerful, original, mature, and just and scientific mind. He wrote two books which I daresay many who hear me know. The one on the History of the Inductive Sci ences, that is to say, the pure and applied sciences, in the true scientific sense of the term; not the chatter we hear about social and historical sciences, which can have no existence. That book, in three volumes, I believe, under correction, to be one of the most solid and precious books of these days. He wrote also two VOL. i. x volumes on the Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, being an analysis of the intellectual processes of those sciences. Those two works trace out the progress of science from its beginning along the line of its advance. For example, he traces in astronomy the earliest observations of the Orientals; and then, how, by gradual discovery, the whole science has been developed; how its periods of observation were followed by periods of demonstration, and these again by periods of deduction, so that the science was always growing in conformity to its first principles, as the acorn into the oak-tree. The intellectual germ was always extending itself. There was a time when this earth was believed to be the fixed centre of all things, the sun revolving round it; and the solar system, as we know it, was supposed to be the whole universe. We know now that the sun, which is the centre of our system, together with all its planets, and they, with all their satellites and comets, are going at a speed which takes our breath away to hear, in the direction of the star X* in the constellation of Hercules. This is true and legitimate progress in science. Take another example. "VVhewell tells us of the tradition that the first idea of the octave in music sprang up in the mind of a Greek by hearing the constant ring and alternation of hammers beating on an anvil. From this the idea of number, rhythm, and sound, with the distinction of tones, grew in his mind, and the basis of scientific music was laid. In the history of music we read, that in proportion as instruments have been perfected in compass, in that proportion has music been perfected. The organ on which Handel played had I know not how much less in compass than the organs of the present day. His music therefore was limited. And the sphere and range of music has been perpetually increasing as instruments have been perfected and their sphere enlarged. This again is an example of scientific and true progress. I might take another example in spectrum analysis, or in electricity, with its application to telegraphy, and many other uses, as an instance of true progress.

We will now take an example of progress in political government. The first law of political government in the beginning was club-law; and the way in which people made peace was by beating one another till one party had enough of it. Jurists tell us the first fiction of civil law was government by majority; that is to say, they no longer counted the number of clubs or bruises, but the number of votes; and the vote by majority and minority was taken as sufficient to settle any political controversy, which is at least a more comfortable way of settling a contest. When this mode of government sprang up, immediately there was found something which had the power of tying the hands of tyrants, of limiting the absolutism of despotic government. The very dicta and axioms of law began to change. There was a time when the first principle of law was, ' Quod principi placuit legis habet vigorem;' that is, what the prince wills has the force of law; so that the will of the prince was the law of the subject. Well, the introduction of this new theory of putting votes for clubs had a beneficial effect in England, and the dicta and axioms of our lawyers, going back to Brae-

:llK ON PROGRESS.

ton and Flcta, were recast. Our ancestors said, ' Lex facit regem,' not ' Rex facit legem.' The law makes the king, not the king makes the law. There came in another idea of government, and that was monarchy limited hy law; hoth by the unwritten customs of the people and the written law made legitimately hy the king and his councillors. Well, from this has come gra dually what we call self-government; hut tjie government which is municipal and local depends ultimately upon the government of each individual man over him self; and no people are worthy to obtain, or can obtain, self-government, or if they had obtained could keep it, who do not train and discipline themselves, so that they begin by governing themselves before they govern their neighbours. There has been undoubtedly great progress in those things also. One more example I will give, and with that will end this dreary part of the subject; and that shall be Progress in civilisation.

