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Show Uncle: 3ack. and . The uncle opens the dialogue by explaining ex-plaining the inanity of Descarte's philosophy, phil-osophy, which consisted in universal doubt. To reform society or religious thought one must begin with truth, which is an affirmation, and not negation. nega-tion. A denial of God, Providence, etc., leads to Skepticism. Having established his principles, the uncle draws his conclusions, con-clusions, which are logical. His reasoning rea-soning upsets the nephew's theories. He begins by giving Descarte's philosophy. philos-ophy. CONVERSATION III. (Continued.) "Descartes regarded it as. his mission mis-sion to reform philosophy, to take away-all away-all uncertainty in regard to philosophical philosophi-cal questions, and to put an end forever for-ever to all the scandalous wranglings of philosophers. A great and noble mission, perhaps; but he began, or laid it down, that we ought to begin by doubting all things all our previous scientific notions, all our religious beliefs, be-liefs, the universe, and even God himselfand him-selfand to admit nothing save as we demonstrate its truth. Consequently, he compelled himsef to begin in nothing, noth-ing, and from nothing to reconstruct God and the universe, religion and science, man and society. The poor man carried his d6ubt as far as he could, but his egotism was too great for him to doubt himself, and so he exclaims: ex-claims: "Eureka! Cogito, ergo sum j I think, therefor I exist. Having thus , by a miserable sophism proved his own existence, he proceeds from the con- j ception of his own ego to demonstrate, j after the manner of geometricians, God, man and the universe, which, of course, could, on his hypothesis, be only modes or affections of himself. You adopt his j method. You begin by doubting or denying de-nying whatever exists, by sweeping away the existing world and starting with your new world from, nothing, or what is the same thing, your sublime self. But as man has no proper creative crea-tive power, you can obtain by your labors only nothing, or, at best, only-self. only-self. He who begins in philosophizing by denal or doubt, can never arrive at an affirmation, and that the Cartesian philosophy, a , product of the seventeenth seven-teenth century, had much to do with thedoubt and incredulity of the eigh-ttenth, eigh-ttenth, can hardly be questioned. It reduced to almost the sphere of revelation, revela-tion, enlarged beyond all bounds that of natural reason, and at the same time threw doubt on reason itself. How it could ever have obtained the vogue it has among men who have no skepti cal veiiueucies, its iu me a iiiyoLcijr. find its method defended in the most popular text-books of philosophy used in the schools of France and this country, coun-try, even at the present moment, and I have been much pelased to find the Civilta Cattolica, at Rome, during the last year, opening its batteries against it. He who would philosophize must begin, not by denying, but by affirming, affirm-ing, in truth, 'not in falsehood, if he means to arrive at truth for result. "So that he who would reform what is amiss in society or in the administration adminis-tration of government must begin with a.' truth, something positive, and proceed pro-ceed to maintain it, not for organic changes, but for the simple correction of abuses; that Is, to bring men to the right uses of the institutions God in his providence has founded for them. In beginning by destroying, you deprive yourself of the spot on which to rest the fulcrum of your lever; you have nothing to work with, and, therefore, can substitute nothing in the place of what you destroy. Luther imagined abuses in the church, and he sought to remedy them, ' n'6t by laboring to remove re-move the obstacles which the church everywhere encountered to her free and salutary action, . not by exerting his gifts to induce men, cleric and laic, to conform to her discipline, but by attacking at-tacking the church herself, casting off her authority and founding a new one in its place. These were followed by I others who treated their work as they had treated Luther's, and thus on down to our time, till your more advanced Protestants have found yourselves without any church, and, giving up church-making in despair, boldly maintain main-tain that no church is necessary, and, indeed, that the grand ; mistake . committed com-mitted by all Protestants since breaking break-ing away from the old church has been in supposing a church of some sort is needed. Luther's work, which started with destruction, has resulted only in destruction. Neither he nor his followers follow-ers have been able to construct any- i thing. The case Is the same with regard re-gard to dogmas of faith. . Luther thought that he must reform the creed of Christendom. He began by denying a few articles, though retaining the larger number. His followers thought he retained too many, and they denied a few more; their followers thought the denial ought to be carried a little further, and each generation .has carried car-ried it still further, till now the great body of living Protestants have denied the whole creed, from the credo in pat-rem pat-rem omnipotentem clown to the vitam aeternan. You reject all dogmatic theology, the-ology, resolve Christianity into a sen- timent of the heart, which many of you are beginning to resolve into mere lust. Beginning by destroying, you can end only in destruction; beginning by stripping strip-ping off one garment after another, you needs must find yourselves at last reduced to simple nakedness. In society so-ciety you arrive at the same results. You begin by attacking the government govern-ment and its institutions, denying all vested rights, and you find yourselves thrown out of civil society, out of well ordered state, back into a state of pure nature, below, that of our American savages. All this is-inevitable, if you start as destructives, and the more logical and daring you are, and the fewer old fogies you have among you, the sooner you will find yourselves at this sad termination of all your labors. I "Count, my dear Dick, the history of the past as worth