i 5 4 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Nor can Protestantism rightly taunt Catholicism for excluding 

 knowledge of astronomical truths from European Catholic uni- 

 versities in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, while real 

 knowledge of geological and biological and anthropological truth 

 is denied or pitifully diluted in so many American Protestant 

 colleges and universities in the nineteenth century. 



Nor has Protestantism the right to point with scorn to the 

 Catholic " Index/' and call attention to the fact that nearly every 

 really important book in the last three centuries has been for- 

 bidden by it, so long as young men in so many American Protest- 

 ant universities and colleges, and university extension schemes, 

 and " approved courses of reading/' are filled with " ecclesiastical 

 pap " rather than with real thought, and directed to the works of 

 " solemnly constituted impostors," while they are studiously kept 

 away from such leaders in modern thought as Darwin, Spencer, 

 Huxley, Draper, and Lecky. 



It may indeed be justly claimed by Protestantism that some of 

 the former strongholds of her bigotry have become liberalized ; 

 but, on the other hand, Catholicism can point to the fact that 

 Pope Leo XIII, now happily reigning, has made a noble change 

 as regards open dealing with documents. The days of Monsignor 

 Marini, it may be hoped, are gone. The Vatican Library, with its 

 masses of historical material, has been thrown open to Protestant 

 and Catholic scholars alike, and this privilege has been freely 

 used by men representing all shades of religious thought. 



As to the older errors, the whole civilized world was at fault 

 Protestant as well as Catholic. It was not the fault of religion ; 

 it was the fault of that short-sighted linking of theological dogmas 

 to scriptural texts which, in utter defiance of the words and works 

 of the Blessed Founder of Christianity, narrow-minded, loud- 

 voiced men are ever prone to substitute for religion. Justly is it 

 said by one of the most eminent among contemporary Anglican 

 divines that " it is because they have mistaken the dawn for a 

 conflagration that theologians have so often been foes of light." * 



* For an exceedingly striking statement, by a Roman Catholic historian of genius, as to 

 the pojndar demand for persecution and the pressure of the lower strata in ecclesiastical or- 

 ganizations for cruel measures, see Balmes's Le Protestantisme compare au Catholicisme, 

 etc., fourth edition, Paris, 1855, vol. ii. Archbishop Spaulding has something of the same 

 sort in his Miscellanies. L'Epinois, Galilee, pp. 22 et seq., stretches this as far as possible 

 to save the reputation of the Church in the Galileo matter. As to the various branches of 

 the Protestant Church in England and the United States, it is a matter of notoriety that 

 the smug, well-to-do laymen, whether elders, deacons, or vestrymen, are, as a rule, far 

 more prone to heresy-hunting than are their better-educated pastors. As to the cases of 

 Messrs. Winchell, Woodrow, Toy, and the professors at Beyrout, with details, see the 

 chapter in this series on The Fall of Man and Anthropology. Among Protestant histori- 

 ans who have been recently allowed full and free examination of the treasures in the 

 Vatican Library, and even those involving questions between Catholicism and Protestant- 



