EDITOR'S TABLE. 



729 



longer bow down to an authority 

 that assumes to prescribe his opin- 

 ions in matters which he is quite 

 capable of judging for himself. He 

 has arrived at the conclusion that 

 even as regards the interpretation 

 of Scripture the Church is just as 

 liable to err as the humble lay- 

 man. He quotes most persistently 

 the case of Galileo, in which the 

 Church, in the most formal and offi- 

 cial manner, declared that Scripture 

 taught what for nearly a century 

 now it has admitted Scripture does 

 not teach. If the highest organs of 

 ecclesiastical authority could make 

 such a blunder in Galileo's day, 

 what blunders may they not commit 

 in our day? But if the Church can 

 err egregiously in what is its own 

 peculiar province — if anji;hing is — 

 how great is likely to be its inapti- 

 tude when it undertakes to deal 

 with scientific questions ! 



" God has taught us," says Mr. 

 Mivart, " through history, that it is 

 not to ecclesiastical congregations 

 but to men of science that he has 

 committed the elucidation of scien- 

 tific questions, whether such ques- 

 tions are or are not treated of by 

 Scripture, the Fathers, the Church's 

 common teaching, or special congre- 

 gations or tribunals of ecclesiastics 

 actually summoned for the pur- 

 pose. This also applies to all sci- 

 ence — to Scripture criticism, to bi- 

 ology, and to all questions concern- 

 ing evolution, the antiquity of man, 

 and the origin of either his body or 

 his soul or of both. For all ecclesias- 

 tics who know nothing of natural 

 science it is an act necessarily as 

 futile as impertinent to express any 

 opinion on such subjects." 



The opposition of the rulers of 

 the Church to the true theory of the 

 solar system in the sixteenth and 

 seventeenth centuries is paralleled, 

 according to Mr. Mivart, by their 

 opposition to the doctrine of evo- 

 lution to-day. He refers to the fact 

 that two Catholic professors who 



had ventured to give a partial sup- 

 port to the doctrine in question — 

 one of them Father Zahm, who con- 

 tributed an article, as many of our 

 readers will remember, to this mag- 

 azine a couple of years ago — had 

 both been compelled to retract and 

 disavow what they had published on 

 the subject. Professor Mivart draws 

 a distinction, however, between the 

 rulers of the Church and the 

 Church. The latter he idealizes — 

 and we by no means dispute his 

 right to do so — as a vast organiza- 

 tion the office of which is to keep 

 alive man's sense of spiritual things, 

 and to bear eternal testimony in 

 favor of those truths of the heart 

 which do not admit, like intellec- 

 tual truths, of logical demonstra- 

 tion. Though cut off by authority 

 from participation in the rites of 

 the Church, he feels himself still 

 one in sympathy with all who in the 

 Church are aspiring to a higher 

 life. We look upon his case as a 

 very instructive one, affording as it 

 does clear evidence of the absolute 

 incompatibility between any au- 

 thoritative system of dogma and the 

 free pursuit of truth. It has taken 

 Professor Mivart a long time to ar- 

 rive at his present standpoint, but 

 it is well that he has got there at 

 last. His example, we believe, will 

 encourage not a few to assert in like 

 manner their right to think freely 

 and to utter what they think. 



A MORE EXCELLEXr WAY. 



When our article of last month, 

 entitled A Commission in Difficul- 

 ties, was written Ave had not seen 

 the paper by Mr. Theodore Dreiser, 

 in Harper's Magazine for February, 

 describing the important educa- 

 tional work which the Western rail- 

 ways are doing with a view to pro- 

 moting the prosperity of the agri- 

 cvdtural regions through which they 

 pass. In our article we observed 

 that " the more interference there 



