Ireland being about four and a-half millions!! In one of these Colleges, that of Belfast, which is situated in the province of Ulster, where there are over a million of Catholics, there were only fourteen Catholic students!! You see, then, that as far as Catholics are concerned, the curse of barrenness has been upon those Mixed Colleges. O'Connell's words have been verified in their regard. They have "not been received by the people of Ireland."

The Sovereign Pontiff, while condemning those Godless Colleges, counselled our Bishops to establish in Ireland a Catholic University like that of Louvain. The Prelates

assembled in National Synod at Thurles in August, 1850, determined to give effect to this advice of the Apostolic See, and appealed to our generous people for the pecuniary means to carry out the great work. The first collection was made in Ireland on St. Patrick's Day, 17th March, 1851. The Bishops also asked the help of the Prelates of England, America, Australia, France, &c. Since that time over £170,000 = 4,250,000 Italian lire, have been contributed, chiefly by Irish Catholics at home and abroad, for the foundation and maintenance of their Catholic University.

In May, 1854, the Bishops assembled in Synodal meeting canonically erected the University; and in August of the same year the Supreme Pontiff graciously approved that erection, and granted to the Rector the power of conferring the usual academical Degrees. The first Rector, Very Rev. Dr. Newman, was installed on Whit-Sunday, and Professors were appointed, and the schools opened in the autumn of the same year, 1854. Since that time the Catholics of Ireland have shown the greatest enthusiasm and perseverence in seeking to obtain from the Government the legal recognition of the University and of Catholic Education, but hitherto without success. On several occasions promises have been given, and even attempts have been made by successive administrations, to grant our demands. But these promises have not been fulfilled, or these attempts have proved nugatory, either through the violence of our opponents, or because it was sought to introduce conditions subversive to the principles of Catholic Education.

The last of these attempts has been the Bill introduced into Parliament by the Prime Minister, Mr. Gladstone, in February last, and rejected by the House of Commons on the 12th of March ult. I enclose a copy of the petition of our Bishops against the Bill. Its chief provisions may, I think, be reduced to three heads, all most objectionable to Catholics. One was: to create a Council, which was to have the supreme control of University Education, and which was to have been

almost entirely nominated by Government. The effect of this provision would have been to hand over to the State, which in our case is the English and Protestant Government, the control of the education of the Catholics of Ireland. The second was to create here in Dublin, alongside and in addition to the Protestant University, which was to be left for Protestants, and for such as they might wish to admit, a mixed University or College, with an endowment of about £40,000 =1,000,000 Italian lire a-year. The intention was-to fill it with the ablest professors, selected solely on account of their learning, and without any regard for their Religious opinions; and it was hoped that Catholic students would avail themselves of the teaching of that most learned body, at least in supplement of the short-comings of the Catholic University, which, it was believed, would result from its poverty. For the third head, to which the provisions of the Bill may be reduced, was: to leave to the Protestant College, and to the old and new Mixed Colleges, an enormous annual revenue, while no help whatsoever was to be given for Catholic Education. Thus, while the property taken from our forefathers in former times, and large annual sums out of the taxes, to which all contribute equally, were left for the maintenance and consolidation of Protestant and Godless Education, it was expected that Catholics would tax themselves to maintain their Catholic University; and all this in the name of Liberty and Equality!! The petition of our Bishops briefly touches on those points.

Besides the Petition of the Prelates, I enclose a copy of the Resolutions which they adopted on the same occasion, and which explain more fully their views respecting the Bill brought forward by Mr. Gladstone.

I have now brought down the history of Higher Education in Ireland to the present time. The rejection of the Bill leaves us without a likelihood of our grievances being redressed for the present. The educational ascendancy of Protestants is still maintained in Catholic Ireland. A system continues which the Prime Minister himself has declared to be "miserably bad," "scandalously bad." The only remedy offered us is one which would aggravate the evil; for instead of Protestant Education, it would consolidate, extend, and perpetuate the Mixed System, that is, false Liberalism, which is nothing else but Infidelity in Education. The Catholics of Ireland, led on by their Bishops, have refused the proffered boon. We will, with God's help, maintain the battle for Catholic Education which our fathers have fought before us at more desperate odds for the last 300 years. We remember the old glories of Ireland, and we will never relinquish that which alone can make our dear native land what she was of old: the Insula Sanctorum et Doctorum.

494

THE CHURCH AND MODERN THOUGHT.-I.

In the last number of the RECORD, on presenting to the notice

of our readers that singularly able and interesting book, "My Clerical Friends," we entered into an engagement to deal at some length with the fruitful subject of "Modern Thought." Nor are we deterred from the fulfilment of that engagement by the consciousness we have that we shall say very little that is either very new or very striking. But, better than a new thing is a true thing-better what is useful than what is merely striking; and it shall be our aim to say what we believe to be true, and to pursue the lines which we have found to be useful in those speculations about " Modern Thought," on which we, in common with every one who has made the slightest acquaintance with modern literature or modern science, have been compelled to enter. Our remarks shall, in the main, be rather suggestive on the several topics they touch than exhaustive in the treatment of any of them; and it is our ambition not so much to direct as to stimulate speculation on this important matter. The title of these papers "The Church and Modern Thought"-has been selected, because we are ourselves convinced of the fact, which, indeed, the ablest and most consistent of our opponents admit, that it is only from the Catholic Church that the infidel element of "Modern Thought" can meet with any forcible answer, or any effectual opposition. Having said so much by way of preface, we proceed at once to the subject of our paper.

