this aim, even when the temporary exigencies of British policy or the special interests of the Anglo-Egyptian colony, official and non-official, seemed to point in another direction. A singleminded devotion to what he conceived to be the truest interests of the Egyptian people as a whole has been the simple secret of Lord Cromer's success in the past, and it will doubtless prove as sure a guide in the future. The statesmanship which abolished the courbash and the corrée; which placed the fellah on an equality with the pasha in the eyes of the law; which reduced the fiscal burdens under which the people groaned and in a comparatively brief time transformed a bankrupt State into one of the most flourishing countries in the world; which brought about the reconquest of the Soudan and the restoration of Egypt's lost provinces; which avoided a European conflagration during the long period when the occupation appeared an insuperable obstacle to the establishment of friendly relations between England and France; which finally shook off the international fetters that bound the Egyptian Treasury hand and foot, will, we may confidently expect, prove equal to the task of grappling with the more subtle difficulties which menace the near future. With one word of warning we may conclude. The edifice which has been so painfully and laboriously built up is not yet able to stand alone. Any violent disturbance of the existing order would be fatal, not merely to further progress, but also to the preservation of what has been already accomplished. The presence of an army of occupation, the maintenance of British control over the administration, and most of all the supreme guidance of the representative of his Majesty's Government, are all indispensable if the enterprise which this country took in hand in 1883 is to be worthily continued. The consolidation of the reforms which have been introduced, the transformation of the Egyptians into a people ready for autonomy, must be a work, not of years, but of generations. ART. IV.-CATHOLIC AUTHORITY AND MODERN SOCIETY. 1. The History of the Papacy in the Nineteenth Century. By Dr. FREDRIK NIELSEN. 2 vols. London: John Murray. 1906. 2. A Much-abused Letter. By GEORGE TYRRELL. London: Longmans, Green & Co. 1906. 3. Lord Acton and his Circle. Edited by ABBOT GASQUET, O.S.B. London George Allen; Burns & Oates. 1906. 4. The Papal Commission and the Pentateuch. By the Rev. C. A. BRIGGS and BARON FRIEDRICH VON HÜGEL. London: Longmans, Green & Co. 1906. 5. The Saint. By ANTONIO FOGAZZARO, translated by M. PRICHARD AGNETTI. London: Hodder & Stoughton. 1906. 6. Out of Due Time. By Mrs. WILFRID WARD. London: Longmans, Green & Co. 1906. To anyone who cares for the moral welfare of humanity or who is an observer of the present situation in Europe, it must be a matter of capital interest to contemplate the attitude of the peoples towards ecclesiasticism and to compare it with the attitude of Rome towards the world. Since the tremendous claim made by the Catholic Church to regulate and inspire all the activities of man drives her into conflict with many modern ideas and much so-called progress, it remains a constant problem whether the Church deprived of that last remnant of temporal power-the support of the States to which she is accreditedwill remain a witness to a state of society and to an intellectual development made obsolete by changing relations, new aspirations, and scientific knowledge; or whether, as some have dreamt, the Catholicism of the future will be so liberalised and spiritualised as to include and consecrate all new thought and all social evolution. To those who pray for the latter consummation it seems no easy enterprise for an organisation which has so long assumed the proud Imperialism of the Cæsars to adorn itself in meekness with the Republicanism of Christ. Though it is impossible to present modern and contemporary history upon paper in any generalised or philosophical fashion, or to treat it as anything more than a series of incidents strung on the string of the years, yet it can never be unprofitable to seize the leading principles, the opposed ideals, the great tendencies of an epoch, and through their agency to illumine and bring into juxtaposition facts and occurrences that would otherwise remain isolated. More especially in regard to ecclesiastical affairs is it interesting to reflect on recent occurrences and present conflicts, with the object of divining, if we can, the religious tendencies of our own day. France has been called 'the mouthpiece of thinking Europe,' and those who have studied the trend of affairs in that country during the nineteenth century point out to us that the centre of interest around which politics, domestic legislation, schemes for colonial expansion, and changes of government have revolved has been the religious question. French statesmen at least have proved to themselves, and to their countrymen, through the political experience of the last century that the aims of the Church and the State, far from being identical, are in many particulars fundamentally opposed. Nor is this strange, for it must never be forgotten in dealing with present-day conflicts between secular and ecclesiastical powers that these conflicts originate, to a great extent, in the opposed beliefs that are held about man. In France alone among European countries has it been officially realised and resolutely faced that an abyss lies between the secular and ecclesiastical conceptions of human nature and its ultimate destiny. Owing to the doctrines of the Fall and of original sin, the natural man has always been distrusted by teachers of religion, and considered as a foe to be conquered by the supernatural man or man of grace. It has been assumed that man cannot be trusted; that left to himself he would become the slave of instinct and anti-social lusts; that if he were not kept to his knees society would fall to pieces. Liberty is dreaded for him, and a great school of conduct, in which he may remain from childhood to old age, has been instituted to teach him how to become supernatural, and a scheme of salvation