trine of the infallibility of the pope had always been maintained in Ireland.[1]
But this is an episode, intended to disabuse those who, in this country or the United States, may have been misled in regard to the personal points referred to. I now return to the impersonal. The course of life upon earth, as far as Science can see, has been one of amelioration—a steady advance on the whole from the lower to the higher. The continued effort of animated Nature is to improve its conditions and raise itself to a loftier level. In man, improvement and amelioration—depend largely upon the growth of conscious knowledge, by which the errors of ignorance are continually moulted and truth is organized. It is assuredly the advance of knowledge that has given a materialistic color, to the philosophy of this age. Materialism is, therefore, not a thing to be mourned over, but to be honestly considered—accepted if it be wholly true, rejected if it be wholly false, wisely sifted and turned to account if it embrace a mixture of truth and error. Of late years the study of the nervous system and of its relation to thought and feeling has profoundly occupied inquiring minds. It is our duty not to shirk—it ought rather to be our privilege to accept—the established results of such inquiries, for here assuredly our ultimate weal depends upon our loyalty to the truth. Instructed as to the control which the nervous system exercises over man's moral and intellectual nature, we shall be better prepared, not only to mend their manifold defects, but also to strengthen and purify both. Is mind degraded by this recognition of its dependence? Assuredly not. Matter, on the contrary, is raised to the level it ought to occupy, and from which timid ignorance would remove it.
But the light is dawning, and it will become stronger as time goes on. Even the Brighton Congress affords evidence of this. From the manifold confusions of that assemblage my memory has rescued two items which it would fain preserve: the recognition of a relation between Health and Religion, and the address of the Rev. Harry Jones. Out of the conflict of vanities his words emerge fresh, healthy, and strong, because undrugged by dogma, coming directly from the warm brain of one who knows what practical truth means, and who has faith in its vitality and inherent power of propagation. I wonder is he less effectual in his ministry than his more embroidered colleagues? It surely behooves our teachers to come to some definite understanding as to this question of health: to see how, by inattention to it, we are defrauded, negatively, by the privation of that "sweetness and light" which is the natural concomitant of good health; positively, by the insertion into life of cynicism, ill-temper, and a thousand corroding
- ↑ On a memory which dates back to my fifteenth year, when I first read the discussion between Mr. Pope and Father McGuire, I should be inclined to rely for proof that the Catholic clergyman, in that discussion, and in the name of his Church, repudiated the doctrine of personal infallibility.
