The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1910-08-13

work that has been done recently. es- pecially in the direction of popuiarlZlng science, as we'll as of correlatlng olS- | coveries and compiling statistics. par tlcularily in the sphere of comparative religion. has been done by those in dependent thinkers. But they have 1n- jured their own usefulness by assum- ing an authority which. by their own
 profession, they repudiate: and by d1s- playing an almost amazing ignorance
 of the significance of certain enormous
 facts and even of the existence of the
 facts themselves. Let us enumerate few
 It is usually assured by the mem bers ofthis school that the Catholic
 Church is the discredited church of the opinion that Catholics consist of a few Irish in America and a small percent
 age of debased Latins in Europe. They seem to be entirely unaware that a
 movement is going forward among
 some of the shredwest and most in
 countries, which if precedent means
 anything. implies as absolutely sound
 the prediction of MT. H. G. Wells that
 we are on the verge of one of the greatest Catholic revivals the world has ever seen
 When men in France like Brune- tiere, Coppee, Huysmans. Rette. and Paul Bourget, come forward from
 agnostfcism Or iHfidelity: when Pasteur. perhaps the most widely known scient- ist of his day, declares that his re- searches have left him with the faith of the Breton peasant, and that further | researches, he doubts not. would leave him with the faith of the Breton peas ants wife; when, in Great Britain. an Irish Protestant professor of biology. a professor of Greek at Glasgow, and
 perhaps the greatest judge on the hnr,o ,oI, Srn fl4 s@I,& 4f ,oof1 Tri V and of their reputation. deliberately | make their submission to Rome when. within the last few months. the Luth- eran professor of history at Halle fol- | lows their example; when two of those ! who are called the three cleverest nen | in London, not only defend Catho- licism. but defend it with the ardor of preaching friars; when. in spite of | three centuries of Professionalism. en- | forced until recently by the law of the | land, the Catholic party in the English l parliamen once more has the balance | of power, as also it holds it in Ger many; when, as is notorious. the 1 'man-in-th street publicly declares that if he had any religion at all. it would be the Catholic religion: when a Papal Legate elic1ts in the streets | of Protestant London a devotion and i an hostility that are alike the envy of | all modern leaders of religious thought and sails up the Rhine into | Cologne to the thunder of guns and | the pealing of bells; when this kind of | thing is happening everywhere: when | the only successful missions in the East are the Catholic missions. the
 only teachers who can meet the Orient al ascetics. the Catholic ascetics.-sure- l 1y it is very strange moment at which to assume that the religion of the future is to be some kind of ethical Pantheism!
 Of course all these phenomena are not for one moment advanced in sup port of the truth of the Catholic claim
 Cbeyond the fact that they do exhibit | a power of recuperation in the Catholic Church which no other religious so- ciety has ever displayed in the history of the world,) but they are at least
 very grave indictment of the ex-
 traodinary and fantastic visionariness of the academic mind which professes to deal with facts rather than a prior in assumptions. Certainly armchair thinking is one essential in the persuit of knowledge. but at least facts must be taken to the armchair. Certainly there is in Individualism the truth that each man has mind of his own. but
 unless that mind is exercised on ob-
 jective phenomena as well as on it's
 own inner consciousness. it will end in
 hopeless limitation. senility. and
 dreams. As MT. Chesterton points out
 the man who believes in himself most
 consistently. to the exclusion of cold
 facts. must be sought in a lunatic asylum