TELL US ABOUT GOD

WHO IS HE?

'ckU:

God, Fact or Phantom

Faith or Godless Science?

God or Man?

We Know God Exists

Christ, Lunatic or God?

Three Persons in One God

Jo. 57



Why the Knights of Columbus

Advertise Catholic Faith

The reason is simple. We Catho-

lics wantour non-Catholic friends

and neighbors to know us as we

really are and not as we are some

times mistakenly represented.

Wef are confident that when

our religious Faith is better un-

derstood by those who do not

share it, mutual understanding

will promote the good-will which

is so necessary in a predominant-

ly Christian country whose gov-

ernment is designed to serve all

the people—no matter how much

their religious convictions may

differ.

American Catholics are con-

vinced that as the teachings of

Christ widely and firmly take

hold of the hearts and conduct

of our people, we shall remain

free in the sense that Christ

promised (John VIII, 31-38),

and in the manner planned by

the Founding Fathers of this

republic.

Despite the plainly stated will

of the Good Shepherd that there

be "one fold and one shepherd,”

the differences in the understand-

ing of Christ’s teaching are

plainly evident. It has rightfully

been called "the scandal of a

divided Christianity.”

If there is anything which will

gather together the scattered

flock of Christ, it is the nation-

wide understanding of the

Savior, what He did and how He

intended mankind to benefit by

the Redemption.

To this end, we wish our

fellow-Americans to become ac-

quainted with the teachings of

Christ as the Catholic Church

has faithfully presented them,

since the day the apostles in-

vaded the nations of the world

in willing and courageous obedi-

ence to Christ’s command: "Go,

therefore, and make disciples of

all nations . . .” (Matt. XXVIII,

19).

SUPREME COUNCIL

KNIGHTS OF COLUMBUS
Religious Information Bureau

4422 LINDELL BLVD. ST. LOUIS 8, MO.

© Knights of Columbus 1959



GOD — Fact or Phantom

It was just before Easter, 1942, and

Moscow lay under snow. At night

the city was dead, without light and

without movement. The streets were

totally deserted, for there was a cur-

few and the sentries were under

orders to shoot at sight. The German

Army was moving on Moscow.

There might be paratroopers or

enemy agents infiltrating into the

city by night.

On the Thursday before Easter

Sunday PRAVDA announced that

on Saturday night there would be

an Easter vigil religious service. No

one believed the newspaper an-

nouncement. For over twenty years

Russia had been officially an atheist

state. Religious instruction in

schools and public religious services

were forbidden. The Cathedral in

Moscow was a state building. All

the modern methods of propaganda

had been used on a vast and un-

ceasing scale to prove to the people

that there is no God. For over twenty

years there had been no public re-

ligious service. No one believed the

newspaper announcement.

On Friday the Press announced

that late street cars would run to

transport worshippers to and from

the Easter Vigil, and that the curfew

would be relaxed for that night.

Long before midnight on Satur-

day the Church was full; the doors

were closed for there was no more

room. It was a strange service. The

Patriarch of Moscow was dressed

in gorgeous vestments, as also were

his ministers. But they had no ves-

sels for the service. The communion

plates and the chalices had long been

melted down for the party funds.

Clothed like Solomon in all his

glory the ministers used jam jars

and enamelled plates for their sacred

vessels. It was a strange service.

And the strangest thing of all was

that those who were there had been

taught, old and young, that there is

no God, that religion is the opium

of the people and that man’s para-

dise is to be found on earth. People

who had questioned these tenets

were no longer to be found. Those

who remained were too wise to ask

questions. Yet there in the capital

1



of atheism, after twenty years of a

police state, after twenty years of

darkness, there was suddenly a ray

of light (The London OBSERVER,

Christmas, 1958).

Freedom Only Under God

Who were they worshipping on

that Easter night? A fact or a

phantom? The official party line

had not changed. The serfs were

worshipping a phantom. But if it

helped to beat the Germans, who

cared? And now that the war is

over, if religion keeps them quiet,

let them have their ikons, their in-

cense, their rituals. In time, intel-

lectual enlightenment will come

from the indoctrination their chil-

dren receive in school.

The fact is that these dictators

who govern the destiny of Russia

and her satellites have forced us to

make a re-appraisal of the mean-

ing of the statement that there is a

God. The sharp differences between

their view of life and ours are forc-

ing us to re-examine our roots.

The main difference between

them and us concerns our concept

of personal liberties. To us the state

is the servant of the community,

and the primary community is the

family. The state exists to safeguard

and protect the rights of families

and of individuals. The meaning of

law is that it defines our freedom.

Those who framed our laws and

our constitution proceeded from a

concept of the dignity of the indi-

vidual based on the conviction that

man is made in the image and like-

ness of God. This is the basis of

respect for man; its absence on the

other side of the Iron Curtain strikes

us like a slap in the face. There, man

is the animal who walks on two

legs instead of four. He is treated

like one and driven to his state-

determined destiny as cattle are

driven to market.

It is in this sense that the Iron

Curtain forces us to look at the

reason why we treat men in the way

we do. We do not say this proves the

existence of God. But unless we

recognize that there is a God in

whose likeness man is made, the

main motive for a democracy dis-

appears. If we act towards man as

if he were made in the image and

likeness of a lower animal, we put

him in a cage and take away his

freedom.

The final refuge of the free world

is that all men shall be equal under

God and under the law.

When The World Knew God

But while the existence or non-

existence of God may be the final

issue between Eastern Communism

and Western democracy it would be

misleading to say on the one hand

2



that all Russians are atheists and on

the other that all in the West believe

in God. We have seen the little

miracle that took place in war-time

Moscow; and most of us know that

in the Western world the sharp out-

lines of God have grown blurred.

But before we consider what God

is, we must first establish the fact

that there is a God. Two things can

be stated as a matter of fact. First,

there is no language in the world

which does not contain the name

"god.” In all the languages of the

Western and Moslem world, there

is the name "God,” meaning one

Supreme Being. We have, in other

words, a verbal witness to the belief

of the world in the existence of a

Supreme Being.

Secondly, this belief has persisted

among mankind at all times and

everywhere and it affirms that a

Supreme Being exists or that beings

exist upon whom the world and men

depend. But even this is not the

whole of the fact.

At all times and everywhere there

has been a small minority who have

asserted that there is no God. In the

records of history as we have them

we find substantially the same argu-

ments against God’s existence as we

find them today. Nevertheless the

majority of mankind has persisted

in its belief. We are dealing with a
common belief of normal humanity.

