MEMOIRS. 



little reject off-hand in a dogmatic interest what 

 the honest induction of experts in any subject 

 seems to gather as he would ignore the guidance 

 of the Church's Creed in criticizing such new 

 material. Nor was he the least blind to the fact 

 that such inquiry must, in a manner, go behind or 

 take to pieces the very things on which authority 

 rests ; that faith will have to listen patiently to 

 reason's investigation of faith's own nature, or that 

 there is a challenge of religion by reason by which 

 in God's providence religion is cleared and con- 

 firmed. " Reason interprets religion to itself," and 

 a great contribution to the interpretation "comes 

 from the side of a scientific discovery " of the how 

 and manner of revelation, of the genesis of dogma 

 (see for example "Lux Mundi," p. 71). And 

 what underlay all this was, of course, his funda- 

 mental reverence for human reason. " Rationalism " 

 was indeed to him " intensely unscientific " as 

 " assuming " that " human belief is the measure of 

 all truth." But he would allow no limit to the 

 area over which reason was to work. "Every 

 question is a lawful one which human reason, 

 enlightened by the grace of God, can understand." 

 The work of reason in making clear, and ever 

 clearer, the bearings of the faith, and in breaking 

 up what have been mistakenly assumed to be such 

 bearings, was as plain to him as the work of 

 the Faith in illuminating and controlling reason. 



