“A portentous word has been pronounced against us to confront progress with Christianity — SCIENCE. Such is the formidable evocation with which they try to appall us. To all that we can say to base progress upon Christianity, they have always a ready response: that is not scientific. We say revelation; revelation is not scientific. We say miracle; a miracle is not scientific.

“Thus antichristianism, faithful to its tradition, and now more than ever, pretends to kill us by science. Principle of darkness, it threatens us with light. It proclaims itself the light. . . .

“A hundred times I asked myself, What is, then, that terrible science which is making ready to devour us? . . . Is it mathematical science? . . . but we also have our mathematicians. Is it physics? Astronomy? Physiology? Geology? But we number in Catholicism astronomers, physicists, geologists, and physiologists, who make somewhat of a figure in the scientific world, who have their place in the Academy and their name in history. It would appear that what is to crush us is neither this nor that science, but science in general.

“And why do they prophesy the overthrow of Christianity by science? Listen: . . . we must perish by science because we teach mysteries, and because the Christian mysteries are in radical antagonism with modern

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science. . . . Mystery is the negation of common sense; science repels it; science condemns it; she has spoken — Anathema!

“Ah! you are right; if Christian mystery is what you proclaim it, then in the name of science hurl the anathema at it. Nothing is antipathetic to science like the absurd and contradictory. But, glory be to the truth! such is not the mystery of Christianity. If it were so, it would remain for you to explain the most inexplicable of mysteries: how comes it that, during nearly 2,000 years, so many superior minds and rare geniuses have embraced our mysteries, without thinking to repudiate science or abdicate reason? Talk as much as you like of your modern science, modern thought, and modern genius, there were scientists before 1789.

“If our mysteries are so manifestly absurd and contradictory, how is it that such mighty geniuses should have accepted them without a single doubt? . . . But God preserve me from insisting upon demonstrating that mystery implies no contradiction with science! . . . Of what use to prove, by metaphysical abstractions, that science can reconcile itself with mystery, when all the realities of creation show unanswerably that mystery everywhere baffles science? You ask that we should show you, beyond doubt, that exact science cannot admit mystery; I answer you decidedly that she cannot escape it. Mystery is the FATALITY of science.

“Shall we choose our proofs? First, then, look around at the purely material world, from the smallest atom to the most majestic sun. There, if you try to embrace in the unity of a single law all these bodies and their movements, if you seek the word which explains, in this vast panorama of the universe, this prodigious harmony, where all seems to obey the empire of a single force, you pronounce a word to express it, and say Attraction! . . . Yes, attraction, this is the sublime epitome of the science of the heavenly bodies. You say that throughout space these bodies recognize and attract each other; you say that they attract in proportion to their mass, and in inverse ratio with the squares of their distances. And, in fact, until the present moment, nothing has happened to give the lie to this assertion, but everything has confirmed a formula which now reigns sovereign in the EMPIRE OF HYPOTHESIS, and therefore it must henceforth enjoy the glory of being an invincible truism.

“Gentlemen, with all my heart I make my scientific obeisances to the sovereignty of attraction. It is not I who would desire to obscure a light in the world of matter which reflects upon the world of spirits. The

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empire of attraction, then, is palpable; it is sovereign; it stares us in the face!

“But, what is this attraction? who has seen attraction? who has met attraction? who has touched attraction? How do these mute bodies, intelligent, insensible, exercise upon each other unconsciously this reciprocity of action and reaction which holds them in a common equilibrium and unanimous harmony? Is this force which draws sun to sun, and atom to atom, an invisible mediator which goes from one to another? And, in such case what is this mediator? whence comes to itself this force which mediates, and this power which embraces, from which the sun can no more escape than the atom. But is this force nothing different from the elements themselves which attract each other? . . . Mystery! Mystery!

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