Nor can it be established that

new discoveries of science and of

knowledge have disproved the tra-

ditional belief. Science today in

uncovering the mysteries of the

universe only illustrates the skill and

intelligence that underlies these

mysteries. When a scientist achieves

in his laboratory what nature has

been doing for centuries it is hailed

as a great achievement. We call

penicillin a "wonder-drug,” and so

it is. But Alexander Fleming did not

invent it; he discovered it. Jet pro-

pulsion is a wonderful invention,

but squids have been using jet pro-

pulsion for millions of years.

If time allowed we could examine

many of our wonderful present-day

inventions and see them duplicated

in nature. When a modern airliner

lands, for example, it has to use the

basic braking mechanism that bird’s

wings employ when a bird alights.

The modern submarine has to be

streamlined to reduce water resist-

ance according to the pattern found

in the shape of the barracuda and

the shark.

The point is worth making

because our education today is

dominated by scientific skills and

technologies. This has led us into

a state of mind in which we become

skeptical of the existence of things

that we cannot weigh and measure

and dissect. This is a short-sighted

view. The human race managed to

exist for a long time without much

3



science. But it would long ago have

died out if fathers had not cared for

and protected their wives and help-

less offspring. How can you weigh

human love? How would the human

family have fared if there had not

existed always a rudimentary sense

of justice which respected, if it did

not always observe, the distinction

between mine and thine, between

duties and rights? Can you dissect

justice?

Traditional Idea of God

The modern notion of God is

blurred and vague. Before we at-

tempt to describe it, we can take

as a point of reference the tradi-

tional conception of God.

When Columbus discovered

America, the Europe from which he

sailed knew exactly what it meant

when it spoke of God. To them God

was the Supreme Being, the author

of His own existence and of the

universe, of the world and of the

men who lived on it. If you pressed

them for more information on this

Supreme Being, they replied that

God’s being was spirit. For them

any being fell into one of three

compartments. It could be material

in composition like a stone, or a

tree, or a cow. These beings were

made of parts, they could be taken

apart and they tended to fall apart

or die. They could be weighed and

measured and shaped — into build-

ings, furniture and steaks.

The next kind of being was man

himself. In comparison with ma-

terial beings, he too was made of

parts, and when he died, he slowly

fell apart through the process of

bodily decay. But during life he gave

evidence by his actions that he was

something more than only matter.

The main evidence was in his think-

ing and in his loving. If he were

only living matter like the brute

how could he express a thought in

a word? How could he in the act of

reflection make himself the object

of his own thought? Material things

cannot do that. The brush cannot

paint itself and the eye cannot see

itself. If he were only living matter

how and why could he know and

love what is good, recognize and

spurn what is evil? How could he

be a free agent and be responsible,

if the only laws he obeyed were the

laws of matter?

Man more than Matter

This thing in man that made him

different from the animal they

called his spirit or his soul. It de-

pended upon his body, of course, in

that his restless urge to know was

limited by his brain; in that his urge

to act was limited by his body and

by his physical energy; in that the

greatness of his love was limited by

the kind of temperament that he

had. At times he could act as if he

4



were only an animal. But he would

feel guilt if he did, and others

would accuse him, for the laws under

which he lived with other men were

based on the belief that he was not

a blind victim of the laws of matter

but capable of self control within the

limits of his human estate. They

made the common-sense distinction

that while a very bad man might

act like an animal, a very good

animal never acted like a man.

The third kind of being was the

being of God. In God, they said, was

knowing and loving, as in man there

is knowing and loving. But in God

there is no matter to limit him.

When God acts He is not limited

by the size and strength of a body;

when God knows He is not con-

ditioned by the condition of a brain.

The knowing and loving of God

are the actions of a spirit.

But this Spirit that is God is

supreme, perfect and without limi-

tation. He depends on none but all

things depend upon Him. So per-

fect is He that nothing can be add-

ed to Him, nor subtracted from

Him. He is of Himself and not of

another, and of Himself in such a

way that He is all that He is at once.

He is perfect within Himself, be-

yond shadow of change and subject

to no limitation.

When He acts His power is so

limitless that He makes things in

our world using no material at all.

When He knows He knows in-

finitely. His knowledge does not

vanish into a past nor is there any-

thing to know in a future. All things

are known effortlessly at once, and

loved in the same way in Himself

for He is the source of all being.

Unless He is, nothing can be.

This is a bare outline of the tra-

ditional concept of God. What has

taken its place in the modern world?

A World In Confusion

What then are the modern at-

titudes to God in our English-

speaking Western world? Roughly

speaking, they fall into three cate-

gories. There are those who affirm

that God exists, those who deny His

existence, and those who are not

sure. Let us begin with the last.

The unsure would never assent

to an explicit statement that there

is no God. But they have been con-

fused by the great religious battles

of the last four centuries; bewild-

ered by the claims of faith and

science; and so caught up by the

vision of higher standards of living

that they have little time for what

must be the most important question

in the world — is there a God?

The trouble is that religion in the

West as a vital force is far less than

it used to be. How often do we hear

our statesmen in their councils call-

ing on God? Not often, and far less

frequently than in the old days of

5



Lincoln and Jefferson. There is less

consciousness of God and His will

than there was. But for the unsure,

at any rate, bewildered as they are,

there is a feeling that God might

be round the corner. But that really

is not enough. Once we assent to

the proposition that God is, our

lives will have to change; though

they do not in fact change very much

if we go no further than affirm

there might be a God. But even here

in times of great national or per-

sonal crisis such people pray — if it

is no more than a prayer to Some-

one in the great Somewhere. And

they show their gropings for the

truth by sending their children to

Sunday School, just in case.

There is no God?

The deniers claim to prove that

God is not. They are always there

throughout Christian history, and

they use something of the same

arguments. The point about them is

that their arguments fail to convince

the fairly high proportion of un-

sure. The reason why this is so is

not only that the deniers are always

a small and militant minority, but

that people feel, albeit vaguely, that

the god the deniers dispute is not

the God Who really is. They dis-

prove, in other words, the existence

of a being who is not God.

Nearly always the deniers have

arguments which proceed from the

premise that matter is all. They do

not accept the existence of spiritual

values, nor the existence of a spirit

in man, and hence, they are incap-

able of thinking adequately" about

the Supreme Spirit Who is God.

Most of us would be hard put

to define spiritual values or spirit.

But we recognize them when we

see them. When men died for

America in the war, we recognized

the spiritual quality of their patriot-

ism. We have ourselves experienced
the qualities of love — in our fami-

lies, in the bonds that bind our

children to us. We feel it is non-

sense to say that this is entirely

material. We know that we have to

build up certain values in our homes.

They do not come automatically as

do the effects of the laws of matter.

Matter does not allow for love

which is essentially a thing of choice.

