ting what I shall have occasion to insist
upon in my next Discourse, let me say that, according to the teaching of
Monotheism, God is an Individual, Self-dependent, All-perfect,
Unchangeable Being; intelligent, living, personal, and present; almighty,
all-seeing, all-remembering; between whom and His creatures there is an
infinite gulf; who has no origin, who is all-sufficient for Himself; who
created and upholds the universe; who will judge every one of us, sooner
or later, according to that Law of right and wrong which He has written on
our hearts. He is One who is sovereign over, operative amidst, independent
of, the appointments which He has made; One in whose hands are all things,
who has a purpose in every event, and a standard for every deed, and thus
has relations of His own towards the subject-matter of each particular
science which the book of knowledge unfolds; who has with an adorable,
never-ceasing energy implicated Himself in all the history of creation,
the constitution of nature, the course of the world, the origin of
society, the fortunes of nations, the action of the human mind; and who
thereby necessarily becomes the subject-matter of a science, far wider and
more noble than any of those which are included in the circle of secular
Education.

This is the doctrine which belief in a God implies in the mind of a
Catholic: if it means any thing, it means all this, and cannot keep from
meaning all this, and a great deal more; and, even though there were
nothing in the religious tenets of the last three centuries to disparage
dogmatic truth, still, even then, I should have difficulty in believing
that a doctrine so mysterious, so peremptory, approved itself as a matter
of course to educated men of this day, who gave their minds attentively to
consider it. Rather, in a state of society such as ours, in which
authority, prescription, tradition, habit, moral instinct, and the divine
influences go for nothing, in which patience of thought, and depth and
consistency of view, are scorned as subtle and scholastic, in which free
discussion and fallible judgment are prized as the birthright of each
individual, I must be excused if I exercise towards this age, as regards
its belief in this doctrine, some portion of that scepticism which it
exercises itself towards every received but unscrutinized assertion
whatever. I cannot take it for granted, I must have it brought home to me
by tangible evidence, that the spirit o