45 6
ESSAYS ON LIBERTY
can the stranger understand where the children of the kingdom are deceived? Against this policy a firm and unyielding stand is of supreme necessity. The evil is curable and the loss recoverable by a conscientious adherence to higher prin- ciples, and a patient pursuit of truth and right. Political science can place the liberty of the Church on principles so certain and unfailing, that intelligent and disinterested Protestants will accept them; and in every branch of l arning with which religion is in any ,yay connected, the progressive discovery of truth will strengthen faith by promoting kno\vledge and correcting opinion, \vhile it destroys prejudices and superstitions by dissipating the errors on which they are founded. This is a course \vhich conscience must approve in the whole, though against each particular step of it conscience may itself be tempted to revolt. It does not always conduce to immediate advantage; it may lead across dangerous and scandalous ground. A rightful sovereign may exclude the Church from his dominions, or persecute her members. Is she therefore to say that his right is no right, or that all intolerance is necessarily wrong? A newly discovered truth may be a stumbling-block to perplex or to alienate the minds of men. Is she therefore to deny or smother it ? By no means. She must in every case do right. She must prefer the law of her own general spirit to the exigencies of immediate external occasion, and leave the issue in the hands of God. Such is the substance of those principles which shut out The HOJ1ze and Foreigll Review from the sympathies of a large portion of the body to which \ve belong. In common with no small or insignificant section of our fellow - Catholics, we hold that the time has gone by \vhen defects in political or scientific education could be alleged as an excuse for depending upon expediency or mistrusting knowledge; and that the moment has come \vhen the best service that can be done to religion is to be faithful to principle, to uphold the right in politics though it should require an apparent sacrifice, and to
