wrote of Darwin as follows: "I have known three generations of Darwin's, grandfather, father, son; Atheists all . I saw the Naturalist not many months ago: told him I had read his "Origin of Species" and other books, that he had by no means satisfied me, that men were descended from monkeys, but had gone far towards persuading me that he and his so-called scientific brethren had brought the present generation of Englishmen very near to monkeys. A good sort of man is this Darwin, and well meaning, but of very little intellect.

Aud

this is what we have got: All things from frog-spawn. The gospel of dirt, the order of the day." (Daily Tribune, Nov. 4th, 1876.) The author of this "gospel of dirt," did not rank very high in Carlyle's estimation. But more competent authorities have spoken. Dr. Constantine James, Dr. Em. Bailey, and A. Kolliker, and many other eminent men, deny altogether the physiological principles laid down by Mr. Darwin, and show that he had no accurate knowledge of Embryology, though he draws largely on that science when illustrating his evolution theory from the human foetus. We are not therefore called upon to regard Mr. Darwin's assertion as final. And on this special question he is contradicted by a whole host of naturalists, many of them quite as distinguished as he is supposed to be. A condition absolutely necessary to the truth of the evolution theory is the complete transmutation of species. And yet the most eminent Naturalists pronounce this transmutation impossible. Darwin's own admission has been already quoted. The late Abbe Moigno, who devoted fifty years to this special study, whose ability and fearless honesty no one who reads his work can question, says of Darwin's system, “it is a gratuitous hypothesis triumphantly refuted by the notorious fact of the fixity of all species." (Vol. II., p. 338). And in the same, and subsequent pages, Moigno quotes a number of eminent French scientists against the transmutation of species. Some of them go so far as to say that "this mutability of species would render experimental science impossible." One of these writers, M. Andrè Sanson, says that for denying the transmutation of species, he has been charged by some of his brother positivists with affording an argument in favour of the Biblical dogma of creation. And he admits the charge, saying, "In truth it is not my fault, it is the fault of science, I am a man of science, not a theologian." A candid admission

this that he cuts away the foundation from the evolution theory because science compels him to do so. If then, it were even a mere matter of testimony, the evidence of so many eminent men must far out-weigh that of Darwin. The differences in structure between man and the gorilla. may be very trifling, and such as they are we must accept them from anatomists, but we must learn from nature herself the value of these differences; and she understands them to be the equivalent in physical organisation of the entire mental difference between man and the gorilla. The fore-paw of a monkey, and the human hand, may differ very little on the dissecting table, but nature uses one for the climbing of trees, and like functions, whilst the other is the instrument whereby the most ingenious contrivances of man's mind are executed. Resemblances of organism do not, therefore, explain the enormous gulf which separates the works of one class from the other. The evolution theory breaks down hopelessly in the attempt to bridge over the gulf between instinct and reason. If the theory be true, instinct must have passed into reason, the sensitive appetites of the brute must have passed into the intellectual and moral faculties of man. Now, even the most enthusiastic evolutionists admit their inability to account for this great change. Darwin evades the difficulty by saying that the mental powers of man and beast differ only in degree, not in kind. Huxley honestly admits that "there is an immense, practically, an infinite distance, an impassable gulf between the mental powers of the lowest man and the highest ape." Scores of writers of the same positivist school could be quoted re-echoing Huxley's sentiments. We see around us some of the species from which Darwin and his friends would derive our origin. Clever, cunning, agile, these apes are certainly; they can climb trees, pluck fruit, worry their enemies, and play several pranks, just as well-trained dogs may do. But of any higher mental operation, of comparison, induction, invention, even for self-defence, other than that which nature supplies, they are quite incapable, as they have been every day of the seven thousand years that man has known them. Brute, unreasoning things as they are to-day, they have been since the first day of this history, their mental powers fixed and stationary all the time. Man, on the other hand, from the very dawn of his history, verified the character which Revelation gives of him: "Thou hast made him a little less than the Angels.'

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From the earliest times he has filled this earth with monu ments of his genius. Reason, that glorious God-given gift, has asserted itself in every age, as the one quality that has made man what his Creator intended him to beLord of all creatures. The highest mountain capped with eternal snow, the ice-bound regions that surround the poles, the barren waste and sandy desert, he has mapped out and measured. He has surveyed the extent of the heavens and the ocean's abyss. He reads the debris of our oldest monuments, and makes them tell the history of those who witnessed their rise, their duration, and their fall. He has dug into the bowels of the earth, and from the strange hieroglyphics that lie buried there, he has rescued the history of long forgotten ages. He has analysed and mastered the powers of nature, and is daily making them more and more subservient to his will. The fury of the storm, the darkness of night, time and distance, are yielding to man's intellectual powers. And yet Darwin dares the audacious assertion that man's mental powers differ from those of the brute, not in kind but in degree! Surely every page of man's history stamps upon Darwin's degrading system a verdict of contemptuous condemnation. The evolution theory then, whether applied to man's body or mind, is a hopeless failure. Science condemns it; reason revolts against it; Revelation anathematizes it. Therefore "cut it down, why cumbreth it the ground?" How forcibly do the inspired words come home to us. "Man when he was in honour did not understand, he is compared to senseless beasts, and is become like to them." Man in the pride of his heart refuses to listen to the voice of his Creator: shuts his eyes to the light of reason, scoffs at Revelation, and in his foolish effort to escape from his Creator's hands he brings himself down to the level of the beasts, and deliberately claims kindred with them. Such are the dreamings which our scientists offer as a substitute for our faith. They would take from us the God whom our fathers adored, the religion that is our sole consolation here and our passport to happiness hereafter, and as a substitute they would give us-nothing, absolutely nothing. Well may we reproach them in the words of Magdalen of old, "they have taken the Lord away, and we know not where they have laid Him."

