§. 1-The Rationalistic and the Catholic Spirit compared

together.

To Rationalize is to ask for reasons out of place; to ask improperly how we are to account for certain things, to be unwilling to believe them unless they can be accounted for, i. e. referred to something else as a cause, to some existing system as harmonizing with them or taking them up into itself. Again, since whatever is assigned as the reason for the original fact canvassed, admits in turn of a like question being raised about itself, unless it be ascertainable by the senses, and be the subject of personal experience, Rationalism is bound properly to pursue onward its course of investigation on this principle, and not to stop till it can directly or ultimately refer to self as a witness, whatever is offered to its acceptance. Thus it is characterised by two peculiarities; its love of systematizing, and its basing its system upon personal experience, on the evidence of sense. In both respects it stands opposed to what is commonly understood by the word Faith, or belief in Testimony; for which it deliberately substitutes System (or what is popularly called Reason,) and Sight.

I have said that to act the Rationalist is to be unduly set upon accounting for what is offered for our acceptance; unduly, for to seek reasons for what is told us, is natural and innocent in itself. When we are informed that this or that event has happened, we are not satisfied to take it as an isolated fact; we are inquisitive about it; we are prompted to refer it, if possible, to something we already know, to incorporate it into the connected family of truths or facts which we have already

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received. We like to ascertain its position relatively to other things, to view it in connexion with them, to reduce it to a place in the series of what is called cause and effect. harm in all this, until we insist upon receiving this satisfaction as a necessary condition of believing what is presented for our acceptance, until we set up our existing system of knowledge as a legitimate test of the credibility of testimony, until we claim to be told the mode of reconciling alleged truths to other truths already known, the how they are, and why they are; and then we Rationalize.

When the rich lord in Samaria said, "Though God shall make windows in heaven, shall this thing be?" he rationalized, as professing his inability to discover how Elisha's prophecy was to be fulfilled, and thinking in this way to excuse his unbelief. When Naaman objected to bathe in Jordan, it was on the ground of his not seeing the means by which Jordan was to cure his leprosy above the rivers of Damascus. "How can these things be?" was the objection of Nicodemus to the doctrine of regeneration; and when the doctrine of the Holy Communion was first announced "the Jews strove among themselves," in answer to their Divine Informant, "saying, How can this man give us His flesh to eat?" When St. Thomas doubted of our Lord's resurrection, though his reason for so doing is not given, it plainly lay in the astonishing, unaccountable nature of such an event. A like desire of judging for oneself is discernible in the original fall of man. Eve did not believe the Tempter, any more than God's word, till she perceived that "the fruit was good for food."

So again, when infidels ask, how prayer can really influence the course of God's providence, or how everlasting punishment consists with God's infinite mercy, they rationalize.

The same spirit shows itself in the restlessness of others to decide how the sun was stopped at Joshua's word, how the manna was provided, and the like; forgetting what our Saviour suggests to the Sadducees," the power of God."

Rationalism then in fact is a forgetfulness of God's power, disbelief of the existence of a First Cause sufficient to account for

any events or facts, however marvellous or extraordinary, and a consequent measuring of the credibility of things, not by the power and other attributes of God, but by our own knowledge; a limiting the possible to the actual, and denying the indefinite range of God's operations beyond our means of apprehending them. Mr. Hume openly avows this principle, declaring it to be unphilosophical to suppose that Almighty God can do any thing, but what we see he does. And, though we may not profess it, we too often, it is to be feared, act upon it at the present day. Instead of looking out of ourselves, and trying to catch glimpses of God's workings, from any quarter,throwing ourselves forward upon Him and waiting on Him, we sit at home bringing everything to ourselves, enthroning ourselves as the centre of all things, and refusing to believe any thing that does not force itself upon our minds as true. Our private judgment is made everything to us,—is contemplated, recognized, and referred to as the arbiter of all questions, and as independent of every thing external to us. Nothing is considered to have an existence except so far forth as our minds discern it. The notion of half views and partial knowledge, of guesses, surmises, hopes and fears, of truths faintly apprehended and not understood, of isolated facts in the great scheme of providence, in a word, of Mystery, is discarded. Hence a distinction is drawn between what is called Objective and Subjective Truth, and Religion is said to consist in a reception of the latter. By Objective Truth is meant the Religious System considered as existing in itself, external to this or that particular mind by Subjective, is meant that which each mind receives in particular, and considers to be such. To believe in Objective Truth is to throw ourselves forward upon that which we have but partially mastered or made Subjective; to embrace, maintain, and use general propositions which are greater than our own capacity, as if we were contemplating what is real and independent of human judgment. Such a belief seems to the Rationalist superstitious and unmeaning, and he consequently confines faith to the province of Subjective Truth, or to the reception of doctrine, as, and so far as it is met and apprehended by the