Nothing compelled a soldier on the

battlefield to risk his life to save

another wounded soldier. It was

heroism, and rightly we talk of the

spirit of self-sacrifice behind it.

There would be no point in honor-

ing the fallen, saluting the gallant,

if all of us were imprisoned in a

world of matter.

It is just here that the deniers

fail to convince even those who are

most unsure. In denying the exist-

ence of that Supreme Spirit Who is

God, they take from humanity that

of which it is most justly proud,

6



namely the transcending qualities of

some of its chosen ones in whom

the beauty of selflessness is so lumi-

nous that we can proudly and justly

talk of the spirit of man.

The believers fall into two class-

es— those who go part of the way

and those who go the whole way.

The partial believer asserts that

there is a God, but when you ask

him what that God is, you often

find it is a limited deity whom he

concedes.

The trouble is that the partial

believer tries to come to terms with

the denier. The denier says: If God

is benevolent He wishes only good;

if God is omnipotent He is the cause

of evil. Very well, answers the par-

tial believer: All the good in the

world belongs to God. The physical

evil that exists comes not from Him

but from some other source. Thus

He is powerful but not omnipotent.

Hence the partial believer is not af-

firming the existence of a Supreme

Spirit.

True Center of Existence

The total believer affirms the exis-

tence of a Supreme Spirit. In God

there is no limitation, no change,

no matter. His being is to be per-

fectly. He has no need of the uni-

verse, of the world, or of man,

because He is self-sufficient. Evil in

this world constitutes a problem

but you will not solve the problem

by limiting the power of God. That

is a secondary problem. The first

one is to account for the existence

of the world and of man.

This God is the center of exist-

ence. Deny Him and you make man

the center of existence. Limit Him

and you make God an adjunct of

man and not man dependent upon

God.

To the total believer God defines

Himself in the words He used to

Moses in the Book of Exodus: "I am

Who am.” This means that God’s

very essence is to exist, and not to

exist in the limited way in which

we do but in a total way. His very

nature is to be most perfectly.

From this point of view God is

an omnipotent being who makes the

world and us out of nothing; we do

not make anything out of nothing

but only change pre-existing ma-

terial, as a sculptor shapes his stone

or the chemist makes new com-

pounds out of existing elements.

God’s power however makes any-

thing out of nothing. And not only

that, for since a created thing came

from nothing, God must sustain that

thing in its being against the gravity

which would pull it back into the

nothingness from which it sprang.

Thus to the believer God is the

center to which all things and all

his actions must be referred. This

will not necessarily keep him from

sinning, but at least it shows him

7



the folly of acting against the will

of a Supreme Being upon Whom he

is dependent not only for his life

but also for his living.

In the absence of this vision man’s

yardstick of human behavior can

only be himself. He begins to act,

in other words, as if he himself were

the center to which all things and

all actions must be referred. Con-

venience becomes the touchstone

and virtue ceases when it hurts.

Absolute standards of right and of

wrong no longer exist because they

lack a final and supreme Guarantor.

Truth becomes relative. A lie is

always justified. Double-thinking

is justifiable whenever convenient.

Vice becomes acceptable when self-

interest demands. All of these aspects

of behavior bedevil the diplomats

of the West when they try to nego-

tiate with atheistic Communism,

because, despite the decay of reli-

gion, the West still retains its

Christian residue: a spade is still a

spade, and duty is still duty, no mat-

ter how difficult the carrying out

of it may be.

This then is the total believer’s

notion of God. God is the truth

from Whom all the truths that we

discover draw their meaning. He is

the final good from Whom all the

lesser goods we seek derive their

meaning. He is the final guarantee

of duty; in Him our obligations be-

come intelligible. What God wills

is justice, and for this all free men

hunger and thirst. What God loves

is goodness, and this all men love,

and for it some men have died. But

once you take Him away, the firm

foundations of a civilized world —

love of justice, truth, and goodness

— become as shifting sand.

The Universality of Religion

As the belief in God has existed among all the races of mankind

from the earliest times down to the present, so the practice of

religion has been likewise universal. This is as true today as it was

at the dawn of history. Whether the race be comparatively primitive

or highly civilized, religion will be found to play an important role.

The practice of religion would seem to follow as a direct and immedi-

ate consequence of the recognition of the existence of a Supreme

Being. Man expresses that acknowledgement through prayer, sacri-

fice, and ceremonial of various kinds. "Nature herself teaches us that

God is to be venerated, and of her law in this matter no man is

free.” (Cicero)

John A. O’Brien, Ph.D. . . . "Truths Men Live By”

8



FAITH or Godless Science?

It must seem to an average Ameri-

can that he is being invited to be a

citizen of two worlds, one of re-

ligious faith and the other of mod-

ern science. Here is an example.

In Dante’s great poem—The Di-
vine Comedy—the author makes a
journey through the universe. He

begins from earth, the center of the

universe and he ascends through

ten concentric spheres all revolving

neatly about the earth. He finds hell

in the center of the earth, purgatory

at Jerusalem and heaven among the

ascending spheres.

But in this cosmic union he finds

that man is real and understandable.

Man knows where he came from

and where he is going, and during

his span of life he is secure in the

knowledge that God is His own

explanation and that man has a

meaning and purpose and value that

carries over to eternity.

On the other hand, the scientist

tells us factually that neither earth

nor sun is the center of the universe.

Our solar system is only one of an

immense number. The most distant

of the stars which our telescopes can

see is so far away in space that the

time taken for its light to arrive

is five hundred million years. It is

things like this that make us wonder

if Dante lived in the real world. If

we were to tax him with our new

knowledge, his answer might be

very simple. He went on his journey

not to discover space but to discover

man.

Here now is the other side of

the picture from the scientist—

a

statement of honesty and despair:

It is Bertrand Russell in a FREE

MAN’S WORSHIP-"That man is

the product of causes which had no

prevision of the end which they

were achieving; that his origin, his

growth, his hopes and his fears, his

loves and his beliefs, are but the

outcome of accidental collocations

of atoms; that no fire, no heroism,

no intensity of thought and feeling

can preserve an individual life be-

yond the grave; that all labors of

the ages, all the devotion, all the

inspiration, all the noon-day bright-

ness of human genius are destined

to extinction in the vast death of

the solar system, and that the whole

temple of man’s achievement must

inevitably be buried beneath the

debris of a universe in ruins — all
these things, if not quite beyond

dispute, are yet so nearly certain that

no philosophy which rejects them

9



can hope to stand. Only within the

scaffolding of these truths, only on

the firm foundation of unyielding

despair can the soul’s habitation

henceforth be safely built. Brief and

powerless is man’s life; on him and

all his race the slow sure doom falls

pitiless and dark. Blind to good and

evil, reckless of destruction, omni-

potent matter rolls on its relentless

way: for man, condemned today to

lose his dearest, tomorrow himself

to pass through the gate of darkness,

it remains only to cherish, ere yet

the blow falls, the lofty thoughts

that ennoble his little day.”