I cannot deny that we are very much better off than when our ancestors smeared themselves with woad; that our manufactures, cheapening good articles of clothing, are a great blessing to everybody, rich and poor. I also think it is much better to live on good wheaten bread than on acorns; and if we cannot grow enough wheat at home, it is a good thing that we are able to import it. Also I think it is better to live in brick houses than in huts of mud and wicker-work; and it is better we should have machinery which will do 10,000 operations with great fineness and power rather than flint knives and burnt sticks. It seems, therefore, that Progress in civilisation as regards food, clothing, dwellings, and machinery, in the mechanical power of production, transit by railway, and the dynamic powers of machinery — that is, the mechanical powers applied to lift weights, build houses, and transport of goods which no human strength could lift — that all this is a vast progress in the material order. I may say also that the extension of the benefits of all these things, from the rich, or from the classes that might appropriate them to their own enjoyment, to the whole mass of the people, bringing them within the reach of the poor and those standing in greatest need of them — that this is a very just and legitimate idea of Progress. Next I will say that what is called credit in commerce is a notable progress. Trading in kind would be very inconvenient nowadays, if, every time you had to buy a hat, you had to pay for it with a table. Or if every time you had to purchase, it was necessary to put down the cash on the spot, you would have to carry a fortune with you; and if brass money were the chief currency, that would be still more difficult; so that the substitution of a gold and silver currency is a progress in civilisation. But it seems to me that the introduction of the bank note is much better; and bank-notes never could have existed, if there had not been confidence created between man and man, and recognised by public and social law, which gives value and reality to a piece of paper. Now that would appear to be the result of modern civi lisation, because I do not read of it either in Athens or Kome. This example, entirely the creation of a civilised state, I will not put high, but I think it an improvement as it facilitates the transaction of business. Then, international law, that is, the law which runs from nation to nation, an extension of that domestic law which governs a people singly, hy contract and mutual recognition, at last federates together and binds a number of nations in one family; and there arises what is called by lawyers a comity of nations, which means a certain mutually fair and benevolent dealing with one another. Just as charity binds individuals, so nations are bound by justice; and this is a distinction of civilisation which grew and advanced so long as Christian civilisation endured.

I hope that I have given a sufficient number of ex amples of Progress in our own country, in Christianity, in science, in political government, and in civilisation, to have cleared ourselves at least, from the imputation of being opposed to Progress.

Let me sum up what I have said in the first part of my subject in this way: It is a philosophical axiom, a certain truth of the reason, that everything is preserved by the same principles by which it is produced. The oak which springs from the acorn is preserved by the sap and fibre and wood and bark which belong to its kind; you cannot change that nature without destroying its perfection. This is true physically, it is true in science, it is true in moral character, as I will go on to show. Whenever anything grows from its root by the sime principles of development to its perfection, it retains its own identity. The oak is always the oak, and Christian society is always Christian society. Another axiom is, that destruction is the change or perversion of the principles by which anything was produced; if you can change or pervert the principles from which anything springs, you destroy it. For instance, one single foreign element introduced into the blood produces death; one false assumption admitted into science destroys its certainty; one false principle admitted into morals is fatal. As, for example, a portion of the Church separated from the unity of the Church, therefore separated from the principles by which it was first created and preserved, becomes a schism. A state which rejects its own vital laws, which were founded upon reason, justice, and Christianity, becomes an anomaly. A body which has reached maturity, and loses the principle of its. animation, becomes dust. The first of these axioms is what I may call the law of progress, the second is the law of decay. We will now consider the latter.

The last part of my subject is that which is opposed to Progress. Let me take as an example the formation of character. I daresay all of you have seen many a youth beginning life with great promise, with piety, faith, conscientiousness, and so growing to manhood; yet there has been about him something which a keen observer has detected, yet feared even to think of, lest he should do him wrong. Just as some magnificent tree suddenly snaps in the night, its strength of stern overmastered by a high wind, because at the heart there was a secret rottenness, unseen without, yet it was there within, and when the pressure came upon the branches the tree went asunder — so it is with many a character. There is some false principle or passion, something within, which, when it is tried, fails. The piety of boyhood and of youth becomes careless, because there is a germ of sloth, and ends in impiety. Faith has, near its root, some secret germ of doubt, which begins to grow secretly, and at last shows itself in the form of captious objection, and ends in unbelief. Conscientiousness begins to manifest a certain laxity, and ends in acts of dishonour. Here we see what may be called a falling off from the first principles by which the character was formed in the beginning. Apply this, then, to the case of nations.

