HAECKEL AND THE MONISTIC CREED 39 



fear of science," Pope Pius X so emphatically 

 said; "Christianity does not tremble before dis- 

 cussion, but before ignorance." 



Faith itself rests upon a basis of the most 

 exacting scientific knowledge and research. There 

 is no difference between the test that the Catholic 

 Church presupposes before her tenets can be ac- 

 cepted by the seeker for truth who comes to her 

 from without the Fold, and that which the most 

 rigid scientist can demand where there is question 

 of ascertaining the facts and laws of nature. The 

 Church indeed sets her light for the feet of science 

 that by following her example it may never stum- 

 ble in the dark. She does not rest satisfied with a 

 iconviction based upon even the strongest proba- 

 bility, but requires absolute certainty on the part 

 of the prospective convert. Only when every 

 slightest and most halting doubt regarding her 

 own Divine foundation and her teaching authority 

 has been finally removed from the mind can faith 

 be said to begin, a faith, therefore, whose motives 

 of credulity are as truly scientific as the belief of a 

 Faraday or a Marconi in the most perfectly ascer- 

 tained laws of nature, or in the truth that two and 

 two are four. These facts the scientist questions 

 no longer, as the Catholic no longer questions the 

 Divine authority of the Church. 



On this point we may once more be permitted to 

 quote from another volume by Cardinal Mercier, 



