the Catholic Church. In fact, it is almost self-evident that this must be the case; since no other supplies in any adequate manner an organized tribunal as the judge of controversy, the divinely appointed arbiter of doctrinal disputes. However carefully worded and systematically drawn up written documents may be, the experience of wills and deeds of contract shows abundantly that it is impossible to avoid some uncertainty and dispute in regard to their contents. How much more so then, when the doctrinal teaching is contained in fragmentary and transparently incomplete records, such as the Christian Scriptures. The same argument might be applied to Hinduism or Mahommedanism, but it is needless; for however much of good Brahmists, and we also, may find in some of the features of those religions, they well know that if any revelation is true, it is Christianity. Again, the religious instincts of man draw him on to crave for religious unity; we perceive this want in every outline of Brahmism, in every attempt at organizing a Church that has been made in India. But such unity is only possible in one system-a system of a perpetually abiding authority, divinely commissioned to decide the ceaseless controversies which will inevitably be perpetually springing up. The only system which furnishes such an authority, is that which is built on the rock of Peter.

Thus, step by step, we arrive at the goal of our argument: viz., that an earnest, humble, and prayerful Theist ought to be led on to view the claim of the Catholic Church as reasonable and antecedently probable, nay, even ought to be imbued with a hopeful anxiety to find it true, in order that he may have a field for the exercise of those virtues which he has learned to regard as the supreme duty of an intelligent creature towards his Creator. A moral and earnest inquirer ought to be led on to be prepossessed in her favour, certainly to examine the evidences she adduces without the least shade of hostile bias or antipathy.

We must not, however, conclude without anticipating an objection which many may be inclined to urge. It will be objected, that we have only dealt with the outworks of the question at issue; that it may be conceded that the claim of the Church, viewed in the abstract, is reasonable and proper enough; but that inquiry and the examination of evidence are so fatal to that claim that any antecedent probability entirely disappears before the subsequent violent improbability which investigation discloses. No doubt this may be said; but we are confident that a more groundless and untrue objection it is impossible to make: we admit at once that many persons who study controversy conclude against the Church, and condemn her in no measured terms; but we say that this is entirely due to the hostile bias, instead of the favourable or at least impartial spirit in which the question should be approached.

One unquestionable fact is alone sufficient to show this: viz.

that ordinary anti-Catholic controversy is shamelessly mendacious and unfair. There are specious and even weighty objections which can be learnedly and plausibly put forward: but as Dr. Newman has shown in one of his inimitable lectures on the position of Catholics in England, these rarely if ever take root in the public mind, and find but scant favour; while the grossest misrepresentations, again and again exposed, flourish and spread with undiminished vitality.

For instance, the Brahmists, no doubt, have deluded themselves into the belief that they have done full justice to Catholicity; they look upon it as transparently false and corrupt, and never allude to it except in terms of unmeasured condemnation. Yet they have drawn all their notions of it from its bitterest and most unscrupulous enemies; and they know full well that they have never attempted to look at it from its own point of view, to let it speak for itself, or to read Catholic books of controversy or explanation. Most of the allusions to the Catholic Church to be found in their writings display an ignorance and a prejudice which are painfully astounding. If there is one Brahmist who towers above all for ability, for candour, for earnestness, it is Keshub Chunder Sen if he is startlingly ignorant and prejudiced on the subject of Catholicity, what must the others be? And his qualifications for forming an impartial and correct judgment on this all-important subject may be gathered from what he says in his otherwise remarkable lecture on Jesus Christ, Europe, and Asia.

To begin with, it does not look like impartiality or an unprejudiced attitude of mind to speak of "the debasing system of Popery"; to call it a system of superstition, priestcraft, and immorality, which it is awful to contemplate"; to say that "the sale of indulgences was the culminating point of this wicked system of Popery, and drew the mighty Luther on the stage." These are strange opinions in the mouth of one who professes to love God above all things, to realize His awful presence, to preach and practise prayer, humility, and submission of the reason to Divine truth, to condemn the spirit of the world as essentially sceptical and materialistic, and who thereby shows that, if he only knew it, if only the veil were withdrawn from his eyes, if only he were consistent, he has accepted the essential principles which are the legitimate foundation of that very system which he calls so debasing! But we know too well the sources from which these opinions spring; we are therefore content to stigmatize them as transparently prejudiced opinions, and thus to leave them. Not so, however, when we abandon the debatable ground of opinions and come to glaring errors of fact and history.

Since the Reformation almost new life was infused into Christianity, and several circumstances conspired to facilitate its dissemination. Its more ardent followers, inflamed with holy zeal, have gone about in all directions to

preach the religion of the Cross to their benighted brothers and sisters in remote countries. There are now three hundred millions of Christians in the world, or three-tenths of its entire population. Let us come nearer home, and see what has been done in our country. So far back as 1706, a few Danish missionaries came out to India to establish a mission. The scene of their labours was Tranquebar, in South India. In 1786, one Mr. John Thomas came out to Bengal as a surgeon, and, after making some desultory attempts to preach Christianity among the natives, returned home. Christian missionaries have since gradually multiplied, and Christian churches have been founded in all parts of the country. The total number of native converts to Christianity has been estimated at 154,000.*

Now we know that the lecturer did not intend to deny the title of Christians to Catholics, for the figures he gives for the number of Christians in the whole world show that he includes them: yet when he speaks of India he seems never to have heard of the fact that Catholic missions have been at work there constantly from the fifteenth to the nineteenth century; that in spite of the most cruel disadvantages missionaries of the Church have made and even retained about 1,000,000 converts; that they have anticipated, not followed, the triumph of British arms; and even to this very day, in parts of India, endure hardships to which their Protestant brethren, without robbing them of one iota of the praise which is their due, are, it may be safely said, utter strangers. All this he knows not, or-worse-heeds not. He passes over the apostolate of a Xavier, and the ever memorable mission of Madura, in order to rescue from oblivion Tranquebar and Mr. John Thomas!

