shadows as much as his palette will permit-regretting all the time that he has no colors nearly black enough to convey, by contrast, a due appreciation of that unrepresentable brightness. Therefore, since it was utterly impossible to depict the bliss of heaven directly, it had been indirectly brought out by depicting hell as a place of all the horrors that the imagination could by any possibility gather together.

Thus it seemed to me that the objections against the Catholic doctrine of an eternal hell might be entirely obviated.

I further added that, of course, all this horrible picturing must be exclusively taken as symbolizing the difference between eternal bliss and its non-attainment, and not by any means as depicting the difference between hell and life on earth. To take it in that old and too generally accepted sense, would be to bring back the horrible teaching which represents God as an execrable demon.

Would my interpretation (brought forward to remove the most fatal of all objections against the Roman Catholic Church) meet with acceptance or even toleration?

By many priests, both in England and the United States, it was gladly accepted. It was declared tenable by the most learned theologian I have ever known-now a "Consultor" of the "Holy Office" and theologian to the Pope.

But many of my friends doubted the result; the editor of the Ninteenth Century said to me, "They will never allow that whip to be taken out of their hands."

The Rev. Father Clarke, S. J., said that the fear of hell could not be spared as a deterrent, and I have indeed heard it said, "If there is no hell-fire, what can be the use of being good?"

I had not long to wait. The memorable year (1893) when Leo XIII. promulgated his terrible Encyclical saw my writings placed upon the Index. This process deprived them of any value they might have had. But the decree did not censure a single proposition I had put forward. As far as I knew, the act of the Congregation of the Index might merely mean that Authority thought the moment inopportune for such a publication, or that I had perhaps handled some dignitaries too roughly. I was therefore advised by my most sympathetic friends to submit, and I submitted, without, of course, unsaying a single word of what I had advanced.

I subsequently found, however, that as usual I had been secretly

denounced to the Inquisition and that all possible efforts had been made for my condemnation, without any notice being given me that I was accused, or what I was accused of, or by whomaccording to the use and wont of "Roman Congregations." This mode of procedure had long before excited the indignation of not a few English priests and laymen, and last year one of the most pious of the English laity, Mr. James Hope, a relative of the Duke of Norfolk, addressed a letter to a newspaper, in which he did not scruple to denounce vehemently such un-English modes of judicial procedure. His protest met with much sympathy among the clergy, who were nevertheless kept silent through prudence. It also came to my knowledge that a new edition of the Index had been sent forth wherein my name still found a place, or rather, had been freshly inserted. Thereupon, in August last, I wrote directly to Cardinal Steinhuber, S. J., the actual Prefect of the Congregation of the Index.

I represented to him how abhorrent to English-speaking Catholics were the modes of procedure of the Roman Congregations, and . I begged him, very respectfully, to have me informed who had. denounced me and what propositions of mine were found fault with; adding that if His Eminence could not, or would not, furnish me with the information I desired, I must withdraw my submission. I received a reply saying that my writings on hell had been denounced to, and censured by, the Holy Office, which had caused Cardinal Steinhuber's Congregation to put me on the Index. No further information was vouchsafed me, so my submission was withdrawn accordingly.

I have had no further contention with any Roman Congregation, but only with Cardinal Vaughan, Archbishop of Westminster, the head of the Roman Catholic Church in England.

After mature reflection and many mental struggles, I had come to the conclusion that the Roman Catholic Church must tolerate a transforming process of evolution, with respect to many of its dogmas, or sink, by degrees, into an effete and insignificant body, composed of ignorant persons, a mass of women and children and a number of mentally effeminate men. I was acquainted with a not inconsiderable number of cultured English Catholics-clergy as well as laity-who were severely tried by the reactionary policy which has shown itself of late years at Rome.

One matter about which they were anxious was the attitude

toward Scripture which had been taken up at the Vatican Council, and which was made still more intolerable by that terrible Encyclical of Leo XIII., which was promulgated in 1893, and is known as "Providentissimus Deus." My cultured friends varied greatly in breadth of views and secret dissent from received dogma, but all agreed as to the necessity of freedom to regard the Bible from the point of view of the "higher criticism," and to declare without disguise their entire disbelief in the historical truth of large portions of it.

To my mind it was clear that, unless the infallibility of the Church could be seriously disclaimed* and the possibility of error in passed conciliar decrees allowed, the needful evolution of dogma was impossible. But if changes in the meanings of dogma could once be admitted by authority as possible, or even if the assertion that they had changed were only tolerated, an immense gain would be achieved thereby.

Convinced that such would be the case, I wrote my two articles which appeared in the Nineteenth Century and the Fortnightly Review, respectively, last January.

On purpose, I made them of a startling character, so that I might be able to ascertain whether the position I, and not a few other Catholics, occupied in the Roman Church was, or was not, a tenable one-whether it was in any way possible to continue in that communion.