Take the Republic of Athens, which was cultivated, intellectually, morally, scientifically, and politically, to a very higlj degree, which established a colonial empire, and I may say a dominion over the Greek race. It rose to a very high point of civilisation. It then became a luxurious and licentious democracy, and began at once to decay. Rome in like manner had what its people called the prlsca virtus, that old austerity of virtue, which carried the sway of its Republic over the whole earth. When it began to be luxurious and corrupt, an imperial tyranny was established over it. Thenceforward it went to pieces age after age, with the greatest havoc ever made on earth. Spain was a noble, Christian, and austere people, until by successful commerce, and the mines of the New World, it was inundated with gold. Among the causes of Spain's decline the enormous influx of gold has a chief place. It brought on a relaxation of industry, a carelessness and luxuriousness of life, a disposition to live on acquired wealth, which paralysed the energy of the people. Here, again, we find the principles of the nation's greatness discarded, and its greatness lost. Take the example of the Christian world as distinct from the Church. Always rememher, when we speak of the Christian world, that the Christian world and the Christian Church are two different things. The Christian Church existed before the Christian world, and created it. The Christian world may go to pieces, and it seems at this moment to he on the breakers; but the Church will remain in all its vigour and plenitude of light and power until its Divine Head comes again. The Christian world is everywhere divided; and because divided, it is in perplexity and conflict everywhere. We hear Christian men complaining and contending about ' the religious difficulty.' They cannot act together or educate their children together, because of the religious difficulty. Do you know what the religious difficulty is? It is not the Catechism, it is not the Thirty-nine Articles— it is God, the truth of God, and the will of God. Because some men have determined to interpret the truth of God in their own fashion, and to reject everything else, and because others reject God altogether, therefore they can find no common basis upon which to educate or to legislate, without shutting out God, His truth and will, from the four corners of an Act of Parliament. Here we have an example of the abandonment of those principles upon which the progress of the Christian civilisation of the world was made.

Modern civilisation, then, is civilisation without Christianity. It is perfect when the religious difficulty is eliminated and excluded from the progress of man, intellectual, moral, and political. Take for example France, which has been for eighty years leading the way in modern civilisation. A more refined people, a people more exquisite in the cultivation of the arts and sciences of the natural order, is not to he found; but a people more incoherent in political life, more wanting in the power of permanent combination, more stricken. as it were with the impossibility of adhering together in any one constant form of civil government, can hardly be found in history. That noble people, full of intelligence and of genius, because it has abandoned the first principles which formed the great French monarchy of a thousand years, and has substituted in their place the shallow theories that are called the principles of '89, that majestic people has reduced itself for a time to an instability so great, that within the memory of living men it has had two empires, three republics, three kings dethroned, seventeen- constitutions, and six or seven revolutions. The present state of that noble country is such, that we may justly take it as an example of the dissolution which follows upon the loss of those first principles from which Christian society springs, and by which alone Christian society can be preserved.

Let us now take England. England in the last three hundred years has been departing from those principles by which its progress was originally im pelled, and by which that progress has been preserved. I will only touch upon three points. Three hundred years ago a legal Church was set up, which covered the whole country, and, excepting only the faithful

Catholics who refused it, and a handful of dissenters, contained the whole population of England. At this moment the population of England has outgrown that legal religion hy one-half its number. Next there was a political Constitution of Church and State set up at that day which spread itself over the whole Anglican population. The population has outgrown the Constitution; and, therefore, some twenty or thirty years ago we were perpetually hearing about Chartism, and now in these days we are hearing of trades-unions, political unions, strikes among trades, — the masses of the people uniting together to accomplish, by combination against capital, that which the law of the land ought to do for them. Lastly, the effect of these and other causes is that one-half of the people of England have outgrown Christianity, they have passed beyond the moral restraints of Christianity, they have become materialised. They are not atheists, not infidels.* It is not by the act of their own will; it is the pressure, and I may say the tyranny, of events or the logic of facts, of which we hear so much, that has robbed them of their inheritances of faith and culture. And this because the first principles of Christian civilisation, which created the mature Commonwealth of England, were violated three hundred years ago.

I was going to take next the example of the United States, but I will not venture upon any judgment of its state. In talking of England I am always willing to give hard knocks. Englishmen like it. They give us the privileges of sons and brothers; and we may say what we like about England, if we say it filially — I trust I never do otherwise. But of the New World I do not venture so freely to speak. I trust that in the United States good care will be taken of the faith, I mean of Christianity, of Christian education, of morals, of domestic life, and of strong-minded women — a race now rising among ourselves, and, with all good- will towards them, I hope they will be benignly kept in order. I hope that in the United States there will be great care taken to exclude political ambition and faction. About fifteen years ago I read what I believe to be an authentic statement — that a number of leading politicians and statesmen of America, of highest name and note, met together to consider the condition of the United States. It was before the war, when there were already many causes of anxiety. It was said that there was a universal and growing license of the individual will, and that law and government were powerless to restrain it; that if the will of the multitude became licentious, it would seriously threaten the public welfare and liberty of the country. The conclusion they came to was, that unless there could be found some power which could restrain the individual will, this danger would at last seriously menace the United States. Now I think we are all ready to say what that power is. It is the power which created the Christian society of the world. Whensoever it is weakened or lost, immediately all political society decays. I hope it may be restored and long retained in the American Union. I hope too that the prophecy of Bishop Berkeley may be abundantly fulfilled in America:

' Westward the course of empire takes its way,

The first four acts already past; A fifth shall close the drama with the day: Time's noblest offspring is the last.'

