448 LESSONS FEOM NATURE. [CHAP. XIV. 



There are yet other words written by him * which may 

 not inaptly be also here quoted : 



&quot; If a man elect to become a judge of these grave questions ; still 

 more, if he assume the responsibility of attaching praise or blame to 

 his fellow-men for the conclusions at which they arrive touching them, 

 he will commit a sin more grievous than most breaches of the Deca 

 logue, unless he avoid a lazy reliance upon the information that is 

 gathered by prejudice and filtered through passion, unless he go back 

 to the prime sources of knowledge the facts of Nature, and the 

 thoughts of those wise men who for generations past have been her 

 best interpreters.&quot; 



Leaving, however, the heat and turmoil of mere personal 

 A retrospect disputes and literary controversies of our own dav, 



and conclu- ,.... 



sion. let us, m imagination, turn into the cool and 



peaceful shade of the old Cathedral of San Stefano at Pavia 

 where repose the ashes of the once fervid African, the 

 large-souled Bishop of Hippo. As we stand in contempla 

 tion before that venerable shrine, it seems to speak to us 

 with silent but persuasive eloquence of the Church s unity, 

 and of that continuity by which it responds in time to the 

 eternal unchangeableness of its Author. Venerated now, as 

 in early and long past ages, it is nevertheless with the pro 

 fuse carving of the later or mediaeval period that that 

 shrine is decorated ; just as the great thoughts of the soul, 

 the remnants of whose earthly tabernacle it shelters, were 

 accepted, revered, and set forth in fresh colours to the medi 

 aeval world by his great follower St. Thomas. 



In the presence of those justly-revered relics, can any 

 thoughtful mind fail to be struck with awe as he ponders on 

 the pregnant fact that by the agency of such minds as those 

 of St. Augustin and St. Thomas the Church should have 

 unconsciously provided for the reception of modern theories 

 by the emission of fruitful principles and far-reaching defi 

 nitions, centuries before such theories were promulgated, 

 and when views directly contradicting them were held uni 

 versally, and even by some of those very men themselves 



Fortnightly Review for November 1874, p. 580. 



