y of
passion and the all-corroding, all-dissolving scepticism of the
intellect in religious inquiries? I have no intention at all of denying,
that truth is the real object of our reason, and that, if it does not
attain to truth, either the premiss or the process is in fault; but I am
not speaking here of right reason, but of reason as it acts in fact and
concretely in fallen man. I know that even the unaided reason, when
correctly exercised, leads to a belief in God, in the immortality of the
soul, and in a future retribution; but I am considering the faculty of
reason actually and historically; and in this point of view, I do not
think I am wrong in saying that its tendency is towards a simple
unbelief in matters of religion. No truth, however sacred, can stand
against it, in the long run; and hence it is that in the pagan world,
when our Lord came, the last traces of the religious knowledge of former
times were all but disappearing from those portions of the world in
which the intellect had been active and had had a career.

And in these latter days, in like manner, outside the Catholic Church
things are tending,--with far greater rapidity than in that old time
from the circumstance of the age,--to atheism in one shape or other.
What a scene, what a prospect, does the whole of Europe present at this
day! and not only Europe, but every government and every civilization
through the world, which is under the influence of the European mind!
Especially, for it most concerns us, how sorrowful, in the view of
religion, even taken in its most elementary, most attenuated form, is
the spectacle presented to us by the educated intellect of England,
France, and Germany! Lovers of their country and of their race,
religious men, external to the Catholic Church, have attempted various
expedients to arrest fierce wilful human nature in its onward course,
and to bring it into subjection. The necessity of some form of religion
for the interests of humanity, has been generally acknowledged: but
where was the concrete representative of things invisible, which would
have the force and the toughness necessary to be a breakwater against
the deluge? Three centuries ago the establishment of religion, material,
legal, and social, was generally adopted as the best expedient for the
purpose, in those countries which separated from the Catholic Church;
and for a long time it was successful; but now the crevices of those
establishments are admitti