A noble line of investigators succeeding Franklin completed his victory. The traveler in remote districts of Europe still hears the church-bells ringing during tempests; the Polish or Italian peasant is still persuaded to pay fees for sounding bells to keep off hailstorms; but the universal tendency favors more and more the use of the lightning-rod, and of the insurance-offices where men can be relieved of the ruinous results of meteorological disturbances in accordance with the scientific laws of average, based upon the ascertained recurrence of storms. So, too, though many a poor seaman trusts to his charm that has been bathed in holy water, or that has touched some relic, the tendency among mariners is to value more and more those warnings which are sent far and wide each day over the earth and under the sea by the electric wires in accordance with laws ascertained by observation.
Yet, even in our own time, attempts to revive the old theological doctrine of meteorology have not been wanting. Two of these, one in a Roman Catholic and another in a Protestant country, will serve as types of many, to show how completely scientific truth has saturated and permeated minds supposed to be entirely surrendered to the theological view.
The Island of Saint Honorat, just off the southern coast of France, is deservedly one of the places most venerated in Christendom. The monastery of Lerins, founded there in the fourth century, became a mother of similar institutions in Western Europe, and a center of religious teaching for the Christian world. In its atmosphere, legends and myths grew in beauty and luxuriance. Here, as the chroniclers tell us, at the touch of Saint Honorat, burst forth a stream of living water, which a recent historian of the monastery declares a greater miracle than that of Moses; here he destroyed, with a touch of his staff, the reptiles which infested the island, and then forced the sea to wash away their foul remains. Here, to please his sister, Sainte-Marguerite, a cherry-tree burst into full bloom every month; here he threw his cloak upon the waters and it became a raft, which bore him safely to visit the neighboring island; here, Saint Patrick received from Saint Just the staff with which he imitated Saint Honorat by driving all reptiles from Ireland.
Pillaged by Saracens and pirates, the island was made all the more precious by the blood of Christian martyrs. Popes and kings made pilgrimages to it; saints, confessors, and bishops went forth from it into all Europe; in one of its cells, Saint Vincent of Lérins wrote that famous definition of pure religion[1] which, for nearly fifteen hundred years, has virtually superseded that of Saint James. Naturally, the monastery became most illustrious, and its seat "the Mediterranean Isle of Saints."
- ↑ That "religion is that which is received always, everywhere, and by all" (semper, ubique, ab omnibus).