It is statements like this that make

us wonder if scientists live in the

real world. For there is something

that affronts our common sense in

this beautifully written testament

of despair. Having told us that our

beliefs are "the outcome of acci-

dental collocations of atoms,” Russell

assures us of the sure truth of the

death of the solar system. But how

can truth be sure, and knowledge

other than illusion, if what happens

within and without us is no more

and no less than a dance of irre-

sponsible atoms ? When a child

gathers flowers for its mother there

is a simple beauty, innocence, and

loving thought behind the gesture,

and a direct meaning which com-

mon sense assures us demands more

in the child than just flesh and blood

to explain it.

We can write down three state-
ments which Russell would take

as self-evident truths:

1)

The inanimate world is a self-

acting, self-perpetuating sys-

tem, in which all changes

conform to material laws^

2) The earth is not the center of

the universe and man is not

its purpose. Man is an acci-

dent, the sport of blind causes,

and his thoughts and beliefs

are illusions.

3) Man is no more than the mat-

ter of which he is made.

What View of Nature

Before we examine what these

philosophical statements mean, it is

important to realize how they ever

came to be made. Why has science
put on the mantle of philosophy?

Long before modern science was

born in the eighteenth century, the

human mind had, after some strug-

gling, established the existence of

a real world distinct from the know-

er, and the capacity of the human

mind to know it adequately. This

may not seem very much to have

achieved, but in fact it was a victory

w4on against men who questioned
whether we could ever reach truth

at all.

The main questions to which

men sought the answers before the

eighteenth century had to do with

the origin of the world and of man,

his purpose therein and his destiny.

They believed that the answer to

these questions was that man was

created by God and destined for

God. And in the light of these

answers they interpreted whatever

happened within their experience.

What happened to them was what

basically happens to us, except that

10



the happenings in nature were not

interpreted then as they are now.

We know physically what happens
when a comet falls in the sky. They

did not. An epidemic broke out.

Nowadays we would track down the

virus or the bacteria and isolate the

carriers. But they knew nothing of

processes in nature. But they did

know the God of nature and the

problem of moral evil in the world.

They were interpreting the happen-

ings in nature in terms of the ques-

tions of whence is man and where

lies his destiny. For them what really

mattered was God and salvation; the

material world was interpreted as

it came from the One and led to

the other. Man was God’s viceroy

on earth, Christ was King Who led
man to His Heavenly Father by way

of the Church. And nothing else

mattered at all. There were no things

in themselves, only things in refer-

ence to God.

In the eighteenth century scien-

tists began to study things in them-

selves and for themselves, and man

in himself and for himself. The main

question was not — what is the first
origin and the last end of this ob-

ject— but, how is this thing com-

posed and how does its structure

serve its function.

Up till that time water was not

merely something to drink and wash

with. It was God’s creature by which

Christians received the life of God.

Now, quite suddenly, it became a

liquid whose behavior could be ob-

served in certain conditions. As a

liquid it possessed certain qualities.

It offered friction and the degree

of friction it offered to solids could

be measured, and all of this new kind

of knowledge could be classified.

This was really a new kind of

experience! Whatever you now

studied was by way of observation

and experiment, by way of measure-

ment and by way of weight. Things

were looked at in a new way.

For the ancient, the moon was a

creature of God, of significance as

it helped or did not help man to

achieve salvation. For the scientist

the moon is significant insofar as

you observe its phenomena.

Quantity an Attribute

The world of science is the world

of quantity known precisely by ob-

servation, by observation refined

where possible with experiment, and

expressed in the language of mathe-

matics. Before the seventeenth cen-

tury shift, quantity was just one of

the attributes of things . . . and the

least important. After the shift,

quantity became the only aspect of

reality that science accepted. But

there is reason to think that what

it ignores is rather more significant

than what it accepts.

During the last war Allied broad-

casts to occupied Europe frequently

began with the opening bars of

Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, which

became a musical V for Victory sign,
because it conveyed and still con-

veys what a critic called the knock-

ing of Destiny on the door. All the

scientist can say, however, about

these opening bars is that they are

a number of notes of different pitch.

He can say they are a number be-

cause he can count them. He can

11



determine their pitch because the

pitch of a note is determined by

its frequency; and you can measure

frequency. What he cannot measure

is the relation of the notes to each

other because that relation was con-

ferred upon them by the genius of

the composer who imposed that kind

of order, and no other kind, upon

them.

Yet in a way music is very mathe-

matical — so many beats to the bar,
so many intervals producing octaves,

fifths and scales. All this is a matter

of quantity. But who responds to

quantity when he enjoys a sym-

phony? It is the quality which

attracts — not just the notes but
the order in which the notes are

arranged . . . which belongs not to

mathematics but to genius. To say

that it is only measurement would

be like identifying a telephone sub-

scriber with his number.

The universe of Beethoven is

romantic. He shares it with Dante

and Shakespeare, Michelangelo and

Rubens. It is the world we live in,

and these men remind us of its

glories. It is a world of color and

sound, love and beauty, idealized,

perhaps, but recognizable because

to it answer chords in our experi-

ence. This is the world of qualities.

It is not the world of science.

What the shift in the seventeenth

century has done to man is well

summarized by Arthur Koestler in

his TRAIL OF THE DINOSAUR

(New York, 1955): "The old ex-

planations, with all their arbitrari-

ness and patchiness, answered the

question after 'the meaning of life,’

whereas the new explanations, with

all their precision, made the ques-

tion of meaning meaningless. As

man’s science grew more abstract,

his art became more esoteric, and

his pleasures more chemical. In the

end he was left with nothing but

'an abstract heaven over a naked

rock.’

"Man entered upon a spiritual ice

age: the established Churches could

no longer provide more than Eskimo

huts where their shivering flock

huddled together, while the camp-

fires of rival ideologies drew the

masses in wild stampedes across the

ice.”

Is Koestler right? It does seem as

if the disappearance of God has

meant the disappearance of mean-

ing from the world, because it has

withdrawn Him Who guarantees
that the appearances meant some-

thing. A thin red line has gone from
history — the red line of God’s plan
for mankind — and we are left with
peaks and troughs of human en-

deavor, with the homeless universe

ever falling; with the firm founda-

tion of unyielding despair; with all

the limitations and no one to ex-

plain them; with our existence like

a Sphinx which will not yield its

secret and with ourselves as sheep

that are leaderless on pastures made

barren by science without God.

