Nor is this irreligious tendency confined to literary publications; it
finds numerous and powerful advocates in men of scientific pursuits, who
strive to make the worse appear the better cause. The chemist has never
found in his crucible that intangible something which men call spirit;
so, in the name of science, he pronounces it a myth. The anatomist has
dissected the human frame; but, failing to meet the immaterial
substance--the soul--he denies its existence. The physicist has weighed
the conflicting theories of his predecessors in the scale of criticism,
and finally decides that bodies are nothing more than the accidental
assemblage of atoms, and rejects the very idea of a Creator. The
geologist, after investigating the secrets of the earth, triumphantly
tells us that he has accumulated an overwhelming mass of facts to refute
the biblical cosmogony, and thus subvert the authority of the inspired
record. The astronomer flatters himself that he has discovered natural
and necessary laws, which do away with the necessity of admitting that a
Divine Hand once launched the heavenly bodies into space, and still
guides them in their courses; the stenographer has studied the
peculiarities of the races; he has met with widely-different
conformations, and believes himself sufficiently authorized to deny the
unity of the human family; in a word, they conclude that nothing exists
but matter, that God is a myth, and the soul "the dream of a dream."

Thus do men attack these sacred truths, which cannot be shaken without
greatly injuring, and finally destroying, the social edifice.

Now, when we see the snares so cunningly laid to entrap our youth, can
we wonder that so many of our Catholic young men, even after they have
been educated at Catholic colleges, are caught in them, and fall into
infidelity? A short time ago, a gentleman of great learning, and a
celebrated convert to our Church, told me that he had the greatest
trouble to keep his son from falling into infidelity, though he was
naturally inclined to piety. He said that he had him educated at one of
the best colleges in the country, and that he felt surprised at the fact
that so many of the young men educated there had become infidels. "I
cannot," he said, "account for this, otherwise than by presuming that
the religious training there is not solid enough; that the heathen world
is too much read and studied; that principles somewhat too lax are in
vogue; that the truths