rought
from these two premisses but this? that to withdraw Theology from the
public schools is to impair the completeness and to invalidate the
trustworthiness of all that is actually taught in them.

But I have been insisting simply on Natural Theology, and that, because I
wished to carry along with me those who were not Catholics, and, again, as
being confident, that no one can really set himself to master and to teach
the doctrine of an intelligent Creator in its fulness, without going on a
great deal farther than he at present dreams. I say, then, secondly:--if
this Science, even as human reason may attain to it, has such claims on
the regard, and enters so variously into the objects, of the Professor of
Universal Knowledge, how can any Catholic imagine that it is possible for
him to cultivate Philosophy and Science with due attention to their
ultimate end, which is Truth, supposing that system of revealed facts and
principles, which constitutes the Catholic Faith, which goes so far beyond
nature, and which he knows to be most true, be omitted from among the
subjects of his teaching?

In a word, Religious Truth is not only a portion, but a condition of
general knowledge. To blot it out is nothing short, if I may so speak, of
unravelling the web of University Teaching. It is, according to the Greek
proverb, to take the Spring from out of the year; it is to imitate the
preposterous proceeding of those tragedians who represented a drama with
the omission of its principal part.

Discourse IV.

Bearing Of Other Branches Of Knowledge On Theology.

1.

Nothing is more common in the world at large than to consider the
resistance, made on the part of religious men, especially Catholics, to
the separation of Secular Education from Religion, as a plain token that
there is some real contrariety between human science and Revelation. To
the multitude who draw this inference, it matters not whether the
protesting parties avow their belief in this contrariety or not; it is
borne in upon the many, as if it were self-evident, that religious men
would not thus be jealous and alarmed about Science, did they not feel
instinctively, though they may not recognize it, that knowledge is their
born enemy, and that its progress, if it is not arrested, will be certain
to destroy all that they hold venerable and dear. It looks to the world
like a misgiving on our part similar to that which is im