The Bridge From Faith

To Science

The issue of the presence or ab-

sence of God, His existence or His

12



non-existence, is the most vital in

the history of the human race. The

fact is that the human species has

now the power to annihilate itself

atomically. The fact is that the mod-

ern withdrawal from God has pro-

duced a spiritual ebb-tide which has

gone back much further than ever

before. Never in the history of man

has so much power been concen-

trated within the dedicated hands of

the scientist and the technologist;

and never has there been less moral

strength to control that power. For,

as we have said, He Who gives as-
surance has gone from our values.

So far we have described the shift

from religion to science in the sev-

enteenth century and onwards, and

have described what its effects have

been on man. It now remains to see

whether or not there is any bridge

between the divided houses of re-

ligious faith and science.

The answer is that man must learn

again to live according to his nature.

Our nature is human—rational and

animal; and our rational nature

shows itself quite simply in our in-

nate urge to ask questions. This urge

is most characteristic when we are

young. What is this made of, asks

the child; what is it for, who made

it? These questions are the begin-

ning of wisdom.

'What is it made of” inquires

about structure.

"What is it for” asks about func-

tion and purpose.

"Who made it” seeks the origin

and cause.

When the child asks when and
where was it made, he is trying to

locate the object in space and time.

The first two questions are asked

in part by the scientist. He wants

precise sense information about

structure. Sense information, how-

ever, will tell him little about the

idea enshrined in the material thing

—the grandeur which Michelangelo,

for example, sought to convey in his

statue of Moses.

The scientist wants precise in-

formation about the immediate pur-

pose of a structure—the construction

of a bone and how it is related to the

supporting function of a bone, how

the whole system of bones is related

to the system of muscles which move

them. All that is excellent as long as

the scientist stays in the sphere of

sense observation. The trouble is that

he strays.

The questions of theologians were

ultimate questions. They wanted the

very first origin of things. Who
created man in the beginning? What

is his final end, his ultimate pur-

pose? Their reasoned answer was

that GOD answered both questions.
If they could stand before the bar

of history their defense would be a

noble one. We ignored nature, they
would reply, because God absorbed

us. Not for us the electronic brain

and nuclear power, but the Cathedral

and the Crusade. For us is the won-

der of the God Who became Man
on earth, so that, though earth be

an insignificant planet, at least a

star danced at His birth, and the sun

shone on Christmas Day as no star

shines and God saw with eyes like

ours in the first light of the morning.

13



GOD or MAN?

As the Emperor Hadrian lay dying,

he composed a poem addressed to

his soul—his "animacula,” or little

soul. This had been with him, he

pondered, in so many experiences

during his lifetime. What now

would happen to it when his clay

grew cold and his soul became an

exile without a home?

At some time, no doubt, the

thought has occurred to us. Have

we a soul and how do we recognize

it? Will it survive us after death?

By a soul is commonly meant a

spiritual principle within us which

informs our bodies, renders us hu-

man and distinguishes us from

animals. Being spiritual it is not

composed of parts as our bodies are,

and hence within it there is no ten-

dency for the parts to fall apart. And

as such we regard our spiritual and

major component as beyond death

and corruption. In this sense the soul

is said to survive the body.

How is it to be recognized, and

what does it do? If it is a spiritual

reality then we must not expect to

see and touch it. At times it has been

suggested that bodies should be

weighed before and after death, and

the difference between weights (if

any) would demonstrate the pres-

ence or absence of the soul. But that

is a view of the soul that sees it as a

sort of material vapor and not as a

component simple in constitution

because free from parts and above

the laws of matter.

The best way to encounter the

soul within us is, like the Emperor

Hadrian, to seek its action within

the experiences of our lifetime.

It is when we seek to evaluate our

experience that we encounter the

soul in action. Some of our experi-

ence cannot be understood if we

are only higher animals.

Let us begin with man’s capacity

for love. Our instinct is to love what

is good. If we were only material,

then the goods we would seek would

be those which satisfied our mate-

rial needs. You would think then

that if man had enough good food,

money, prestige, recognition, a good

wife, a good marriage relationship,

a good family—that he would have

achieved everything and should be

unconditionally happy. But in fact

we desire health and we experience

sickness; we amass money and leave

it all behind when we die. Death

appears to end all the goods we have

enjoyed. It is not only good things

we want; we keep wanting better

14



things—more out of life than it ever

quite gives. In brief we are never

satisfied totally and continually.

The Soul’s Restless Search

Now why is this? It can only be

because our capacity for love is

greater in its demands than the satis-

faction things can offer us. We want
life and want it more abundantly.

We want happiness and we want it
unconditionally. What is it in our

make-up which makes us want the

best and continually leaves us dis-

satisfied because the best is forever

just out of reach? The Christian an-

swer is that the Good we strive for,

which things cannot give us, is the

hunger of the soul for the Good we

call God.

We all hate to be aimless. We
want to have a purpose in our lives—

something to aim for, a good, a goal,

an end. On this material plane this

is most easy to understand. A hun-
gry man works for food; a starving

man makes the acquisition of food

his sole object; a man marooned in

the desert looks for water.

These objects are felt as needs.

Now there is an inner need of a

special kind which belongs to the

soul of man. This is our need to have

a master purpose in life, a last goal,

a final end, from which all our striv-

ing for lesser ends will derive its

purpose. If you build a house you

start from the foundations. To the

unskilled the first brick and the

second and third bricks you lay do

not seem to have any purpose. But

they have. The laying of each brick

derives its meaning from your final

purpose, the construction of your

house. That is the master purpose

that creates order out of the chaos

of all the building materials lying

around.

In the construction of our lives

the reality that gives purpose to our

actions is the possession of some

master end to which all our actions

are subordinated. The .end of any

action that we do is either complete

and final itself, or it leads us on to

another end which is final or leads

to still another end. Eventually we

are driven to wanting something

which is so worthwhile in itself that

it can be subordinated to nothing

higher. When we have reached this,

we have found God.

It is here, too, that we encounter

the soul of man in action. Its needs,

unlike those of the body, are never

satisfied. For our will that loves,

even the best is not good enough;

for our mind that knows, there is

an irresistible search for truth. Our

common experience of these needs

is felt in our search for happiness—

to love and be loved, to know and

be known, onwards towards ecstasy.

No Substitutes for God

Now it is just here that substi-

tutes for God let man down. First,

he takes some object or person, in-

vesting it with a magic it does not

possess—the millenium, for exam-

ple, that a Marxist works for; the

achievement of social prestige; the

amassing of a fortune. These substi-

tutes, however, are relative things.

15



The let down comes when he starts

treating them as if they were abso-

lute things.