formulated to bring him within touch of grace. The secular conception of man, on the other hand, assumes that natural man has a value and a future; that man has within his breast the instinct for righteousness; that there has been no Fall but a continual ascent; that morals and ethics are perpetually evolving and are neither permanently fixed on the stone tablets of centuries ago, nor codified into any inspired system of probabilism. The antithesis was phrased by Brunetière L'erreur peut-être la plus grave que la philosophie du dernier siècle ait commise c'est d'avoir 'substitué le dogme de la bonté naturelle de l'homme à celui de sa perversité foncière.' * Both theses had as objective a * Revue des Deux Mondes, January 1895. unity of view and thought from which should emanate unity of power and conduct; but in the one case the method employed to produce this unity was domination and in the other education. On the face of it the principles on which the opposed ideals of society rest seem irreconcileable; yet attempts have been made by reformers so to modify dogma as to effect their reconciliation. Many Catholics have felt that the new appraisement of man's natural dignity and value made in the eighteenth century called for a readjustment of their own position. Lamennais, when he denied the Fall of Man and yet remained a believer in the teaching of Jesus, crossed the abyss that yawns so widely between the two conceptions of human nature. He has been called the father of Liberal Catholicism, because to him it first occurred that it was possible so to blend the two views of man, imperfect as all extremes must be, into that mean which was to be the consecration of modern society. Many instances might be brought forward to prove that in the doctrine of original sin Liberal Catholics have recognised a stumbling-block. Father Hecker made as light as he could of it, insisting that natural and civic virtues are admitted by the Church in fallen man prior to the gift of grace. He gloried too in asserting that Calvinists conceived man as far more wicked than did Catholics, and rejoiced in calling to mind how the Church had protested against Calvin's doctrine of 'total depravity' at the Council of Trent. The promulgation of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception emphasised the official attitude of the Church towards natural man, and by many people it was felt to increase the difficulties of those Catholics who were endeavouring to adapt themselves to a less debased view of human nature. By some of the converts who conducted that English Catholic Review, the 'Rambler,' the difficulty was keenly felt, and we see that occasion even was taken of the definition of the Immacu'late Conception as a dogma of the Church to inquire what were the scantiest possible views of original sin and eternal punishment compatible with the defined doctrines of the 'Church.'* The Church avoids compromise on this matter because it tends to infringe her authority, and consequently the ecclesiastical history of the nineteenth century to a great extent consists of a war between the two principles-of man dependent and man independent, man wicked and man good. She consistently has refused to recognise the far-reaching effects of the French Revolution on the social system, on the individual, and on the *Lord Acton and his Circle, p. xxxviii. theory of authority, and to adapt herself with regard to temporal power to the ideas of the modern State. France was the first country in which the war of refusal was waged. It is as if two giant figures had been fighting in the clouds above the soil of that country for the soul of its nation; and to the watchers as now one, now the other, gained a conspicuous, albeit temporary advantage, came the realisation of tremendous issues involving the downfall or the exaltation of a world. When at the Revolution the new force that was to leaven society-namely, the new appraisement of man's natural dignity and value-stood upright and hurled its challenge at the Church to justify her accusation of original depravity and prove herself something better than the oppressor and enslaver of the human mind; when to the question, On what foundation basely used authority rested?' was returned the answer, 'The powers that be are ordained 'of God,' it was determined to try authority by its own test, whether it was of God or no. And beneath the injustices and cruelties of that day of confiscations may be detected the working of a sound principle and the endeavour to prove by a great divorce between spiritual and temporal powers the validity or invalidity of the spiritual, and to demonstrate to all the world whether riches and temporalities were the only properties by means of which the Church had wielded authority over men for centuries. That experimental divorce was decreed by the revolutionaries in 1794, and before the outcome could be finally gauged it was rescinded by the man who stood for a domination as complete as that of Rome. It was said by Guizot that Napoleon's greatest and most arduous achievement was the revivification of the idea of authority-an idea which it was thought that the great Revolution had completely discredited. That ruler, in the face of a nation which had discovered there was no divine right in might at all, re-established authority in the old external sense because, like the Popes, he believed in the principle of power and domination, and disbelieved in the principle of individual liberty and private judgement. Owing to the spread of education and liberal ideas, dominion such as he personified has become unrealisable in modern life unless the subjects of that dominion be educated in view of subjection. The Church of Rome to-day is the sole claimant to absolutism in Europe, and since she realises that private judgement and individual liberty are disastrous to her prerogative, she opposes herself to any movement that might invalidate her theory of authority, and sets upon the theological virtues a value greatly exceeding that which she sets upon sound thinking or exact science. The Catholic apologist, Bonald, VOL. CCV. NO. CCCCXIX. G |