our dull world had been refreshed and fed again by that divine realism which is expressed in the incarnation of the Word, which causes its life-arteries to pulsate in the miracle, and unfolds its luster so gloriously in the bodily resurrection of the Christ from the tomb! But alas! from the very beginning this realism was abandoned and reached thereby in spite of itself a most deceiving viewpoint. Instead of a bold and a noble effort to show our guilty age the entente of its offenses, and so to secure for itself a moral preponderance over its sinful career, rationalism rather bent the knee before its highness and sought salvation in comparison. It was as though rationalism said to our age: "In sooth your realism is above reproach. With thee I will also pursue the way from passion to reality. As reward, however, Mighty Ruler, for this genuflection, grant my ideals a throne in your domain." And thus modernism undertook its gigantic task. The things unseen are above. Thither it would lead, and our age would follow-but upon this impossible condition: that for no single moment it should have to lift its foot from this visible soil and that the ground for the sacred be pointed out in the midst of this profane life. And modernism has undertaken to satisfy this demand. Driven to this strait by its own spiritual blindness, it bent its knee before its cruel commander and granted his abhorrent ultimatum. It conceded the claims that we should not be too greatly concerned with the things of heaven but that first of all we should be concerned about the life here on earth, that the study of nature is the guide also in the study of the kingdom of the Spirit that in every conflict between this and the other world this one must never yield, and thus no miracle can be recognized. It granted that to speak longer of a supranaturalism implied a criticism upon the existing state of things which no genuine son of this age could tolerate. Yea, it also granted in the end that, if there were to be a knowledge of God, it must be interpreted from man as he is, and if there were still to be a Christendom it must renounce its absolute title of "the only true religion" in order henceforth to live on the same level with other religions which heretofore it had shunned as idolatry. And at first the impossible actually seemed to succeed. Mod ernism produced a life- and world-view so artistic, finely-wrought and wonderful that every sacred interest seemed saved and the ideal maintained without violation of the hard ultimatum which had been demanded from it by the realism of our age. But more than mere semblance it was not and it was soon evident that with the most liberal calculation the very bottom of our spiritual treasury could not be covered by half. You know that from the side of the rationalists the desire is great to carry the honorable title of Protestant, and they are bound to make the people believe that rationalism and Protestantism are branches of the same tree, separated merely by an earlier or later appearance according to the time of sprouting. Meanwhile nothing is less true. Rationalism chooses human authority as a point of departure in all matters of faith over against which Protestantism raised its mighty protest, and, since it is the opponent rather than the outcome of Protestantism, rationalism should not be adorned with the honors of the Reformation if for no other reason than that it has never known anything of the anxiety of soul, brokenness of heart and contriteness of spirit, from whose depths a Luther has called upon his God. The Reformation sought the salvation of the troubled heart; rationalism the solution of an ingenious problem, for which reason it knows but one reality, that of the things that are seen, and passes by the reality of that other sort which is so much higher, which is so much more firmly established, and which even in the face of the fact of sin still speaks to us of the "immovable" kingdom of God. And this was rationalism's mistake. It spake as though we were still in Eden, of a natural tie which unites the visible and the invisible, and did not understand that if we still lived in Eden there would never have been a salvation, and a Christianity would never have been known. ART. II.-GALILEO A LECTURE upon Galileo by a distinguished Italian historian, Isidore del Lungo (La Vita Italiana nei Seicenti. Milano. 1897.), delivered before a remarkable audience in which the queen of Italy was the central figure, revived an interest in the "Tuscan Artist," as Milton called him, that was first created in me by the magnificent oration of Edward Everett at the dedication of the Dudley Observatory. Some novel features of Del Lungo's narrative led me to procure Domenico Berti's edition of the documents of the trial (Il Processo Originale di Galileo Galilei. Roma. 1878.), and this induced me to study all the recent literature upon Galileo that lay within my reach. The results are here set down. I. The Trial of 1615-1616. a. The accusation: "February, 1615, the Dominican friar Nicolo Lorini of Florence transmitted to the Holy Office an alleged copy of a writing of Galileo then circulating in that city, which, following the propositions of Copernicus that the earth is in motion and that the sky stands still, contains many propositions suspicious