Again, what can we say to the amazing assertion that missionary enterprise owes its vitality to the Reformation! God, it is true, reformed His Church through the Council of Trent, soon after Luther and his followers rebelled against it. In all quarters saintly men were the fruit of a renewed outpouring of Divine grace. S. Ignatius of Loyola, S. Charles Borromeo, S. Francis of Sales, S. Theresa, S. John of the Cross, S. Philip Neri, appeared almost simultaneously; and Catholic missionaries, with renewed vigour, repaired the losses of the kingdom of God by fresh victories in America, in India, in China, and in Japan; at the same time too in England Elizabeth, by her gallows and her quartering-block, was assiduously reinforcing that noble army of martyrs in Heaven whose blood and intercession are daily winning us back in crowds to the Church our forefathers abandoned, and pleading for that return of England to the Faith, so earnestly longed for in the heart of hearts of the Church militant on earth and triumphant in Heaven. In this sense it

* Jesus Christ, pp. 10 and 11.

may be said no doubt that the Reformation infused new life into Christianity; but in the communions that broke off from unity is it open to denial that its fruit was an almost entire abstention from missionary enterprise for nearly 200 years? Human pride and the self-sufficiency of private judgment quenched the divine flame of love which finds a natural vent in that ardent devotion for the souls of others, which burns in the breast of the true missionary, and chilled the desire for self-sacrifice and self-abnegation which the true Faith inspires; and with the exception of a few isolated efforts of the Moravians, Protestant missions were not. At last, some ninety years ago, under the influence of Divine grace, the tide began visibly to return. The great bulk of the stream of Protestantism still, as heretofore, flows down towards the ocean of infidelity and utter negation; but on the flanks of it a backward eddy has set in towards the truth of God and the Church of God. It began with the evangelical revival of a strong and ardent personal love of God and our Saviour Christ; and this love developed itself into a revived appreciation of true Christian doctrine on the one hand, and true Christian practice on the other. The former has led towards Catholicity step by step, till it has resulted in hundreds of conversions of the flower of the Anglican Church to the Church of Christ during the last thirty years; the latter, combined with other causes, has led to the wonderful missionary activity displayed during the same period. Both are in antagonism to the spirit of the Reformation, as they are diametrically opposite to its immediate and direct fruits. We have only to look at the name of Wilberforce to see that Anglicanism is the legitimate child, as Catholicity is the grandchild, of original Evangelicalism. The bulk of minds are no doubt slow to move, tardy in finding out the true tendency of their principles, often also reluctant in carrying them out to their consistent results, when they do become apparent. Hence we can account for the anti-Catholic prejudices which still linger among the adherents of a school which properly leads to Catholicity. But the history of the leading minds of one generation is that of the rank-and-file of the next: the great leaders of the Catholic movement of our day, almost to a man, were so-called Evangelicals at first; while such eminent minds as have refused to submit to the Church have, with few exceptions, fallen back into latitudinarianism, or worse. So far as it is not due to emigration and conquest or to the spread of education, missionary energy is the practical, as High Anglicanism is the doctrinal effect of the Catholic reaction among Protestants.

With such views of history it is idle to pretend that Brahmists have fairly or adequately examined the claims of the Church, or that their condemnation of her can be regarded as reasonable; nor is the case improved by the manner in which they deal with her

doctrine. This is important, since not only is the general claim of the Church to divinely commisssioned authority, a claim entirely unique of its kind, a direct appeal to the moral sense of all who know of it, but her moral doctrines also co-operate in affording a moral probation; as the Brahmist lecturer truly said, "they find a response in the universal consciousness of humanity." It does not follow that each individual ought to expect to find them absolutely in accord with his own opinions in every particular; for though in a model man, perfectly corresponding with Divine Grace, the intellect can step by step attain to a knowledge of all moral truths; yet, in fact, each individual mind is so deranged in its orbit by prejudices of country, circumstances, or constitution, as well as by imperfect correspondence with Divine Grace, that the most it can ever hope to arrive at, without the guidance of the Church, is a generally correct code of morality; therefore in some particulars its own erroneous opinions will make the corresponding true teaching of the Church appear erroneous. But in broad outline the teaching of the Church is in unison with the moral instincts of every man, and hence can appeal to them for a general support; on this account a fair and candid appreciation of doctrines is a great aid to conviction, and a systematic misrepresentation of them a notable mark of à priori bias and hostility. We look in vain however for such appreciation from the Brahmists. We can take no better instance than the principle of asceticism, which they at first openly condemned as contrary to the teachings of man's moral consciousness. Time however has modified their views; as they have advanced in spiritual experience, so have they come nearer and nearer to this doctrine, till we find one of them thus writing in 1868" The soul is not only to be dead to the world, but alive unto God and truth; it must not only retire from the world, but enter into the kingdom of heaven. . . . In the natural course of man's progress it is invariably the case that as the body dies, the spirit rises regenerated; that in proportion to the mortification of the carnal is the development of the spiritual life; and that the further the soul is from the world the nearer it is to the kingdom of God. In fact, carnal death and spiritual life go together, and are inseparable in the normal development of the soul."* Can the principle at the root of asceticism be more correctly described? The fault, if any, is that the lecturer errs by excess of devotion to the doctrine; he seems to impose asceticism of the most complete kind as a sine quá non to salvation; whereas, the Church, with higher wisdom, knowing that "all men cannot receive the saying, only they to whom it is given,"t holds it out as attainable in its integrity by few only, though

* Regenerating Faith, p. 22.

+ S. Matthew, xix. 11.