The Milan exchange. (Milan, Gibson County, Tenn.) 1874-1978, 1880-07-29
Father. Hyacinthe on .',Positiye Chris
tiaBity."

Father Hyacinthe began in London
on the 10th of June the first of a series
! of four lectures on Positive Christian
ity', He explained I'm French) that
his presence among them that day was
due to the Archbishep's having on
| Easter Sunday heard him preach on
the Resurrection, when he expressed
an earnest wish that he would deliver
in London a short course OF lectures on
the cardinal points of Christianity, as
opposed to -he spirit of negation,
which fndSin our days so many able
and eloquent eXpOnenTs. -r s.sL..
At the epoch, he saidg when Christ
appeared, the Hebrew religion had
been corrupted into Pharisaism on the
one hand and Sadducism On, the. other,
and to this day we found ourselves
face to face With these tive great ex-
tremes& There were still those who,
like the PhariseeS, in accepting reve-
latiOn stifled the spirit clothed in the
letter, while ratiOnalism, in its, striv-
Sings after undue freedom, stripped the
spirit of that letter, which alone gave
sta Ioed babhations and scattered it
10 the Winds, lust as che perfume was
lost when the vase containing it was
broken. Positive Christianity kept
the golden mean and found the truth
midway between these conflicting ten
denotes: full of reverence for the letter,
it held fast by the facts Of the Bible as
facts, and to its teachings as authOrita-
tive doctrines, making of them neitherfa-
bles nOrmyths, butusing them rs chan
nels through which flowed the spirit of
life and light which was the very es-
sence of Christianity.
If we reminded our teachers that
evolution presuppOsed involution, and
asked who stored up the dormant
germs of things, it was useless for them
to tell us of laws of nature, Mhen what
we wanted to know was, Who made
those lawsP Sometimes Science ut bay
answered that all she troubled herself
with was facts, not hypothesis. So lit
tie, it seemed after all, were the two
things one and the same. The Bible
opened, on the other hand. with the
words, God created the iteagens and
the earth They sounded RSes rec
ord made BY a witness of 9tke@ work.
The second verse unfOlded the picture
of the six'days' work Of creation, fol-
lowed BY rest. As Saint Augustine
said, we were not to expect from the
Bible a revelation of science. The
scientific account of Nature was left by
Col to human investigation But it
ought not to be overlooked how the
Bible in its opening verse steered clear
of the two great master alterations of
the human mind atheism and pan
theism. 1t was not the learning OF the
Egy ptians that spoke here. Fire book
established at the outset and in a single
phrase the foundation alike of all true
philosophy and religion. For all was
done by the Almighty's word-that IS,
by Hi reason.
In the second place, we were taught
that no aimless miracle was' wrought.
God did not bring the fishes into the
world as with a magician swand. He
spake, and at His word the waters
teemed with living things. They were
made out of pre-eXisting matter. So Of
all animal and vegetable bfe. 1t was
from this point of view that we might
see in the Book of Genesis the principle
of evolution shOrn of its exaggeratiOns.
Thirdly, we learned that all creation
had man as its Object-a. proposition
which science confirmed. In the words
of Agassiz: "Man is the object (buD
to which all the anima; creation mas
pointed from the first appearance of
the first palPOzoic fishes" Thus the
pretended contradiction between sci
ence and revelation, at which the twen-
tieth century would blush, was the
fruit either of the narrow eXegesis of
superstitiOus Pharisee theology, or of
the audaciOus hypothesis Of ratiOnalism
in the mask of science. A French phi
lOsOpher, Maine de Brian, had said:
= Science has two poles; the Infinite
Personality, which means God, and the
finite personality, or man. This might
well suggest to a rejecting mind mans
divine origin, just as in the Bible crea-
ton rose step by step until it culminat-
ed in MANI. Y. Post.