xviii EVOLUTION AND DOGMA. 



there is ample field for research and speculation, 

 without any danger on the one side of trenching 

 on faith, or of putting a bar to intellectual progress 

 on the other. The Fathers of the early Church and 

 the Schoolmen of mediaeval times, show us what 

 liberty of thought the Catholic may enjoy in the 

 discussion of all questions outside the domain of 

 revealed truth. 



I am not unaware of the fact that Evolution has 

 had suspicion directed against it, and odium cast 

 upon it, because of its materialistic implications and 

 its long anti-Christian associations. I know it has 

 been banned and tabooed because it has received the 

 cordial imprimatur of the advocates of Agnosticism, 

 and the special commendation of the defenders of 

 Atheism ; that it has long been identified with false 

 systems of philosophy, and made to render yeoman 

 service in countless onslaughts against religion and 

 the Church, against morality and free-will, against 

 God and His providential government of the uni- 

 verse. But this does not prove that Evolution is 

 ill-founded or that it is destitute of all elements of 

 truth. Far from it. It is because Evolution con- 

 tains so large an element of truth, because it ex- 

 plains countless facts and phenomena which are 

 explicable on no other theory, that it has met with 

 such universal favor, and that it has proved such a 

 powerful agency in the dissemination of error and 

 in giving verisimilitude to the most damnable of 

 doctrines. Such being the case, ours is the duty to 

 withdraw the truth from its enforced and unnatural 

 alliance, and to show that there is a sense in which 



