form of certain words has been altered in such a manner as to change the substance."

In like manner they condemn the process or "lapse" and "relapse." Thus was the Maid of Orleans vindicated within about a quarter of a century after her death.

Who can do full justice to the subject, a story whose sublime pathos has never been exceeded even in the annals of France, replete with national tragedies, over which the world had mourned? When all that was mortal of the Maid of Orleans had disappeared forever from human vision, when the relentless flames kindled by the vindictiveness of the secular power, to whose unsparing vengeance she had been ruthlessly consigned, had done their work and her spirit was seen soaring away from France in the form of a white dove, the hostile spectators of this final scene in the old Market Place of Rouen became their own self-accusers. In their heart of hearts they acknowledged their crime. Too late. Only time in its undeviating onward march could right the wrong. And it was not slow to do so. How consoling it is to remember that the Church shows the care of a mother for the good name of her children while ever solicitous for their eternal welfare!

A greater, a sublimer vindication of Joan's life is the process of her beatification, which began in January, 1904. The process necessarily implies a belief in her exalted virtues and concedes the truth of her praises by a host of writers.

Some of the present day infidels of France profess to see nothing higher in the wonderful career of Joan of Arc than her patriotism, to which they attribute all her military enthusiasm at Orleans and Patay, accompanied by her extraordinary success. They sneer with Voltaire at her "voices," although compelled to honor her for the brilliancy of her deeds on the battlefield, which enthused all France. How strange that the patriotism which had redeemed France in the hour of her extremest peril should have found lodgment alone in the breast of a girl but entering her teens, absolutely illiterate, and whose world should ordinarily have been the isolated hamlet of Domrémy! Was there not another in all France or Lorraine more fitted for the noise of battle and the flash of arms? Was there no other on whose brow could as well be wreathed the laurels of a nation's victory? None so blind as those who will not see. Truth to tell, "the cold abstraction of patriotism she never discovered for herself," as one of her admirers, Thomas Davidson, aptly wrote. She was moved by far different influences than those of patriotism or ambition-by her tender pity for the oppressed, her fresh young sympathy with the Dauphin and, above all, by her firm belief in her divine commission as she conceived it. To act for the future, to

read its secrets with the keenest vision of a prophet as if unveiled from the present, is not the mere patriot's attribute. Without chart or compass, book or pen, perfectly heedless of military glory for its own sake and supported at first by a mere remnant of soldiers regarding her with distrust if not scorn, she displayed an ardor and selfconfidence hitherto unknown to the greatest generals of England or France. And as to her military skill, notwithstanding her utter lack of training or experience in the art of war, there is abundance of unimpeachable testimony. Such, for instance, as that of the Duke d'Alençon and that of Thibauld d'Armagnac.

The relief of Orleans and the crowning of the King at Rheims was her express mission, according to the records of history. To unite the discordant interests of a nation, to arouse a spirit of exalted patriotism, for the want of which France was perishing, to turn back the tide of English invasion, to reprove the corruptions and immoralities of court and camp, to bear witness to the might of the God of Arms-this was the larger mission of the noble, the immortal peasant girl of Domrémy.

Ottawa, Ont.

A. J. MCGILLIVRAY.

THE WITNESS OF CONSCIENCE TO THE EXISTENCE

OF GOD.

T

HE fact that the main argument which is urged at least in modern times by non-Catholic theists to prove the existence

of God is that from the moral order renders an examination

of the argument a matter of some importance.

This is the more necessary, for Catholic apologists on the other hand fight shy of the argument as a rule, and rest their case entirely on one or other of the five cosmological proofs of St. Thomas. In the first place, then, we shall define the precise phase of the argument that will engage our attention. We shall then endeavor to show that the argument, far from being a modern one made in Germany by Kant, is in reality bound up with and essential to the truth of certain universally received views in Catholic theology; and finally we shall endeavor to show that the argument cannot be explained away on Utilitarian lines.

I.

The argument from the moral order is presented in two ways: First, in contending that many of the precepts of that order are

absolutely necessary; that their existence is inconceivable in any hypothesis, and hence that they cannot rest in any way on the fleeting things of time, but must have as their ultimate basis some necessary immutable being "with whom there is no change nor shadow of alteration." Viewed in this way, the argument from the moral order merges in and is identical with that derived from the existence of necessary truths in general.

The other form of the argument is that alone with which we shall concern ourselves-namely, that the notion of obligation which arises in the mind when the performance of certain actions and the omission of certain others occur to us, and the correlative sense of self-esteem or reproof, according as we have been faithful to the obligation or the reverse, prove the existence of some extra mundane being who imposes and sanctions the obligation. This intellectual perception of a duty and of self-complacency or fear, according as we have performed or neglected it, is conscience, at once the norm and sanction of morality.

Our opponents are two-fold: First, those who hold (and many Catholics are numbered amongst them) that the idea of obligation comes to us from without; in a word, that it is traditional. It is our thesis against them that obligation is a primary perception and arises in our minds spontaneously without previous knowledge of God or the moral order. Our argument is impugned in the second place by those who, while admitting these feelings of obligation and consequent retribution, attempt to explain them on Utilitarian principles and without any reference to an extra mundane legislator who has impressed his law on our minds.

