Comment and Discussion. v 



and his Son. Salvation is above nature. It is super- 

 natural. Natural salvation is a contradiction in terms - — 

 a self contradiction ! " 



What a picture do these words portray of the indoctri- 

 nated, dogmatized condition of this man's mind ! Salva- 

 tion a supernatural rescue at the hands of a supernatural 

 being. Otherwise incomprehensible. 



This, indeed, is the conventional, church attitude of 

 mind, the attitude which regards the " soul " of man as a 

 "spirit," detachable from the human body at death, or, 

 indeed, in trance, or catalepsy; a spirit to be saved 

 by Divine favor or grace, divested of the body and 

 unincorporate. 



It is this conception of life which the growth of 

 scientific knowledge invalidates ; and to me it seems only 

 logical that theologian, priest, and sectary should oppose 

 scientific progress generally. Science wastes creeds as the 

 warm spring torrents melt the ice of winter. There is no 

 way of chaining humanity to a creed, except by arresting 

 its mental growth. This latter is what Catholicism in 

 America seeks to accomplish. Its sustained struggle 

 against popular education and the growth of knowledge 

 here is one of the most instructive spectacles which the 

 times present. There is, indeed, no other way of per- 

 petuating creed and its establishments, except by laying 

 the spell of church authority on the brain, and effecting 

 a semi-paralysis of this trouhlesome organ of progress* 



