the aching longing for spiritual help, beyond the worship of Persia's creed The Lord of Light Is it a woman's weakness that would wish him Another, tenderer name, the Lord of Love? she shadows forth the truth as it was to be revealed in the fulness of time; she says: If earth can find, Indeed, no answer to her children's cry, Wandering from yon bright host a star will lead In age still faithful to their childhood's longing, The Saviour soul of self-subsistent Truth, Some great world-conquering, world-delivering might, No such beautiful expression has been given, within our knowledge, to the longing for deliverance, to the Expectation of the Nations, and we recognize in it the strain which harmonizes and completes Mr. de Vere's work. Can that work, for all its perfection as a poem, its power as a drama, be appreciated so highly as it deserves, by non-Catholics, however high their cultivation, or refined their taste? We think not-because none but Catholics can supply the inward contrast which brings the extraordinary beauties of this poem into perfect estimation; the contrast of that calm, unmoved security of belief which we who "know in whom we believe," and why we believe in Him, through His unerring Revelation-offer to the tumult of theory, doubt, assertion, negation, division, and general confusion that reigns among men outside the Church to-day. The tumult assumes different forms indeed, but no less wildly and bewilderingly do the nations rage, and the heathen imagine vain things, than when Alexander of Macedon died in Pagan doubt and darkness, while the Children of the Kingdom were singing the songs of Zion in the courtyard of his palace. ART. VI. THE INFIDELITY OF THE DAY.-THE NEW SCHEME OF CATHOLIC HIGHER EDUCATION. Synodal Letter of the Archbishops and Bishops of the Province of Westminster assembled August 11th, 1874. HE publication of this Synodal Letter may be considered higher studies; and University College, which is its first fruits, will have opened at Kensington, before this number of our REVIEW is in our reader's hands.* On former occasions we have repeatedly urged the necessity of imparting a specially Catholic higher education to Catholic youths; and also the impossibility of doing this with any effectiveness, except in some college especially devoted to the purpose. In our present article we will take wider ground. We will set forth to the best of our power the necessity of some such Institution as the present, if England is to be saved from a national profession of irreligion and godlessness.† Our argument will be as follows. (1) Atheism is advancing in Great Britain § with far more * For ecclesiastical reasons, the Institution is not yet rightly called a University; but the College is called "University College," as implying that it is intended to be the rudimental nucleus of a University. + Our readers may possibly observe great similarity of thought between our present article, and two which appeared respectively in the "Tablet" of September 5th and September 19th. This does not arise from plagiarism, but from the simple fact that our present contributor was writer of those two articles. The thinkers to whom we are here referring commonly disclaim the name of "atheist"; because they do not say dogmatically that there is no God, but only that man has no reasonable ground of conjecture whether there be a Personal God or no. In an article like this however, it will be more intelligible and even more correct to call them "atheists." We do so firstly, because that which is not personal is not God; and because, as regards any practical effect on the heart and conduct, there is no difference between the thesis that "there is no God," and the thesis that "men have no reasonable ground of conjecture whether or no there be a God." But, secondly, it is clear that those men do dogmatically deny the existence of a Being, at once Infinitely Good and Infinitely Powerful. So Mr. Stuart Mill ("Autobiography," p. 39) implies that "dogmatic atheism" is "absurd"; while in the very next page he calls it an "open contradiction" to allege, that the world proceeds from "an Author combining infinite power with perfect goodness and righteousness." § We say in Great Britain," because we believe that Ireland is as yet almost entirely exempt from the plague. rapid strides, than Catholics in general are at all aware of. (2) It cannot be successfully resisted, except on the principles of Catholic theology and philosophy. (3) Non-Catholic Theists can give comparatively little help in the atheistic conflict, and the whole religious future of England_therefore depends on efforts put forth by Catholics. (4) But these efforts will be comparatively powerless, if there be not some organization, combining Catholic energies in their movement to the desired end; unless there be some centre and nucleus of operations. (5) The new Institution is inevitably marked out by its very character, as ultimately supplying that organization which is so imperatively necessary; and in vigorously responding therefore to the appeal now placed before them by the Bishops, Catholics support the only practicable means for effectively stemming that tide of unbelief, which increases daily both in extent and power. We will treat successively these five theses; but we will dwell on the first two in particular, at much greater length than is necessary for our argument. We shall do this, partly because such expansion, though not strictly necessary to our argument, will give it nevertheless much greater point and edge. But our chief motive for dwelling on these theses is, because we think it may be serviceable for more reasons than one to place before Catholics some general view, both of the assault which is being made on religion, and of the principles which seem to us most available for its repulsion. 