II.

Against the first class of opponents we admit that this conception of obligation is immature, and that without the aid of others men generally could not explain the genesis of obligation nor even formally recognize it as such. But we contend that on the bare contemplation of certain acts, the conscience of one who has attained the use of reason revolts from them without the previous apprehension of God or the application of any general principle of morality, the recognition of which is not a spontaneous process, but is subsequent and reflexive. As an easy deduction from this shrinking of conscience and from the subsequent remorse and fear, if he has outraged his conscience, the average man in our opinion first reaches the knowledge of God as some superior outside himself whom he has offended. For the presence of a negative obligation or one that has been transgressed is, considering the bent of mind of men generally, much more likely to awaken this knowledge than a posi

tive one or one that has been performed. "Stern daughter of the voice of God" is not all a metaphor, and the man who has experienced the imperious dictate of conscience has been apprised of the presence of the divinity in his inner nature-"that God is not far from every one of us."

Of course it is true that before any pronouncement of conscience a child of good Christian parents is likely to have heard of God, but that he will have any true conception of Him-any realization of what God is―till conscience reveals Him as sanctioning certain acts is, we contend, very improbable. Similarly such a child will have been told that certain actions are evil and that he must not do them, as God would punish him; but it is almost impossible that a child of tender years and of average precocity could assimilate the ideas of morality and of obligation unless they were first united in some way and the admonition of the external mentor enforced by the imperative dictate of conscience.

Those who endeavor to overthrow our argument on this first line of attack, viz.: That our first ideas of God and of obligation are, as it were, echoes of what we have heard from others are, I think, principally Catholics, for Protestants as a rule admit the validity of the argument from conscience. And one of the principal dogmas of unbelievers is that morality and obligation are quite separable from a belief in God and, in fact, are found separate in the lower strata of civilization. Hence they bend all their energies to explain the problem of conscience on Utilitarian lines, and we shall see what is to be said for this view later on. Our opponents here, then, being Catholics, we are justified in repelling the attack by an appeal to Catholic principles. But first it might be well to give in a summary way an argument that applies generally.

In ancient paganism the objects of worship, such as Bacchus, Neptune, Mercury, Pluto, were often immoral as well as falsedemons and nothing else—and yet dishonesty was banned, purity was honored if not generally practised, and ascetics were admired if not imitated. Manifestly, then, the popular and traditional cult of the gods was in no way responsible for this involuntary homage to virtue. Nothing can account for it but the guiding light of conscience, which, in spite of external authority, led those that were docile to its behests away unsmirched through the quagmires of paganism to the throne of One All Holy God.

To come now to arguments that are distinctively Catholic, I would urge in the first place the almost universally accepted view1 in our theology that no adult can be ignorant of the existence of God except through his own fault. The question then we have to face.

1 See Mazzella de Deo (College Class-Book).

at once is: Whence is this knowledge derived? In a great many cases, of course, it can be and is derived from tradition-the oral teaching of parents, clergymen and those intrusted with our education. In these cases we reasonably assent to the existence of God on their authority. But in some cases such reasonable assent is precluded. Take, for instance, the children of agnostics2 educated in an unbelieving atmosphere. They cannot derive the knowledge of God that they are supposed by us to have in this way; on the contrary, a very powerful proof is necessary in their case to over come authority backed up by prejudice and inherited tendencies. Where is such proof to be sought? Not, we believe, in the five great proofs elaborated by St. Thomas, for no one would say that such persons are incapable of serious moral delinquency until they have had sufficient training to weigh and appreciate the force of these arguments. Even granting them mental capacity sufficiently evolved for this task, if we try to create for ourselves their mental atmosphere we shall realize that such speculative proofs would be quite inadequate to overcome the efforts of early training, for Suarez admits that even for specialists some of these proofs are slippery and uncertain.

Besides, it was St. Thomas' own opinion that a person entirely sequestered from society would nevertheless attain to a knowledge of God. And great probability is lent to this view by the action of the Fathers of the Vatican Council in rejecting from their canon about the knowledge of the existence of God the limitation that some proposed, viz.: That it applied only to those in normal circumstances "in societate adulta." And we make bold to say that the argument from contingency or the impossibility of an infinite series would never suggest itself to a person thus isolated. And the same would probably be true of the argument from design-having no previous knowledge of an extra mundane being, the Romulus in question would probably take things as he found them without inquiry as to their origin. Of course, the case would be quite different if he had a previous knowledge of God; then the aspect of external nature would be to him all that is claimed for it in the Acts of the Apostles and the Book of Wisdom.

Another point in this theory about unbelievers that makes for our view is the fact that sin is considered to be effective in destroying the knowledge of God, so that all admit that there are many speculative atheists consequent on the commission of habitual sin at least. There is an explanation of this fact on the theory that knowledge of God is dependent on conscience, for conscience is a delicate flower that easily loses its bloom; it is singularly liable to be choked by 2 "Principles of Moral Science."