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One day when we were talking about that holy liberty of spirit of which he thought so highly, as being one of the great aids to charity, Blessed Francis told me the following anecdote, which is a most practical illustration of his feelings on the subject. He had been visited by a Prelate, whom, with his accustomed hospitality and kindness, he pressed to remain with him for several days.
The separation of the world into a religious and a scientific sphere arises when the religious interpretation of natural happenings gets discredited by advancing knowledge. If one takes such an illustration as that of witchcraft the nature of the process is clear. First we have the interpretation of certain forms of dementia and delusion in terms of religion.
Now, applying the illustration to drama, I should say that the playwright is perfectly justified in letting chance play its probable and even inevitable part in the affairs of his characters; but that, the moment we suspect him of cogging the dice, we feel that he is taking an unfair advantage of us, and our imagination either cries, "I won't play!" or continues the game under protest.
Examples by the score crowd in upon our minds as we think more deeply into this subject, but space permits of only one more before passing to our special illustration: When troubled with deafness, the Duke of Wellington consulted a celebrated physician, who put strong caustic into his ear, causing an inflammation which threatened his life.
Our first illustration is from the life of Washington Allston, the great American painter. We may call it: "Praying for Bread." Many years ago Mr. Allston was considered one of the greatest artists in this country. At the time to which our story refers, he was living in London. Then he was so poor that he and his wife had not a morsel of bread to eat; nor a penny left with which to buy any.
But would this examination ever have taken place would the costly experiments which render it feasible ever have been performed if the dynamo machine was still under the undisputed control of pure science, and had not become subject to the sway of the capitalist and the engineer? Of course the electric telegraph affords an earlier and perhaps as good an illustration of the same fact.
It is inconceivable to the layman what tremendous labor is involved in the development of a single mathematical hypothesis, and a concrete illustration of it was the long time, with tremendously advanced calculating machines, that was required in their present work.
"The children must make it up themselves," was in effect his expression in sending home the order for the appropriation of the money. The career of John Howard was throughout a striking illustration of the same power of patient purpose. His sublime life proved that even physical weakness could remove mountains in the pursuit of an end recommended by duty.
This parity may exist though the two cases be apparently very remote from one another; the only resemblance existing between them may be a resemblance of relations, an analogy in Ferguson’s and Archbishop Whately’s sense: as in the preceding instance, in which an illustration from agriculture was applied to mental cultivation.
These stanzas afford an excellent illustration to the meaning of Bunyan in his Pilgrim's Progress, where Christian, before the cross, receives the roll or certificate loses it for a season in the arbour on the hill Difficulty, when loitering and sleeping on his way to the Interpreter's house, but regains it by repentance and prayers, and eventually, having crossed the river, gives it in at the gate of the Celestial City, and is admitted.
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