Secondly, he maintains the fraud;

and here he is his own propaganda

agent and perhaps his own execu-

tioner. What he has chosen as the

main purpose of life may indeed be

a good thing in itself, but our ex-

perience teaches us that even the

best is not good enough. Yet he has

to convince himself that the good

thing is the best thing; and, of

course, things promise us nothing.

Finally he goes in one of two direc-

tions. If he is resilient when his ob-

ject or person has let him down,

then there are plenty of fish in the

sea and he goes off fishing for some-

thing else to keep him busy. If he

is not, however, and the market has

crashed, or the perfect woman let

him down, or he has failed in the

public eye—well, the weekly news-

papers are full of accounts of suicide

stories.

Modern Idolatry—
The Godless State

In poor humanity’s search for

happiness all the substitutes have

been tried and in the end found

wanting. Nothing outside us is really

good enough. If we are to be per-

fectly happy then we must be pos-

sessed in our souls of all good, and

only the Supreme Spirit Who is all
goodness, all truth, and all beauty

can do it. Our hearts are restless, said

a great Saint, and they will not rest

until they rest in Him.

The weakness of some of us to

deify objects or persons is the weak-

ness of some countries too. It is

strange that the political theories

which have the strongest hold on

their peoples are those which have

a pseudo-religious character. Take

Communism, for example.

Throughout its history the human

race has always dreamed of a society

in which there is full and perfect

happiness because there is perfect

justice and equality. Despite the

dream and the wish, the sad fact

is that in any society there is some

injustice, discord, and rivalry. But

man’s soul knows that there is a

certain ideal pattern of justice in

which wrongs are righted, responsi-

bilities accepted and discharged, and

the rights of men respected. An-

gered with the injustices that they

see, some men turn to Communism

as supplying the answer.

As Marx saw the problem it was

this. The fact of Capitalism must

beget its contrary; that is to say, the

oppression of the many workers by

the few rich would cause in the end

a revolution by which inevitably and

automatically power would pass to

the workers. They in turn would

establish a dictatorship and this dic-

tatorship would be vested in the

state. The state, however, was to

be only a temporary establishment

and of its own accord it would with-

er away. Why? Because the revolu-

tion would have destroyed private

ownership and thus there would no

longer be any reason for class strug-

gle. In the absence of class struggle

there would be no need for a state

to defend the interests of the pro-

letariate.

There is, of course, more to it

16



than that. Marx was an out and

out materialist. He did not believe

in free will, in the right to owner-

ship, or in God. For him history

was the product of the inexorable

laws of profit and loss. What a man

was, what he could be and would be

were all molded by the laws of

exchange. As a result there would

always be a class war between the

"have’s” and the "have-not’s,” the

owners and the workers, the for-

mer protected by the state.

Since he published Das Kapital,

the history of the trade union move-

ment and of social legislation has

made nonsense of some of what he

said. Western democracies since the

end of the last century have been

correcting their most glaring abuses;

and something like a balance has

been struck between capital and

labor.

Communism vs Christianity

However, much of what Karl

Marx taught has been modified by

the Russian Communists. The main

architect was Lenin. He had doubts

whether the process outlined above

(sometimes called the Marxian di-

alectic) would really work. He said

that the proletariat needed guidance

from without and that this leader-

ship should be vested in a revolu-

tionary vanguard called the Com-

munist Party. Marx had said that the

state would wither away because in

the absence of private ownership

class struggle would disappear. Lenin

said that Marx was right, but the

process would be a protracted one.

In this way the Party was ensured

power and permanence.

The question remains, however,

why is Communism successful?

Part of the answer is that Com-

munism gives a faith to men who

have none. It appears to give a mas-

ter purpose to life—the restoration

of justice in society. It gives a sense

of belonging to bewildered sheep

who are starving spiritually on pas-

tures made barren by science with-

out God. "Are you hungry, dispos-

sessed, unhappy,” it asks of the

three-fifths of the world who are

underprivileged. "We will redress

your wrongs, feed you, and make

you happy by giving you Paradise

upon earth.”

In this latter role, it assumes a

pseudo-religious character. This can

be seen if we tabulate its answers as

against the Christian answers to the

questions that most deeply concern

us.

What is man’s origin? Commu-

nism answers, "You are the product

of a blind process in matter called

evolution.” Christianity answers,

"You were made by God as a result

of His infinite love.”

What is man’s pattern and pur-

pose? Communism answers, "To

achieve revolution, and to know,

love, and serve the state. There is

nothing else.” Christianity answers,

"To revolutionize your thought and

behavior in the knowledge, love, and

service of God in this world and

to enjoy eternal happiness in the

next.”

Who shall guide us? Communism

answers, "The state shall guide you.

It is omniscient. If you are blind to

teaching, you will go to Siberia or

be liquidated. The state is the in-

17



terpreter of Marx.” Christianity an-

swers, "God Himself will guide you

through His revelation. If you are

blind to it, you must answer to

God.”

What is death? Communism an-

swers, "The end of everything.”

Christianity answers, "The begin-

ning of eternal life.”

What is life

?

Communism an-

swers, "A search for Paradise on

earth.” Christianity answers, "A

preparation for everlasting happi-

ness with God.”

Not long ago Communism was

wrapped in a death struggle with

Nazism, a war of ideologies, as it

were, within the canvas of the Sec-

ond World War. To the young Nazi,

Hitler had said "I will make you a

hero”; to the young Communist

Stalin had said "I will give you Para-

dise upon earth.” To each the strug-

gle had become a crusade. The Nazi

had lavished upon Hitler and the

German race the honor that Chris-

tians reserve for God. But this

kind of love bred hate. The ideals

of young Germans—patriotism and

self-sacrifice—were directed to false

ends, and all of us know the corrup-

tion that came upon Germany and

the appalling disaster that overtook

it.

At the same time we remember

what happened in Russia. If a mil-

lion Ukrainians refused to be col-

lectivized they were starved to death.

In the Soviet satellites, slave labor,

the concentration camp, brain-wash-

ing—all of these await the slightest

disobedience.The Communist search

for justice has been as corrupting as

the Nazi search for power. The erst-

while idealists have become fanatical

tyrants. They dictate what their peo-

ple must think and rob them of their

fundamental rights. In a Godless

world, the striving for justice has

defeated itself.

In the last analysis, men can only

be made "good” according to the

brand of Russian goodness, by fear

and threats. But men can make them-

selves good if they know that God

speaks to them in conscience, that

they will have to answer to Him one

day, and in Him they will find the

goodness, the truth, the justice and

the happiness for which they sought

during their days.