mind, which will be differently in different persons, in the shape of orthodoxy in one, heterodoxy in another; that is, he professes to believe in that which he opines, and he avoids the apparent extravagance of such an avowal by maintaining that the moral trial involved in faith does not lie in the submission of the reason to external truths partially disclosed, but in that candid pursuit of truth which ensures the eventual adoption of that opinion on the subject, which is best for us, most natural according to the constitution of our minds, and so divinely intended. In short he owns that faith, viewed with reference to its objects, is never more than an opinion, and is pleasing to God, not as an active principle apprehending different doctrines, but as a result and fruit, and therefore an evidence of past diligence, independent inquiry, dispassionateness, and the like. Rationalism takes the words of Scripture as signs of Ideas; Faith, of Things or Realities.

For an illustration of Faith, considered as the reaching forth after and embracing what is beyond the mind or Objective, we may refer to St. Paul's description of it in the Ancient Saints; "These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth;" or to St. Peter's; "Of which salvation the Prophets have inquired and searched diligently, who prophesied of the grace that should come unto you, searching what, or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ which was in them, did signify, when it testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ, the glory that should follow; unto whom it was revealed, that not unto themselves, but unto us they did minister the things which are now reported unto you by them that have evangelized you." Here the faith of the ancient Saints is described as employed, not on truths so far as mastered by the mind, but truths beyond it, and even to the end withheld from its clear apprehension.

On the other hand, if we would know to what a temper of mind the Rationalistic Theory of subjective Truth really tends, we may study the following passage from a popular review. It will be found to make use of the wonders of nature, not as "declaring the glory of God, and showing His handywork,"

but in order to exalt and deify the wisdom of man. almost avowed infidelity contained in it, I do not speak.

Of the

"For the civil and political historian the past alone has existence, the present he rarely apprehends, the future never. To the historian of science it is permitted, however, to penetrate the depths of past and future with equal clearness and certainty; facts to come are to him as present, and not unfrequently more assured than facts which are past. Although this clear perception of causes and consequences characterizes the whole domain of physical science, and clothes the natural philosopher with powers denied to the political and moral inquirer, yet foreknowledge is eminently the privilege of the astronomer. Nature has raised the curtain of futurity, and displayed before him the succession of her decrees, so far as they affect the physical universe, for countless ages to come; and the revelations of which she has made him the instrument, are supported and verified by a never-ceasing train of predictions fulfilled. He [the astronomer]" shows us the things which will be hereafter;" not obscurely shadowed out in figures and in parables, as must necessarily be the case with other revelations, but attended with the most minute precision of time, place, and circumstance. He converts the hours as they roll into an ever-present miracle, in attestation of those laws which his Creator through him has unfolded; the sun cannot rise, the moon cannot wane, a star cannot twinkle in the firmament without bearing testimony to the truth of his [the astronomer's] prophetic records. It has pleased the "Lord and Governor" of the world, in his inscrutable wisdom, to baffle our inquiries into the nature and proximate cause of that wonderful faculty of intellect,—that image of his own essence which he has conferred upon us, &c. &c. . . . . . But how nobly is the darkness which envelopes metaphysical inquiries compensated by the flood of light which is shed upon the physical creation! There all is harmony, and order, and majesty, and beauty. From the chaos of social and political phenomena exhibited in human records, phenomena unconnected to our imperfect vision by any discoverable law, a war of passions and prejudices governed by no apparent purpose, tending to no apparent end, and setting all intelligible order at defiance, how soothing and yet how elevating it is to turn to the splendid spectacle which offers itself to the habitual contemplation of the astronomer! How favourable to the development of all the best and highest feelings of the soul are such objects! The only passion they inspire being the love of truth, and the chiefest pleasure of their votaries arising from excursions through the imposing scenery of the universe, scenery on a scale of grandeur and magnificence compared with which whatever we are accustomed to call sublimity on our planet, dwindles into ridiculous insignificancy. Most justly has it been said, that nature has implanted in our bosoms a craving after the discovery of truth, and assuredly that glorious instinct is never more irresistibly awakened than when our notice is directed to what is going on in the heavens, &c.