something. You know that I have been stating to you only simple historical facts. You have the ! history of the reformation before you. Tn religion Luther eneenered Voltaire. ! in philosophy Descartes, in politics ' Jean aJcques Rousseau, in morals Hel- vetius. In relegion you have ended in j the rejection of the supernatural, In philosophy in doubt and nihilism, in politics in' anarchy, in morals in the sinctification of lust. Here is the fact which you cannot deny, which stares you in the face, and with which all Protestantism groans. This fact ought to have fololwed, it is a logical consequence conse-quence of your premises, and you need i not imagine that you can, by going ! through your process again, arrive a i any other result." j "You may be shocked, my dear uncle, i but I do riot wish to arrive at any re- ! suit. I read history as well as you do, and I acknowledge that the movement of the reformation has been precisely as you describe it. I accept the result j obtained by the more advanced Protestant Pro-testant party. That result is what was implied in Luther's movement, only he knew it not, and it brings us back to pure and primitive Christianity, to Christianity as it lay in the mind of its author .though his ignorant and superstitious super-stitious disciples, with their minds obscured ob-scured by their Jewish prejudices never understood it. The church has never done justice to the free and noble thought of her Master. She has applied to a future world, to a supposed life after death, what he understood of this world, and applied to an extramundane God what he affirmed only of God and man. He taught that God has cornel in the flesh ,and that the God we are to love, worship and obey is the God who lives, moves and speaks In the instincts and aspirations of man's own nature those very instincts and aspirations. which the church condemns and commands com-mands us to mortify. It is the man-God man-God that Christianity proposes to the worship of man God in the flesh that she bids us adore. To be true followers of Christ, then, we must renounce all your' sacerdotal doctrines and spiritualistic spiritual-istic dreams, and put man in the place you assign to your God, the earth and the place of your imaginary heaven, and the flesh in the rank you claim for i the spirit. Here is the true and genu-j genu-j ine doctrine of him whose name you wrongfully usurp, and to this the refor-J refor-J mation has, perhaps against its inten-I inten-I tion, conducted us, and, therefore, we honor it. This is the mighty progress it has enabled us to make." I "A progress, by the way, in losing . a sort of progress which you cannot continue much longer, for I do not see what more you have to lose. You have I reached the last stage this side of no- i tvhere and unntho eton o n ,1 ..ah mlict vanish in endless vacuity. In plain words, if I understand you, my dear Dick, and I ought to understand you, for I blush to confess it I once held your very doctrine, you would have me hold that the Divine Founder of our religion came' into the world to teach us that there is for us no God but man, to free us from all religion, from all moral obliaalions, and to bid us live as we list, atheism for doctrine, and epicureanism for morals. You have, indeed, made a marvelous pro-I pro-I gress backwards. Why, my dear Dick, the devil must be in his dotage, or else he finds you very easily duped. Your so-called Christianity, under the name of Heathenism of carnal Judaism, is a very old doctrine, and has long since been condemned by the common sense of mankind. Satan preached it 6,000 years ago to our first parents, and your enlightened nineteenth entury is, just able to revive it. Well, well, Solomon Solo-mon was right when he said, 'There is nothing new under the sun; the thing that it has been, and the thing that has been shall be.' Even the devil has failed to invent a new delusion, and you with all your wonderful progress have fallen into his old snare. I am almost al-most ashamed of you, Dick. I did hope that, if a heretic you were resolved to be, you would at least embrace a heresy not wholly cflficreditable to your intellect. If you recognize Christianity at all, or in any sense the authority of Jesus Christ, you must admit that he never taught the vile heathenism you ascribe to him. It was not because be-cause he sought to establish an earthly kingdom, and to promote the worldly prosperity of mankind, that the Jews rejected him, and refused to own him as the Messiah, but because he came as a spiritual prince, and taught men to mortify their lusts, to crucify the flesh, to trample the world beneath their feet, and to labor not for the meat that perisheth, but for the meat that endureth unto everlasting life. It was because he dLd not teach what you allege, but the exact opposite, that they crucified him between two thieves. He condemned the doctrine you ascribe to him as heathenism, as you nTtist know if you know anything of his teachings. If there is any one thing certain with regard to our blessed Lord, it is that he taught that our true good is not derivable from this world, and is enjoyed in this world only by promise; that the good of the soul in all cases takes precedence of the good of the body; that, if we will be his disciples, we must deny our- i selves, take up our cross, and follow j him; that we are to set our affections, j not on things of the earth, but on things in heaven where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, nor thieves break through and steal. He bids us: not fear him who can kill the body, and after that hath no more power, but him who hath power to destroy both body and soul in hell. No, my dear boy, you cannot shelter your heathenism and your worship of the flesh under his august name. On this point at least there is. no difference between be-tween his Vachings and that of the church, and the Jews rejected him for precisely the same reasons that you reject her. You must either renounce your doctrine of the earth, earthly, vour deification of man and the worship wor-ship of lust, or not have the audacity to call yourself a Christian or to pretend pre-tend that you embrace Christianity." (To be ontinued.) 1 |
