hall say that divine revelation cannot be rendered credible by
external evidences.

"Who shall say that no miracles can be wrought, or that they can never
be known with certainty, and that the divine origin of Christianity
cannot be proved by them.

"Who shall say that divine revelation includes no mysteries, but that
all the dogmas of faith may be understood and demonstrated by reason
duly cultivated.

"Who shall say that human sciences ought to be pursued in such a spirit
of freedom that one may be allowed to hold as true their assertions,
even when opposed to revealed doctrine.

"Who shall say that it may at any time come to pass, in the progress
of science, that the doctrines set forth by the Church must be taken in
another sense than that in which the Church has ever received and yet
receives them."

THE EVANGELICAL ALLIANCE. The extraordinary and, indeed, it may be said,
arrogant assumptions contained in these decisions were far from being
received with satisfaction by educated Catholics. On the part of the
German universities there was resistance; and, when, at the close of the
year, the decrees of the Vatican Council were generally acquiesced in,
it was not through conviction of their truth, but through a disciplinary
sense of obedience.

By many of the most pious Catholics the entire movement and the results
to which it had led were looked upon with the sincerest sorrow. Pere
Hyacinthe, in a letter to the superior of his order, says: "I protest
against the divorce, as impious as it is insensate, sought to be
effected between the Church, which is our eternal mother, and the
society of the nineteenth century, of which we are the temporal
children, and toward which we have also duties and regards. It is my
most profound conviction that, if France in particular, and the Latin
race in general, are given up to social, moral, and religious anarchy,
the principal cause undoubtedly is not Catholicism itself, but the
manner in which Catholicism has for a long time been understood and
practised."

Notwithstanding his infallibility, which implies omniscience, his
Holiness did not foresee the issue of the Franco-Prussian War. Had the
prophetical talent been vouchsafed to him, he would have detected the
inopportuneness of the acts of his Council. His request to the King of
Prussia for military aid to support his temporal power was denied. The
excommunicated King of Italy, as we have seen, took possession of Rome.
A