Human thought is the lineal ancestor of human action, and no power, whether human or divine, that claims to exercise any influence upon the actions of men, will ever have its claim recognised in its fulness, if it have not first enthroned itself in all the majesty of acknowledged sovereignty over the silent empire of human thought. Brute force may, for a time, seem to triumph over thought-may proscribe its expression and ignore its existence-but thought will keep working all the time, in silence, preparing the way for revolutions that are not silent, and when compressed beyond the appointed limit, thought, like steam, will burst through all material barriers, and manifest itself in action,

Hence, too, at any given time, the action of an age-the action that gets itself written down in history—is but the harvest of a long past sowing, and, in the silent thoughts of its living actors, may be seen another seed-time of which the sheaves shall all be garnered in coming years. This truth it is,

we may incidentally remark, that gives its unspeakable importance to the work of education, and places in the teacher's hand a sceptre that wields an empire over times to be. If any one wish to read aright the history of his own time, he must stand face to face with "modern thought;" and if he wish to fulfil the duty which has been imposed upon him by the fact that God has caused him to live now, and not in any then the duty of doing his part, that the world he shall leave after him will be, on his account, at any rate no worse than the world of which he made a part-he must make such a survey of "modern thought" as will enable him to take his stand upon the side of whatsoever in it is true and good, and to wage unceasing war upon the false and the evil.

Nor would it ever be true to imagine that "modern thought," however deplorable in its tendency, is all a mass of sophistry and error. The human intellect was made, and made by God, to see truth; and, however it may have abused its function, it has never been able to see as a reality a pure unmixed falsehood. Any error that lives, if only for a day, has in it some grain of truth to which it owes its vitality. There is no one from whom we dissent, however just the grounds of our dissent may be, from whom we may not learn something, and the best service we can do, both to our own good cause and to the real interest of our opponent, is, as far as we are able, to disentangle his truth from his falsehood-show him that the truth makes not for his side but for ours, and that his falsehood is not only an injustice to us, but a very real hindrance to himself even in the attainment of his laudable ambitions.

The first condition of speaking to any good purpose about anything whatever, is to know precisely what that thing is, and whence it came. As in dealing with an individual in the way of argument, we address ourselves not precisely to his abstract reason but to his concrete individuality, adapting our arguments to the known conditions of his existence, suppressing, consequently, some whose cogency he is not qualified to appreciate, and urging others to which his special circumstances give special weight; so, in dealing with "modern thought," and its most eminent exponents, it will be to our advantage, and to that of truth, to ascertain, as accurately as may be, its parentage and character.

And in this matter, as in most others, the first step seems to present the greatest difficulty. To hear what men say, and read what they write, one would imagine that if anything had a definite meaning it is-"modern thought." The phrase is in everybody's mouth. One man condemns it unsparingly;

another as unsparingly applauds. Is a thing to be praised? "It is quite in accordance with modern thought." Is a thing to be condemned?" Has not modern thought already banned it." But when one comes to ask what precisely is this "modern thought" about which so much is said and written, then it is no such simple matter to get or give a simple

answer.

The truth is, like all generalities, it leads to the vague; and another thing that is true of it is, that to Catholic ears it is a phrase of evil omen. So much injustice has been perpetrated under the sanction of "modern thought"-so many a fraud has sought its protection-so many a pill, bitter to the natural palate of the unsophisticated human conscience, has been gilt by this glittering phrase, that Catholics have some reason to shrink from it as if it were the necessary prelude to inevitable evil. Nevertheless, we are of those who think that the phrase itself-"modern thought"-need not be vague to any one who cares to ascertain its precise meaning; and of those, too, who think that far too much would be given up to our opponents if we recognised in their speculations exclusively a complete expression of "modern thought."

If there be now, as in most ages there has been, a “modern thought" that has wandered from the path of truth, there is also a "modern thought" that has never left that path; and both may be found, stripped of all vagueness, in the syllabus issued by our Holy Father Pius the Ninth, the propositions of which, in their direct meaning, photograph with unerring accuracy "modern thought" in its evil sense; while their contradictories, proposed by infallible authority, give an equally faithful picture of that "modern thought " that is "ever ancient and ever new," that has been preserved in the past and shall be preserved in the future by the only authority capable of such a function-the authority of the Holy Catholic Church.

Taking "modern thought" in its worst sense, as opposed to the teaching of the Church, it will be to our purpose to examine its origin and its tendency, and to determine, as accurately as may be, some of the principles which, in the main, form its distinctive character. For the sake of clearness, it will be well to lay down at the very outset our own theory of the matter. Accordingly we do so here. The origin of this "modern thought" is to be found in Protestantism as a system -and its tendency is a tendency which, indeed, is no longer a mere tendency, but a full development into pure naturalism. Some of its leading assumptions are-and they are assumptions which, beyond all others, should be branded as "unscientific "-that there is no such thing as "the supernatural "-