would require more copious explanation than
they can give. And thus will be brought home to their minds that, in the
topics upon which popular controversy chiefly turns, the conditions of
discussion and the resources of arguments are subject to gradual and
constant change.

A Review, therefore, which undertakes to investigate political and
scientific problems, without any direct subservience to the interests of
a party or a cause, but with the belief that such investigation, by its
very independence and straightforwardness, must give the most valuable
indirect assistance to religion, cannot expect to enjoy at once the
favour of those who have grown up in another school of ideas. Men who
are occupied in the special functions of ecclesiastical life, where the
Church is all-sufficient and requires no extraneous aid, will naturally
see at first in the problems of public life, the demands of modern
society, and the progress of human learning, nothing but new and
unwelcome difficulties,--trial and distraction to themselves, temptation
and danger to their flocks. In time they will learn that there is a
higher and a nobler course for Catholics than one which begins in fear
and does not lead to security. They will come to see how vast a service
they may render to the Church by vindicating for themselves a place in
every movement that promotes the study of God's works and the
advancement of mankind. They will remember that, while the office of
ecclesiastical authority is to tolerate, to warn, and to guide, that of
religious intelligence and zeal is not to leave the great work of
intellectual and social civilisation to be the monopoly and privilege of
others, but to save it from debasement by giving to it for leaders the
children, not the enemies, of the Church. And at length, in the progress
of political right and scientific knowledge, in the development of
freedom in the State and of truth in literature, they will recognise one
of the first among their human duties and the highest of their earthly
rewards.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 339: "Rome and the Catholic Episcopate. Reply of His Eminence
Cardinal Wiseman to an Address presented by the Clergy, Secular and
Regular, of the Archdiocese of Westminster, on Tuesday, the 5th of
August 1862." London: Burns and Lambert. (_Home and Foreign Review_,
1862.)]

XIII

CONFLICTS WITH ROME[340]

Among the causes which have brought dishonour on the Church in recent
years, none h