Page:The True Story of the Vatican Council.djvu/144

132 incredible. But if these axioms, or any one of them, be true, the reason of man is not dependent on God, and God cannot lay upon man the obligation of believing—that is, of faith.

From this it would follow that all revelation is needless, and that there is no truth except within the order of nature. But this denies all revelation, and therefore all supernatural truths such as the redemption, the Redeemer, the supernatural order of grace. There is no alternative but between Rationalism and faith. The human reason is either a critic or a disciple, and to determine this issue the first necessary truth to be proved is the existence of God. If the world be God, or if God be the world, or if the world be all, or if there be no personal Creator distinct from it, or if we cannot know Him to exist, then the reason of man is the critic of all that remains. All nature is under his feet, and though he cannot create a grain of sand or a corn of wheat he bears himself as if he were the lord and judge of all. Such is the ethical character of complete or absolute Rationalism.

But there is another form of Rationalism which is inconsistent and transitional. Many who would shrink from affirming that reason is the sole fountain of truth to itself, and that nothing is true which cannot be found in the human consciousness or