MARTIN EAU AND MATERIALISM. 131 



exercise, is virtually the undeveloped brain of the child. And thus 

 it is that as children in scientific knowledge, but as potent wielders 

 of spiritual power among the ignorant, they countenance and enforce 

 practices sufficient to bring the blush of shame to the cheeks of the 

 more intelligent among themselves. 



Such is the force of early education, when maintained and per- 

 petuated by the habits of subsequent life ; such the ground of peril 

 in allowing the schools of a nation to fall into ultramontane hands. 

 Let any able Catholic student, fairly educated, and not yet cramped 

 by sacerdotalism, get a real scientific grasp of the magnitude and 

 organization of this universe. Let him sit under the immeasurable 

 heavens, watch the stars in their courses, scan the mysterious nebulae, 

 and try to realize what it all is and means. Let him bring the 

 thoughts and conceptions which thus enter his mind face to face with 

 the notions of the genesis and rule of things which pervade the wi'it- 

 ings of the princes of his Church, and he will see and feel what driv- 

 elers even men of strenuous intellect may become, through exclu- 

 sively dwelling and dealing with theological chimeras. 



But, quitting the more grotesque forms of the theological, I 

 already see, or think I see, emerging from recent discussions, that 

 wonderful plasticity of the theistic idea, which enables it to maintain, 

 through many changes, its hold upon superior minds ; and which, if 

 it is to last, will eventually enable it to shape itself in accordance 

 with scientific conditions. I notice this, for instance, in the philo- 

 sophic sermon of Dr. Quarry, and more markedly still in that of Dr. 

 Ryder. " There pervades," says the Rector of Donnybrook, " these 

 atoms and that illimitable universe, that ' choir of heaven and furni- 

 ture of earth,' which of such atoms is built up, a certain /orce, known 

 in its most familiar form by the name of ' life,' which may he regarded 

 as the ultimate essence of inatter^ And, speaking of the awful search 

 of the intellect for the infinite Creator, and of the grave difficulties 

 which encompass the subject, the same writer says : "We know from 

 our senses finite existences only. Now we cannot logically infer the ex- 

 istence of an infinite God from the greatest conceivable number of finite 

 existences. There must always obviously be more in the conclusion 

 than in the premises." Such language is new to the pulpit, but it 

 will become less and less rare. It is not the poets and philosophers 

 among our theologians and in our day the philosopher who wanders 

 beyond the strict boundary of Science is more or less merged in the 

 poet it is not these, who feel the life of religion, but the mechanics, 

 who cling to its scaffolding, that are most anxious to tie the world 

 down to the untenable conceptions of an uncultivated past. 



Before me is another printed sermon of a different character from 

 those just referred to. It is entitled " The Necessary Limits of Chris- 

 tian Evidences." Its author. Dr. Reichel, has been frequently referred 

 to as an authority, particularly on personal subjects, during recent 



