of Christian marriage; (2) the Christian people formed by Christian education; and (3) the Christian State elevated by the higher law of Christian morals. 6. That the highest civilization, therefore, has a twofold foundation, material and moral, and a twofold progress, likewise both material and moral. 7. That the material foundation and progress which consists in the action and development of the reason and skill of men in arts, science, industry, wealth, and natural prosperity, as it existed before the moral foundation of a higher life and law was laid, so it may for a time survive the loss of that higher life. Great economical and material prosperity may be found, at least for a time, when the moral life of a people is declining, or even low. Material progress will continue after the moral progress has been checked, at least long enough to afford a plausible argument in favour of a non-Catholic as against a Catholic people, a pro vince or a canton. Such is, in fact, the fallacy of M. de Laveleye and his followers; and such is the argument which for a century has perplexed and deceived many minds. The Baron de Haulleville has done good service, therefore, in treating of the future of Catholic nations. As Lord Bacon says, "Time destroys the fictions of men, but confirms the judgments of truth." Given time enough, and we see that the greatest material prosperity, unless supported by a higher principle, cannot endure; it carries in itself the principle of its own dissolution. Germany and France are direct examples of this truth. Medieval Germany was a creation of Christianity. Modern Germany, since Luther, is already divided against itself. The northern half, which Comte placed as the lowest in the scale of European civilization, is precisely that half which has forfeited its Christianity. The southern half still lives on by the principle of its own creation. The material progress of France is greater than that of any country except our own. It is checked and endangered only in the measure of the decline of its moral progress; and its moral progress is checked only in the measure in which the infidel revolution of the last eighty years has checked it. The master fallacy of the arch-impostor is the assertion that Christianity-that is, the Catholic faith and the Catholic Church-are the obstacles to civilization and progress. Christianity, as the chaos and corruption of the Greek and Roman world demonstrate, and as modern Europe shows, is the productive and the sustaining principle of all civilization, and of all progress in the higher culture of men and of nations. All things are preserved by the permanent action of the principle from which they spring. Christendom, or modern Europe, with all its civilization of national and international law, and with all the purities and sanctities of its domestic and private life, is the offspring of the Christian faith and of the Christian Church. European civilization will survive while it is Christian. If it ever cease to be Christian it will die out-not all at once, but stealthily, steadily, surely, under a fair countenance of seeming health. Its material progress will for a generation or two deceive many, till its moral progress has been turned backward, and its material progress has issued in the return of the Iron Age of universal armaments, mutual destruction, and the supremacy of might and matter over the moral laws of God and the higher civilization and onward progress of mankind. Donoso Cortes was mocked as a dreamer in his day, when he said, "Christian Europe is moribund. It is dying because it is poisoned. It cannot live by matter alone, and it is poisoned by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of its philosophers." We are eyewitnesses of this dissolution. Materialists and doctrinaires, sceptics and Positivists, and the schoolmen of profit and loss, tare and tret, with their ignoble and unjoyous science, have dwarfed statesmen into politicians. These are the pontiffs and the prophets who are labouring to eliminate Christianity from civilization, and to make the nations conspire against the Catholic Church, the mother of their civilization, as the enemy of their welfare and the obstacle of their progress. It is a sign of happy augury when we see laymen like Mr. Bellingham and the Baron de Haulleville devoting their intelligence and their industry to the refutation of this great deceit. HENRY EDWARD, CARD.-ARCHBISHOP OF WESTMINSTER. April 12, 1878. |