My effort was successful, and though I deeply regretted, and regret, this clear demonstration, through the action of Archbishop Vaughan and his advisers, that the Roman Catholic Church has thus shown itself to be essentially a petrified and not a progressive Church, I feel none the less convinced that it is better that such a fact should become distinctly known than that it should remain concealed by the subterfuges and evasions of ecclesiastics who seek to retain, and gain, adherents through a pretence of logically impossible liberalism.

The Archbishop, acting as my Ordinary, required me to subscribe a profession of faith which contained the following clause:

"In accordance with the Holy Councils of Trent and of the Vatican,

*The late Mr. Richard Simpson, a very distinguished and witty convert, endeavored to get rid of this incubus by a joke. He said the word was of a similar nature with the political term "non-intervention." As to that, he quoted Talleyrand's explanation as follows: "Non-intervention c'est une mot politique et metaphysiq e qui signifie à peu pres la même chose qu'intervention." But I do not think jokes on serious subjects can do any real good.

I receive all the books of the Old and New Testaments, with all their parts as set forth in the fourth session of the Council of Trent and contained in the ancient Latin edition of the Vulgate, as sacred and canonical, and I firmly believe and confess that the said Scriptures are sacred and canonical, not because, having been carefully composed by mere human industry, they were afterwards approved by the Church's authority, nor merely because they contain revelation with no admixture of error; but because, having been written by the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, they have God for their author, and have been delivered as such to the Church herself."

The books, all parts of which I was thus called on to declare had God for their author, include that of "Tobit," with its account of how Tobit and the Archangel Raphael, with the aid of the liver of a fish, overcame a homicidal demon and imprisoned him in Egypt. The fabulous second book of Maccabees is also among them, as is also the story which relates how, when Daniel was thrown a second time into the lion's den, an angel seized one Habbakuk, in Judæa, by the hair of his head, and carried him with his bowl of pottage to give it to Daniel for his dinner.

It was, of course, absolutely impossible for me, or for any other scientific man, to sign such a formula, unless it was clearly and publicly known that I should be free to reject, as errors, statements historically untrue, such as the account of the serpent and the tree, the bringing of animals to Adam to be named, the history of the Tower of Babel, that of the Deluge, and so on.

Accordingly, I wrote to my Archbishop begging him, as my Ordinary, to give me an authoritative answer whether I was, or was not, right in judging that the signing of the formula submitted to me would be equivalent to an assertion that there were no errors in the Bible, and that I could then no longer rationally and logically deny the veracity of the Biblical statements above referred to, and many others equally untrue.

It has been commonly supposed that one characteristic of the Roman Catholic Church was its distinct and definite teaching. It has also been credited with having the courage of its opinions, while being, at the same time, a tender and faithful mother to her spiritual children.

I sought in vain for the decisive reply it was plainly my Archbishop's duty to give, when appealed to as my Ordinary. He referred me to Leo XIII. and certain writers.

Now, the Pope, in his celebrated Encyclical about Scripture, after reaffirming the decrees of Trent and the Vatican, laid down

the following most unequivocal declaration about the writers of Scripture:

"By supernatural power, God so moved and impelled them to writeHe was so present to them-that the things which He ordered, and those only, they, first, rightly understood, then willed faithfully to write down, and finally expressed in apt words and with infallible truth."

It would surely be impossible to use words more decisive as to the assertion by the Roman Catholic Church that God must be declared indeed the author of every statement, in every part of all the books declared by Trent "sacred and canonical."

This fact was for me decisive and I refused to sign the formula. But it is very noteworthy that I could get no authoritative answer from my Archbishop in reply to my question. The fact was, he dared not answer it. He could not allow that God had inspired men to write falsehoods, or that the Church had (as of course it has) misled mankind as to the "Word of God" for a long succession of centuries. He could not admit that the Councils of Trent and the Vatican had erred, because he was hidebound by the doctrine of the Church's infallibility, which, as a Catholic Archbishop, he had strenuously to uphold. Neither could he venture to declare that I was bound to hold, as certainly true, all the puerile absurdities to be found between the covers of the Bible. Therefore, on this important matter of Scripture, Catholic authorities trifle with truth and "palter with us in a double sense." Most shocking of all is their utter disregard for the anxiety and distress of so many Catholics who know not what they must believe about Scripture, yet dread peril to their immortal souls if they do not believe what the Church teaches.

The most imperative task for Roman theologians to-day is so to modify the meaning of the dogma of the Church's infallibility as to render possible the admission by them that the Councils of Florence, Trent and the Vatican have erred, and that the Pope's Encyclical is to be put on one side as of absolutely no account whatever. By such a course, the way will be prepared for the play of evolution on Church dogma through the future centuries, and for the gradual construction of a Catholicity which shall embody all scientific truth and all the religious truths held by all forms of belief, including the beauties and noble precepts of the old Paganism, which were too quickly and carelessly thrown aside. ST. GEORGE MIVART.