the title of professor that makes the learned man; and many that have never sat in the chair of a professor are more profoundly learned than many who have; and there are many sitting in those chairs who, to speak with profuse respect, are not learned. If, therefore, I find that in Germany some professors have been making declarations against the Council, that does not surprise, still less alarm, me. It is against this same rationalistic spirit—that is, the pretensions of perverted intellect—that the whole pontificate of Pius IX. has contended. And it was perfectly foreseen, that the moment this intellectual Gnosticism was touched, it would rise; and the rising has been incomparably less than was expected.

There never was a General Council of the Church after which there followed less of contradiction. After the great Council of Nice, Arianism became a formal heresy which afflicted the Church for centuries. After the Council of Ephesus, Nestorianism became a formal heresy which is not extinct at this day. After the Council of Con stance, the spirit of national insubordination sowed the seeds of Gallicanism, which was only extinguished last year in the Vatican Council. After

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the Council of the Vatican, or at least its first sessions, it is no surprise that a handful of professors in Germany should rise up against it; and when I analyse the list and find out who these professors really are, I am still farther from surprise. There are, I believe, only two professors of theology; but we find professors of botany, mineralogy, chemistry, anatomy, physic, and of I know not what. The other day we saw an address from the University of Rome to an aged and celebrated professor at Munich. Well, there came an address from the University of Rome; and there went up a cry of exultation in England, that even within sight of the windows of the Vatican, Rome had protested against the Vatican Council. I have to-day read the names of the men who signed that address: and I find that they were, with hardly an exception, men intruded by the Italian Government since last September, and that they style themselves professors of botany, of mineralogy, of chemistry, of surgery, and one describes himself as professor of Veterinary Pathology.

Before the Council met, a great preacher in France, whose natural gifts had filled the land

with his fame, in an evil hour lifted up the eloquent voice which God had given him, against the Vicar of Jesus Christ. Where is he now? Lost, powerless, unknown.

The venerable professor in Germany — more learned, indeed, in history sacred and profane, than either in Christian philosophy or in theology, the founder of a school and the master of many disciples-through the whole of the Council exercised his influence with a skill and a boldness which would have made itself sensibly felt against any authority which was not Divine. We looked forward with anxiety to what might be his future career. I was fully prepared to hear that which I have heard; and I feared too that his eminent example might have led astray a multitude of his disciples. What do I see? Not a bishop, though many were his disciples. A few priests, and a handful of professors; and this is all that comes after the Council of the Vatican. A little momentary agitation, a little transient noise, and a passing sorrow. The Council has extinguished the last remaining divergence of thought in respect to faith, to be found among Catholics. It has com- . pacted and consolidated the Divine authority of

the Church in its head, and therefore in the whole body, both in the active and passive infallibility. The authority of the Vatican Council is fatal to the semi-rationalism which had crept within the Church. The antagonists knew it well, and the Council knew it likewise when it made that definition. There never was a time when the faith of the Catholic Church was more firm, complete, and universal than at this time. And if in the course of ages a revolt of the intellect has carried away individuals from the Faith, in the course of the same ages, the manifestations of the Divine authority of the Church in the midst of mankind have been made more luminous and self-evident than ever.

LECTURE II.

THE REVOLT OF THE WILL AGAINST GOD.

'The wisdom of the flesh is an enemy to God; for it is not subject to the law of God, neither can it be.' Romans viii. 7.

ON looking back at what I have hitherto said, I feel more than ever the difficulty under which I have been, in laying before you a subject which, if it had been treated in detail, with the exactness which a philosophical or a theological argument would require, must have become entirely impossible in such a popular form. But the treating it in a popular form may perhaps lay my statement open to question and to cavil. Between these two difficulties I can only attempt to give a correct outline. I will therefore remind you briefly of what I have said.