Science and Protestantism.  But the spirit of the age demands—­is the human intellect to be subordinated to the Tridentine Fathers, or to the fancy of illiterate and uncritical persons who wrote in the earlier ages of the Church?  It sees no merit in blind faith, but rather distrusts it.  It looks forward to an improvement in the popular canon of credibility for a decision between fact and fiction.  It does not consider itself bound to believe fables and falsehoods that have been invented for ecclesiastical ends.  It finds no argument in behalf of their truth, that traditions and legends have been long-lived; in this respect, those of the Church are greatly inferior to the fables of paganism.  The longevity of the Church itself is not due to divine protection or intervention, but to the skill with which it has adapted its policy to existing circumstances.  If antiquity be the criterion of authenticity, the claims of Buddhism must be respected; it has the superior warrant of many centuries.  There can be no defense of those deliberate falsifications of history, that concealment of historical facts, of which the Church has so often taken advantage.  In these things the end does not justify the means.

Then has it in truth come to this, that Roman Christianity and Science are recognized by their respective adherents as being absolutely incompatible; they cannot exist together; one must yield to the other; mankind must make its choice—­it cannot have both.

Science and faith.  While such is, perhaps, the issue as regards Catholicism, a reconciliation of the Reformation with Science is not only possible, but would easily take place, if the Protestant Churches would only live up to the maxim taught by Luther, and established by so many years of war.  That maxim is, the right of private interpretation of the Scriptures.  It was the foundation of intellectual liberty.  But, if a personal interpretation of the book of Revelation is permissible, how can it be denied in the case of the book of Nature?  In the misunderstandings that have taken place, we must ever bear in mind the infirmities of men.  The generations that immediately followed the Reformation may perhaps be excused for not comprehending the full significance of their cardinal principle, and for not on all occasions carrying it into effect.  When Calvin caused Servetus, to be burnt, he was animated, not by the principles of the Reformation, but by those of Catholicism, from which he had not been able to emancipate himself completely.  And when the clergy of influential Protestant confessions have stigmatized the investigators of Nature as infidels and atheists, the same may be said.  For Catholicism to reconcile itself to Science, there are formidable, perhaps insuperable obstacles in the way.  For Protestantism to achieve that great result there are not.  In the one case there is a bitter, a mortal animosity to be overcome; in the other, a friendship, that misunderstandings have alienated, to be restored.