"Man is fearfully and wonderfully made. We never fail to be

impressed with an intricate mechanical device, such as a linotype

printing machine, a loom, a calculator machine; and we praise the

maker. Why are we not more generous in our adoration of a living

creature, which is more than any machine? Why are we not more

inclined to do homage to the Prime Mover, who made things make

themselves?

J.
A. Thompson

"Science and Religion”

18



WE KNOW GOD EXISTS

There are two kinds of arguments

for God’s existence. The first affirms

His existence from the use of rea-

son; and the second grows out of

the historical existence of Christ.

The arguments from reason begin

with the premise that this world

does not contain its own explanation.

As we know our world, it is a planet

revolving about the sun, ninety-

three million miles away. The sun

itself is not the center of the uni-

verse.

At the same time there are man-

made satellites revolving about the

sun. If we ask who put them there

and how did they get there, the an-

swer is that scientists put them there

using rocket-stages to get them into

orbit. If another satellite went into

orbit again we would ask how it got

there. We would remain unsatisfied
until we discovered that the agents

were the Russians or the Americans

or the British.

The same mental instinct which

demands to know who has put a

rocket into orbit around the earth,

also demands to know who has put

the earth into orbit around the sun.

To answer that the earth is just there

and so is the sun leaves us dissatis-

fied because it offers no explanation.

This is another way of stating that

there is no effect without a cause.

Common sense is always looking

for causes to explain events. Police

find a dead man on the road. How
did it happen; was it a hit-and-run

driver? Did the man fall out of the

car? Who is he? Who did it?

We know when we are causing
something. I drive a golf ball from

the first tee. Something happens be-

cause I make it happen. Nothing

happens without a cause. A plane
crashes and there is an investigation

called because common sense assures

us that nothing happens without a

cause. The cause is there, even if we

cannot discover it.

What or who caused the earth?

Whatever, whoever brought this

vast immense universe into being

cannot be less than the universe. No
cause can be less than its effect. A
man with strength to lift only half

a ton cannot lift a whole ton. If he

lifts a ton he must have that much

muscular strength.

We are then dealing with a Power
of some sort of immensity to explain

the immensity of that universe we

observe. What sort of Power can it

be? Day follows night with regular-

ity; season follows season; trees,

19



flowers, animals all follow a certain

and predictable course of behavior.

What happens is so well-defined

that we can say they happen accord-

ing to laws in nature. The Power is

a law-giver, a law-maker Who gives
testimony of intelligence.

This immense Power of terrify-

ing Intelligence (we are still making

fresh discoveries of design in na-

ture) is subject to the same question.

Who caused it or Him? If it or He
is the effect of another Cause, there

must be behind Him another Cause,
of which He is the effect; or He
must be without a Cause because

He IS of Himself and not of an-

other. Ultimately there must be a

Being That Is, a Supreme Cause

Who depends upon no other for His
existence.

The Reflection of God

In The World

We are not content with the state-
ment that God made the universe.

We ask further what is His relation
to it? How is He present in the uni-

verse He has made? There are some

who think that He is infinitely re-

moved from it; and others who say

that He is so much in it as to be

identified with it. The first set of

thinkers are so impressed by the

absolute perfections of God that they

think He would be diminished in

some way, unless He were cut off

from it. He is the architect but once

the building has been made He

leaves it to stand by itself. The sec-

ond group are so impressed by the

world as an expression of the Divine

Artistry that they think God is in

the universe as the singer is in the

song. The order they see in the uni
:

verse is God in the universe, which,

as it evolves, expresses the growth

of God in perfection.

Group one assumes that the Su-

preme Cause is not interested in His

effects. Group two assumes that the

Supreme Cause is not supreme, and

in identifying Him with His crea-
tion asserts that He is not perfection,

but is growing thereto.

Midway between these two ex-

tremes is the view that God is the

Supreme Cause from Whom all
things ultimately proceed to their

separate existence. God is thus the

ground of all beings but remains the

Separate One. In this view God is

so perfect that He needs nothing

outside Himself; yet, nevertheless,

He has, out of love, produced a

finite and limited world in a vast

universe.

This world is, then, an expression

of the Divine Artist and, by a con-

sideration of the things that He has

made, it is possible to see a little of

the Divine Imprint; in the same way

we examine a portrait and deter-

mine its authorship by some great

painter.

Of all things we can ask a three-

fold question. We ask—on what plan
was this conceived? Some material

thing, such as a flower or a dog, con-

tains within it an idea, a blueprint,

a form. We say to ourselves that the
blueprint of the flower is to ensure

the continuance of a plant species

by the formation of seeds.

Then we ask—why was it made in

the first instance? What is its ulti-

mate purpose? And lastly we ask-

20



who made it?

Consider these aspects at work in

an artist. He is, shall we say, a sculp-

tor. Before he chisels his stone he

must have an idea of what he wants

to do. Secondly he must have a pur-

pose, an intention to carry out his

plan; and lastly he must put his plan

into effect. Omit any of these and

no statue will be made. The final

work will embody the artist — his
idea, his purpose, his skill in execu-

tion.

Wisdom

God is embodied in His universe

as the Wisdom Who conceived it, as
the Will Who carried out the cosmic
project and as the Power Who sus-
tains it. As Wisdom God is in the

butterfly and the bird. They are both

composed of living matter, but they

belong to different orders of animal

creation. What makes the living

matter of the one a butterfly and the

living matter of the other a bird, is

the different conception of animal

that each enshrines. The idea or the

form is a reflection in matter of the

idea that exists in the mind of the

Divine Artist. Every tree and every

flower embodies an idea in the Di-

vine Mind and speaks of God as a

poem speaks of its author.

The wisdom of God in creation

is in its last analysis the reason

why we know. When we learn, it
is because we discover the form or

idea hidden in the material com-

position of what we study. Unlike

animals we have the X-ray power

to penetrate material things and find

what is in them. What is printed

on this page is so many letters strung

into words — material things made
out of pulp and print. You the

reader, take the meaning out of

them. Dr. Alexis Carrell in his

Reflections on Life puts it this way

. . . "all (scientific) research begins

with an act of faith in the rational

ordering of nature.” Unless nature

made sense, it could not be studied.

When we study it we learn a little

of the divine ideas.

Goodness

God is in things secondly by His

goodness. To things he has given a

purpose. Plants are green because

they contain a pigment, and the pig-

ment has the power of absorbing

energy from light and using that

power to bond together inorganic

materials in the atmosphere and

make of them sugars and starches.

In this way natural food granaries

are formed and upon them feed

animals, and upon them we our-

selves feed and maintain ourselves

in existence. The plant which makes

starch and the animals which feed

upon it follow blindly a purpose

they do not understand.

The urge by which a plant or an

animal follows the law of its nature

is what we mean, then, by purpose.

