If it is sufficient to reject the principle of authority in order to be a Christian, or in other words, if one is only a real Christian when outside the fold of the Church, one Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic, it is necessary that we should ask for details, in order that we may become enlightened by a comparison of religious beliefs.

It is evident to all sensible minds, that the future cannot consist in a mere denial of the Catholic Church.

A public act of faith is necessary, and something definite and positive must be laid down.

We must ascertain whether M. de Laveleye's interpretation of the Bible brings him to profess the doctrine of the Incarnation, of the Word made flesh, of the Holy Trinity, the Resurrection of our Lord,— and in short whether it brings him to believe in the supernatural?

We must ascertain whether the followers of this new school consider prayer necessary, whether they are persuaded of the existence of the Devil, and so on ad infinitum.

The position they assume enables us to assert that upon all these great matters there is no certainty, and that if certainty did exist, they would not dare to admit

it, for such an avowal would alienate many of their admirers and supporters.

In matters of religion, however, mere negation is insufficient; religion is not an abstraction, but a positive assertion-active, efficacious, and surrounded by an exterior form of worship.

Absolute certainty is necessary for assertion.

There is no doubt that subjective reason is able to attain to the philosophical conception of God, but there is need of revelation to define the living personal God of the Christian, and the entire region of the supernatural.

Instead of defending the Catholic Church against attacks which are in reality as old as the Church herself, it will not be difficult to take the offensive, and treat of the thesis laid down à priori.

Does Protestantism, in its thousand-and-one varied manifestations, from the established Churches of England and Sweden, down to the Socinianism and platonic Christianity of the modern continental liberals, in truth represent the doctrine of Jesus Christ?

If indeed each individual may freely interpret the sacred Scriptures for himself, there may logically exist as many different religions upon the earth as there are

individuals-that is to say, a day may come when there will be no longer any religion at all.

The various Protestant communities carry within. them elements that must eventually bring about the destruction of all Christian doctrine.

It was for this reason that statesmen like Quinet, philosophers like Vacherot, and poets like Eugène Sue, stated that the attempt to destroy Catholicism without putting anything in its place, did not and could not attain the end in view; and it was for this reason that they wished for the perversion of the Catholic masses to some form of Protestantism, so that they might become the accomplices of subjective rationalism in its warfare against the Universal Church.

M. de Laveleye in his pamphlet neither informed his readers what creed he eulogized, nor did he prove theologically that Protestantism in its general form, as the negation of the Universal Church, is the supreme and infallible expression of the Christian revelation.

He ingeniously conceals the barrenness of his positivist doctrines behind a convenient negation.

Scientific men do not ordinarily act in this manner, even when they have become the disciples of Buckle.

If we rightly understand the analysis that has been

made of the works of this writer, they are based upon the deductive method, and though we willingly admit it in the daily exercise of positive politics, we cannot accept such a principle in the logical foundation of philosophy.

M. de Laveleye applies it to the development of the subject of which we are treating, and puts forward an argument of refutation of invincible force: he lays down, with a certain boastfulness of tone, what he styles the benefits of Protestantism, and declares that they have produced a civilization in comparison with which the social influence of the Universal Church appears completely inferior. This style of argument, since it proves too much, in reality proves nothing. Athens in the time of Pericles, Carthage under the rule of Hannibal, Rome in the time of Virgil, and Spain under the Arabian caliphs have severally presented a spectacle of "civilization" which from the human point of view far excels in splendour the ponderous rule of Frederick I., twelfth elector of Brandenbourg and first king of Prussia, the violent régime of Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden, or the rough presidency of President Jackson in the United States of America.

According to this reasoning the paganism of the

Greeks, Romans, and Phoenicians, and the Mahometanism of the Arab races, would be infinitely superior to modern Protestantism. Herr von Hartmann1 (the present fashionable light at Berlin) declares that "the inevitable result of the philosophical system of the unbewussten must be a return to paganism," and well may it be asked why such should not be the case? Where in the present day can be found such names as Eschylus, Euripides, Sophocles, Plato, Pindar, Aristophanes, Demosthenes, Phidias, and Praxiteles, such powerful orators, such sublime poets, such profound philosophers, and such gifted artists?

Where such magnificent conceptions as the Parthenon, Venus of Milo, or the Laocoon?

Has either the electorate of Brandenbourg, the town of Berne, the kingdom of Sweden, the territory of Washington, or the court of George I. of Hanover, ever presented a similar assemblage of poetry, of grace, of intellect, of beauty, or of natural reason?

Theophilus Gautier preferred Aspasia to all the Protestant matrons, and out of a hundred persons who will approve of M. de Laveleye's treatise, there

1 "Die Philosophie des Unbewussten" (the school which is gaining the upper hand in Germany), by Herr Hartmann.