I hope there is a future for America which will verify this prophecy; but I am confident it cannot be, unless those first principles of Christian civilisation which have created and maintained the Progress of the Christian world shall be restored and preserved.

Now I shall be asked what those principles are; and I will enunciate them as quickly as I can. First, they are the laws of God in nature and revelation. They are the laws of God in nature; that is, the reason rightly cultivated, the conscience rightly directed; the four cardinal virtues, prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance; the law, that is, recognition of a rule and. duty of obedience to the law. The idea of law is the foundation of all civil society, and the rule of the consqience and conduct of men. Second, the principles of God's law in Kevelation, the Ten Commandments, a very old code, and very much forgotten; the twelve articles of the Creed, very much disliked by those who talk of the religious difficulty; the unity of the Christian Church, and its authority. Thirdly, the laws of man made by rulers and legislatures when conformable to those of God. And so long as legislatures and govern ments conform themselves and their laws to the law of God, then there is progress. I utterly deny there is progress when they depart from it.

What, then, are the principles that convert progress to decay? The violation of God's laws, their perversion, and their privation or loss. I had put down a numher of examples, but I have looked at my watch, and see I must not go on. Therefore I can only give one single example, which is the most fresh and vivid at this moment.

We have heard a great deal of the Munich Conference; well, now, this revolt is nothing new. Another,. precisely the same, happened at the beginning of this century. In the year 1801, on the 15th August, Pope Pius VII. issued an apostolic letter, whereby, by the supreme authority of the Vicar of Jesus Christ, he extinguished the whole existing episcopate in France, subdivided anew all the dioceses, and thus created a new hierarchy over the whole of the country. At once, a certain number of men, in whom the Gallican spirit was strong, — I have no doubt many were conscientious and good men, but they had admitted one false principle, which, as I said, like one single globule of foreign matter in the blood is fatal, — absolutely refused obedience, separated themselves from the Catholic Church, and set up what was called the Petite Eglisc. This little Church consisted of a considerable number of bishops, priests and laity. The last bishop of the Petite Eglisc submitted himself to the Catholic Church in the year 1829, and died in peace. But this separation is not yet extinct. In the year 18G5, when I was at Poictiers, the Bishop told" me that he had some 5000 of the members of this little Church in his diocese, who had no priests, no sacraments, no churches;

nevertheless, that they baptised their own children, and met, from time to time, to say prayers and the Rosary together. They are dying out. Yet they began with a number of bishops; but they had no succession, and they are now' ceasing to exist.

What is now happening at Munich? The Holy Father, in the Vatican Council, issued last year the Constitution Pastor ^Eternus, whereby the infallibility of the Head of the Church was defined. The Times newspaper says all the Bishops of the Roman Catholic Church have accepted it, 'having been fairly caught and safely landed in the great Vatican net.' Well, this was too much for the professors of Germany. They are an estate in the intellectual realm of Germany, and the consequence has been what you may have read in the newspapers. Some 500 men from all countries have met together. The names of the chief leaders from foreign countries have been mentioned in the papers, except only the English deputies. Who deputed them? Whom did they represent? I wish the names had been published, as we should know more easily how to deal with them..As it is, I can only say that every man who has participated in that Munich Congress is either directly, explicitly, or implicitly excommunicated and incapable of Sacraments. However, this Congress did a great many things. It has resolved to begin a system of parishes and public worship with priests, the greater part of whom have been suspended, and are incapable of officiating in the Catholic Church. It is a curious thing that the Petite Eglise, of which I spoke at first, commenced their schism upon the rejection of the plenitude of the supreme authority of the Head of the Church in matter of jurisdiction and discipline. These Munich separatists are committing schism by rejecting the plenitude of the doctrinal authority of the Head of the Church in matter of faith. That is to say, these two schisms are made precisely on the same ground: the plenitude of the primacy in jurisdiction and doctrinal authority; with what result, time is to show. In the mean while we have the authority of the Times newspaper for saying that the great difficulty with them is, that, though they have some laymen and some priests, they have no bishop.