1. First then as to the rapidity with which atheism is advancing. We cannot better introduce what we would say on this head, than by quoting from a very valuable article, which appeared in the "Month" of September. "The advance of infidelity," says our contemporary (pp. 73, 74), among a large part of the generation now entering, or having entered, upon the full enjoyment and use of life, has reached the line, at which even morality becomes a sentiment rather than a law; conscience a phenomenon, rather than the voice of God sitting in judgment; freewill and responsibility an imagination; the Universe a physical system, self-evolved and selfregulated; the soul of man a mechanism; the future of man a blank; sin, original and actual, a fiction; the Atonement an impossible superstition." Such opinions are even now (as we have said) far more prevalent than Catholics generally suppose, and have a fearfully wide-spread acceptance among British non-Catholics. Nor can we console ourselves with the fancy, that the plague is confined to those more highly educated. Even were this true, it would be a matter of small comfort, because such a plague necessarily in due course proceeds down wards. But in the present case this calamity has already occurred. Hear again the “Month." The advance of infidelity, and of its inseparable shadow immorality, among the lower classes in our towns, the extreme activity with which the poison is spread in books, in cheap newspapers, by lectures, and the like, and the measures by which this activity should be met on the side of all who are for religion and for God, should be subjects of earnest thought and meditation, for all who have duties which bring them frequently across the evils which have just been enumerated. It is probably within the experience of any one whose calling enables and obliges him to know the state of the minds of the lower orders even among Catholics, that questions about the Faith and the elementary truths of religion are far more rife and more troublesome than was the case twenty years ago. No one whose occupations lie among considerable numbers of men can pass many days or even many hours without hearing religious subjects discussed, and the discussion will too often take a blasphemous tone. The mechanic, the young man in the house of business, the clerk in the office, however good and sound their faith and practice may be, will often hear statements which they cannot contradict, though they feel them to be false; arguments which they cannot answer, though they know them to be fallacious. It is often the case that such persons have to spend the greater part of their time in company in which irreligious talk is usual or perpetual. (pp. 70, 71.) Lord Lyttleton, in the "Contemporary " of September, asks why we should account the infidelity of the nineteenth more perilous than that of the eighteenth century. Several answers may be given to this question. One is, that various branches of science, within comparatively a very few years, have acquired an indefinitely more menacing aspect as against religious truth. But the reply on which we should ourselves lay far the most stress is, that (speaking generally) infidels of the last century were deists, those of the present atheists. It is a common saying among Catholics, that there is no resting-place between Catholicity and atheism; and so much at least must be meant by this saying, that far more substantial objections are adducible against true religion by the atheist than by the deist. Such certainly is our own conviction. In our last number we expressed our opinion (p. 171), that often some indubitable truth is encountered by objections of real force, nay, of very great force; objections which cannot be at all satisfactorily solved, even though the verity against which they are adduced is established by reason with absolute certainty. But we do not think that such objections can be raised, either by Protestants against Catholicity, or by deists against Christianity. The elder Mr. Mill, we are told by his son ("Autobiography," p. 39), considered the argument of Butler's "Analogy" "as conclusive against the only opponents for whom it is intended." "Those who admit" continues the autobiographer "an omnipotent as well as perfectly just and benevolent maker and ruler of such a world as this, can say little against Christianity, but what can with at least equal force be retorted against themselves." To our mind indeed, the one objection against religion, which by itself exceeds in force all other objections put together, is the difficulty of supposing, that a world, containing evil such in degree, in kind, in distribution, as is found on earth, can have proceeded from a Being at once Infinitely Powerful and Infinitely Good. The atheistical party go so far as to call this a direct and absolute contradiction. And this their allegation is one which is founded, not on subtle sophisms or dark speculations, but on patent facts, which press themselves on the notice of every man at every turn. Take even the least educated portion of mankind: so soon as their traditional belief in religion is undermined, the allegation we have mentioned often impresses them with the character of a self-evident truth; nor can any fair person doubt that, when an ordinary Catholic meets with it put down in black and white, it may naturally present to him a most formidable appearance. But in truth the putting it on paper by no means does justice to its practical force, as he encounters it in active life. It comes upon him with indefinitely more power and staggering effect, when enlarged on and illustrated in detail by living companions, with the persuasiveness of the human voice; by companions also, who have every appearance of speaking from profound conviction, and who exhibit in their demeanour no obvious appearance of moral depravity. If indeed it were the case that more highly educated men unanimously assured him that such reasoning is fallacious, the temptation no doubt would be indefinitely lessened. Again if the more highly educated class held Theism themselves with firm conviction, doubtless they could do much towards reestablishing among the masses the shattered traditions of the past. But so far is this from being the case, that on the contrary those known to be most advanced in scientific research, are those who express most loudly the very same lesson. We have been speaking of what seems to us at once the strongest and the most generally persuasive, among antireligious objections. But there are other arguments also, directed more immediately against revealed religion-against the doctrine of miracles e. g., of Scriptural inspiration, and still more against that of eternal punishment-which have |