J. MURPHY.

QUESTIONS REGARDING "FORMAL INTEGRITY."

N a recent number of the ECCLESIASTICAL RECORD allusion

secure, by interrogation, the integrity of his penitent's confession; but circumstances then admitted no lengthened consideration of the extent of that duty. As, however, it is a matter involving grave and daily recurring responsibility upon the confessor, an inquiry in more minute detail -though necessarily limited in its scope-may be useful. The purpose of this paper will be fully attained if it serve as even an imperfect Index Capitum of authors in whose works the subject will be found fully discussed.

That the confessor is bound to interrogate, and bound in an obligation second only to that of the penitent to examine his conscience, is obviously involved in the fact that he is the custodian and dispenser of the sacraments, and must therefore jealously make provision against their profanation. Hence in the sacrament of Penance the confessor is bound by his office to supply the deficiencies of his penitent, so that the sacrament may not, by the default of either, be subjected to irreverence. "Per se datur obligatio gravis in confessario interrogandi poenitentem, quia confessarius, tanquam judex, curare debet, ut, quantum satis est, causa judicii sacramentalis instruatur." (Gury, Cas. Consc.) Failing to secure the formal integrity of his penitent's confession, he would be (1) abdicating a fundamental function of his own ministration, by ceasing to be a competent judex; and (2) he would be treacherously and disloyally exposing the sacrament to invalidity. La Croix certifies that this is the "sententia communissima" of theologians.

Since, however, the obligation of supplying formal integrity belongs primarily to the penitent, the confessor's obligation to interrogate arises only when, and in so far as, the penitent has presumably failed. "Poenitens obligatur primo loco, et in ejus defectum obligatur confessarius ad eum juvandum juxta ipsius capacitatem, atqui ideo minus obligatur quam ipse poenitens." (DE LUGO. D. xvi. S, xiv.)

From this universally accepted principle some most useful practical rules are at once derived :

1o. Non teneris interrogare, si scias poenitentem scire quid requiratur ad validam confessionem." (LA CROIX). GURY adds: "Confessarius enim interrogare non tenetur

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nisi advertat integritatem certo aut probabiliter in aliqua re deficere." Consequenter," observes the former, "Religiosi, clerici, aliique praecipue in Theologia versati, non sunt facile interrogandi, nisi manifestum sit omitti vel non satis discerni aliquid necessarium."

2o. "Confessarius non tenetur interrogare quando advertit poenitentem, qui noverat se examinare, adhibuisse ad hoc moralem diligentiam." (Ibid). DE LUGO puts this more pointedly: "Quando confessarius advertit poenitentem scire, et posse ex se adhibere debitam diligentiam in examine, et de facto adhibuisse, non debet confessarius aliam interrogationem addere, si nesciat [hoc est, nisi sciat] aliquid per oblivionem esse omissum." (D. xxii. S. ii.)

In this way theologians indicate, by a general rule, the two very distinct objects of interrogating (1) the revelation of sins brought to memory by a sufficiently diligent examination of conscience, and (2) the making of the examination itself. These should be always kept apart, and the distinction runs through the whole inquiry as to the confessor's duty in interrogating.

All penitents, however, cannot be described as "praecipue in Theologia versati ;" and, consequently, the above rules are practically of very limited application. Outside of these and the "poenitentes pii" to whom the frequentation of the sacraments has imparted a sound knowledge of practical theology, we have those numerous classes designated by theologians as ignari, hebetes, rudes conditione, tardi ingenio, &c. Unlike the pii and docti, the presumption should generally be against the probability of their having made the requisite examination of conscience and the "confessio integra" to which they are bound. Oftentimes they are unable to make either, and not unfrequently they are unwilling; but from what source soever their deficiencies come, the duty of the confessor is well defined.

His first duty is to place himself morally and intellectually in the position of his penitent. His questions must assume no theological knowledge which the penitent does not already possess, or which he himself is not bound to impart to him. He must not seek to find in his penitent, as if he was an educated man, an intelligent power of analysing events and modes of thought, or of computing numbers. He must take him as he is cramped by ignorance and sluggishness and dearth of spiritual sensibility. He must carefully remember that in the matter of self-examination, the capacity of men is very variable, and that this variable