or presumptuous. Fra Nicolo informs us that said writing had been indited in order to contradict certain teachings of Father Caccini of Florence in regard to the passage in Joshua x, sol ne movearis." In the alleged writing of Galileo (a private letter written to Father Castelli, a Benedictine monk) are the following statements: 1 The passage referred to reads as follows: "Sun, stand thou still upon Gideon, And thou, Moon, in the valley of Ajalon! Is not this written in the book of Jashar? And the sun stayed in the midst of the heaven and hasted not to go down about a whole day." In which two things are to be noted: 1. That the words of Joshua are quoted from a poem. 2. That the poem is quoted from the book of Jashar, a book from which is quoted also the famous lament of David over Saul and Jonathan, found in 2 Samuel, Chapter 1. What a discovery this book of Jashar would be! It was evidently a collection of war songs. As the Holy Office has suspended operations it is probably safe to call attention to it. 1. The Holy Scriptures contain many propositions that are false, if taken in the naked sense of the words. 2. That in disputes about natural phenomena Scripture should be reserved to the last place. 3. That Scripture, in order to meet the incapacity of the people, has not abstained from expressions which, taken literally, would contradict its most important doctrines; attributing, for instance, conditions to God himself which are contrary to his very essence. 4. In natural science the philosophic argument should prevail over the theological. 5. The command of Joshua to the sun must be understood to refer not to the sun but to the Primum mobile, if the Copernican system is rejected. b. The Accusers. Father Caccini appeared as a witness and deposed that he had heard of other erroneous and wicked opinions of Galileo. But those named by him as his informants failed to support his allegations. And even Fra Nicolo Lorini wrote to the Cardinal Inquisitor Mellini that "Brother Caccini did not appear to be fighting so much for the faith as for his own overweening vanity." This Dominican friar, Caccini, was one of those rabid preachers who, while destitute alike of the spirit of science and of the mind of Christ, pervert the Scriptures that they pretend to adore and divert attention from their own practices by outcries against the discoverers and champions of the truth. He it was who, preaching to an immense crowd in Florence, stirred the excitable Italians with the cry, "Ye Galilean men, why stand ye gazing at the sky!" Brother Lorini was "indifferent honest,' but terribly scared and ludicrously ignorant. "We must keep our eyes open," he wrote, "lest a small error in the beginning become a great one in the end." He, too, has assailed Galileo from the pulpit, with less success, however, than the more declamatory Caccini. He had, though, inveighed against Galileo and mathematicians in general as adepts in secret science, in league with the devil, and suspected of heresy especially because they promulgated the opinions of Hypernicus, as Copernicus was called by this amazing professor of Church History. c. The Trial and the Judgment. The original letter of Galileo to his friend Castelli, which had been written hastily, was not produced at the trial. Even the Inquisition balked at condemning so famous a man upon what purported to be a copy only. They fell back, therefore, upon Galileo's treatise on the Solar Spots. Here they found two propositions, one of which they declared heretical, the other erroneous, and both philosophically absurd. It is interesting to read them after the lapse of three centuries. They run as follows: The sun is the center of the Solar System and does not move from its station. The earth is not the center of the Solar System and has a daily motion of rotation. Cardinal Bellarmine was deputed, therefore, to call before him the propounder of these wicked propositions and to instruct him that he must not in any manner whatever discuss this opinion touching the mobility of the sun and the stability of the earth. And the congregation of the Index was at the same time ordered to prohibit every book that treated of the said opinion concerning the motion of the earth and the stability of the sun. It was maintained by some of his enemies that Galileo had been not only silenced but forced to abjure. This was denied both by Galileo and by Bellarmine.* The story has, however, been revived quite recently with some plausibility. The noteworthy thing in this first process is that Galileo's book on Solar Spots does not contain a single reference to Holy Writ. In other words, an accusation of heresy based upon the contents of a letter which were said to impugn a given passage in the Book of Joshua led to the condemnation of the accused for publishing a book never before incriminated and which in no wise touched upon any passage of the Bible. Galileo was sentenced (so it was held afterwards) to keep silence for life about the rotating of the earth. II. The Second Trial. 1633. a. The Accusation. In 1630 Galileo brought to Rome his dialogues on the two chief systems of the skies. He was given an imprimatur for Rome, but when he sought one for Florence it Bellarmine's denial is among the documents, both in his own and in Galileo's handwriting. |