' Here,' says the Times, ' are 500 professors, priests, and laymen, founding and constituting a Church — old, say they; new, says Rome — and, as it were at the last moment, they find they must have bishops to keep it going. They will beg, borrow, or steal one. Are not bishops to be found somewhere? We, nevertheless, are sure that not even an English ' colonial,' not even a suffragan, not even a Scottish bishop, without clergy, churches, or people, would hire himself out to keep up the breed of Old Catholics at Munich.'

The broad English common sense of the Times has saved it. It goes on to say: ' The last words in the description which our correspondent, who was present, gives of the last public meeting have, we suspect, a prophetic import. The assemblage was vast for Catholic Munich; the city was much stirred up by the strangeness of the event; but when all was over the impression left on the public was " that much more remained to be done." All Englishmen must feel that.

'It is a common thing to find men who retain the shell, as it were, of old conviction; who live by old habit and use the words they did in their youth; but whose inner nature, indeed, whose leading principles, are bursting these bonds. The programme before us we venture to pronounce utterly inconsistent in spirit with the conservative part of its doctrinal propositions.'

Here is good sense. Further on, the Times, with the accuracy of a Catholic theologian, speaking of the Munich Congress, continues: ' It retains the decrees of the Council of Trent, including all former Councils, but re-opens — and, indeed, compels the re-opening of— every controversy which that Council was summoned to close. "A dogma," it says, "to be valid, must be in accordance with Holy Writ and the old traditions of the Church, such as they have been conveyed to us in the writings of the recognised Fathers and the decrees of the Councils." Then, having said this, it proceeds to point out that even were a council really oecumenical, it would be powerless against essential truth and history; nay, that no unanimity could confer validity on its decrees. The congress, some here will think, avows an intention to look still further ahead. It sets out boldly on the road of science and progressive Christian culture; it insists that the clergy shall be theologians, and also admitted freely to the culture of the century. This must all mean something, and most people will understand it better than the dogmatic portion of the programme. Which of the two conflicting portions will survive the other on German soil is a question on

VOL. i. Y which our English readers will not be long in making ' up their minds.'

I must pass over much more that I had meant to say, and sum up in these words: We do not oppose any true material, scientific, social, or political progress. The reiterated and persistent way in which people say we are opposed to progress is cant. They who can believe it to be. so are superstitious — they ought to believe in hobgoblins; and perhaps they do. Well, then, my general conclusion is, that the Church is progressing, and always will progress, in strength, truth, unity of faith, in the self-evidence by which it proves itself to the world. Secondly, that nations are departing from the principles which created their civili sation. Thirdly, that civilisation is becoming every day more and more material. I shall keep you till mid night if I go on. Look for proofs of what I say in any work on political economy; or in the production and use of wealth, its enjoyment, luxury, and the consequences of luxury, visible all around us. Fourthly, that this material civilisation, while more and more material, is becoming less and less moral. Fifthly, that therefore this modern civilisation is for this reason not progressive, because the nations are not growing happier, nor purer in their morals, nor more united in the charities of life. Sixthly, that society is not becoming more solid, more safe, more stable; that, on the contrary, the reverse of all these things is indubitably true and visible before our eyes. Seventhly, that individuals are becoming more anarchical, the intellect more licentious, the wills of man more stubborn; and this self-will expresses it self in their actions, so that it is true to say that the principles upon which the Christian world was founded, and by which it has hitherto been preserved, have been rejected and are being violated on every side. The Christian world therefore is not progressing, but is going back. Finally, civilisation like everything else cannot stand still: non progredl est rcgredi; not to go onward is to go backward; and therefore it is that the Holy Father, when he condemned in the Syllabus the proposition, ' that the Roman Pontiff can and ought to reconcile and adjust himself to Progress, Liberalism, and Modern Civilisation,' condemned a great error, and proclaimed a great truth. There is no hope for either man or society, but to go back to the feet of the only true Legislator, who said, ' Come unto Me: take My yoke upon you; for My yoke is easy and My burden is light.'

XII.