The Blessed Sacrament by Rev. Fr. Frederick Faber

Author:Rev. Fr. Frederick Faber [Faber, Rev. Fr. Frederick]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: TAN Books
Published: 2015-06-08T04:00:00+00:00

SECTION IV

THE MATERIAL WORLD

MODERN science has divided and mapped out for us the whole of nature into various kingdoms and provinces, each representing a separate science, some formed on peculiar axioms of their own, and some on a principle of classification. These kingdoms are very unequally illuminated in the present state of discovery. Some appear to be well-nigh finished and complete sciences; others again almost like regions unexplored, with objects seen indistinctly, and as it were, in a bright haze. Yet all of these sciences are full of sacred philosophy, full of God. They raise the mind to Him, and often illustrate with peculiar force the teaching of strict and scientific theology. Rightly viewed, these various kingdoms of science represent to us the intellect of humanity, acknowledging at once the dignity and the difficulty of the search after God, and so dividing among its children separate tasks, distinct provinces, in which to limit their investigations and their discoveries; so that the one united toil of all human minds should be a magnificent and universal search for God. The physics of ancient times seemed to follow a loftier method than those of recent days.* The ancients took the nature of things in themselves to argue from, and began, like Aristotle, by laying down principles which should be fundamental truths in the very nature of things. But this was too high a flight; and consequently, in comparison with the light of modern times, ancient physics may be regarded as a failure. The later method of minute experiment, of registered observations, and of patient induction, is more fit for man, and more appropriate to a search after God amid the concealments of the natural world; and hence has come its eminent success. No sight can be more grateful to a true theologian than to behold the giant strides of scientific discovery, and the bold methods of scientific research. He has nothing to fear for his faith; except an embarrassment arising from the very riches of its demonstration, which these discoveries are continually supplying. Nothing can be more narrow, vulgar, or stupid, than the idea of an antithesis between science and religion. It is true that some of the sciences, in the earlier periods of their construction, turned the heads of those who drank at their fountains; and crude theories, incompatible with the dogmas of the faith, were the result. Yet these only changed at last to fresh and more striking proofs of the divine and unalterable truth of our holy faith. For further discovery, and a larger induction, led in every case to an abandonment of the irreligious theory. Meanwhile nothing shows the divinity of science more clearly than this, that it is so full of God and under such a necessity of reflecting His attributes and operations in all sorts of ways, that even theories constructed to hasten discovery, and which acted for a while as conditions of discovery, until discovery itself proved them at last to be untenable; still gave true

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