Man must discover his own purpose

by using his reason. That purpose,

the urge of a rational nature, is to

discover the truth and goodness of

God.

We discover goodness in things
when we experience love for them.

A man loves his automobile because

it serves him, gets him around, is a

delight to drive. A man loves his
wife because of the goodness he

21



finds in her. In courting days he was

discovering that goodness and feel-

ing more and more attraction to it.

At the same time he was finding out

more about her—what sort of com-

mon interests they shared and so on.

Eventually he decided that he want-

ed to unite with her in marriage.

Love teaches us how good things

and people are, and the more we

love the more we want to be united

with what we love, to possess and

be possessed. Ip this sense our pur-

pose in life is to know and love God

—to seek His truth and His good-

ness.

Without God there is no explana-

tion for "the rational ordering of

nature”—no satisfactory explanation

of our own existence. Without God

there is no explanation of our pur-

pose in life, and of our need to have

a master purpose in life. Without

God there is no explanation of what

we mean. We are like satellites coast-
ing in orbit and no one fired us, like

arrows speeding through the air and

no bowman or archer to explain

them. Where did we come from,

where do we go—in a meaningless

orbit, from nothingness and into

nothingness without explanation?

Power

God is in things by His power. To

Moses He said "I am who am.” All

of us have existence, but of God it

can be said simply that He exists.

Our existence is partial, from mo-

ment to moment. He possesses the

whole of His existence at once. Our

existence is limited—our bodies die,

we are chained to space and time,

controlled to some extent by pleas-

ure and pain.

If nothingness ever were, then

nothing would ever be. How can
something come from nothing?

Only if there is a Being Whose Be-

ing demands existence can there

come from nothingness the universe

that we know. All the things that

are owe their being to God in the

same way as the rays of the sun come

from the sun.

God then is in His world by His

knowledge, by His love and by His

power. This triple action comes from

a Supreme Being Who is a Spirit.
For God is not tangible and He is

not visible and in Him there is

nothing of material composition.

For material things can suffer

change because they are composed

of parts and can be taken apart. To

suffer change is itself an imperfec-

tion. And God is perfect, otherwise

He is not God. He is the Supreme

Spirit Who is changeless, one and
entire in His wholeness for He is

not made of parts, possessing all of

His Being all at once. He is great-

ness without limit; He is all that

without beginning and without end;

all that He does is likewise without

beginning and without end. None

of His loving and none of His know-

ing have vanished into a past, nor

have more knowledge and more love

yet to come. Past and future belong

only to creatures who receive their

being from moment to moment. God

lives, God knows, God loves, God

is in one eternal now without effort

and without limit.

22



Christ Lunatic or GOD?

If reason alone were all we had to

establish the existence and essence of

God, we might feel curiously dis-

satisfied. If God is a Supreme Spirit,

omnipotent and of total benevo-

lence, the origin and end of us all,

why does He not speak and re-assure

us? The Christian claim is that, in

fact, God has spoken to mankind

first in the prophets of the Old

Testament and last of all through

His Son made man.

The historical existence of Christ

is what we are now concerned with,

and also with His claim to be the

Son of God.

The historical existence of Christ

and of His followers, the Christians,

is beyond dispute.

About the year 116 A.D. a Roman

historian named Tacitus wrote as

follows in his ANNALS apropos of
the great fire of Rome in 64 A.D.:

"A persistent rumor associated Nero

with the starting of this fire. To

combat this he decided to provide

culprits and inflicted the most atro-

cious tortures upon that sect known

as Christians, detested by the people

for their practices. Their name is

derived from one Christ, Who was
condemned to be crucified by the

procurator Pontius Pilate in the

reign of Tiberius. This pernicious

sect, formerly proscribed, has estab-

lished itself not only throughout

Judea where it originated, but in the

very City itself.” This witness is a

pagan and hostile. He is writing

less than a hundred years since the

governorship of Pontius Pilate.

Another historian of about the

same time, called Suetonius, wrote

the LIVES OF THE CAESARS. He
refers to a persecution of Jews in

Rome in the year 50 A.D. which led

to their banishment under the Em-

peror Claudius, who, he writes, "ex-

pelled the Jews from Rome because

under the influence of Christ they

had become a permanent source of

disorder.” (This persecution is re-

ferred to in a Christian document

called THE ACTS OF THE APOS-
TLES. This work was written round

about the year 60 A.D. and it re-

counts how in Corinth the Apostle

Paul encountered a Jewish family

who had been expelled from Rome.)

Yet another pagan document of

considerable importance mentions

Christ. In 111 or 112 A.D. a letter

was sent from the Imperial Legate

of Bythynia and Pontus (Asian prov-

inces on the Black Sea) to the Em-

peror Trajan. The writer was called

23



Pliny the Younger and he asked the

Emperor for a directive in the treat-

ment of Christians. The Christians,

he said, met together, sang hymns to

Christ and pledged themselves to

avoid lying, stealing and adultery.

Two had been closely questioned

by him and they seemed harmless

enough to the state. Nevertheless

pagan priests were complaining that

their temples were deserted and

traders resented that there was no

sale for sacrificial animals.

In the year 125 A.D. the Emperor

Hadrian wrote to a proconsul in Asia

directing that accusers of Christians

must appear in person to substanti-

ate charges.

As the Christians grew in num-

bers and importance there appeared

an anti-Christian writer in the

second century, called Celsus. His

attacks were violent and he was an-

swered by a Christian thinker, the

great Origen. At no point in the

works of Celsus do we come across

the flat statement: Christ never

existed. Celsus wrote as if all the

historical facts claimed about Christ

were true.

After the persecution of Nero in

64 A.D. the Christians went under-

ground, quite literally, taking up

their services in the burial places of

Rome known as catacombs. Inscrip-

tions of Christ, symbols of Him have

been dated back to this time on the

walls of the catacombs.

In brief—literary and archaeologi-

cal sources make it impossible to

deny the historical existence of that

man Whom Christians claim to be
God.

The four Christian documents

about the life and teaching of Christ

are the Gospels. It is now common-

ly accepted by the vast majority of

scholars that they are historically

valid and accurate. Various editions

are continually being discovered, in-

dicating that the text now used was

in use substantially in very early

Christian times. The most celebrated

relic is a fragment of Chapter 18

of the Gospel of St. John, called the

Rylands Papyrus because it is kept

in the John Rylands Library, Man-

chester, England. All authorities

agree in dating this fragment to 130

A.D. a mere thirty years from the

date at which the original Gospel

was composed.

The four Gospels are biographies

of Christ. No other biographies in

the world have had to face such in-

tense and sustained critical exam-

ination; and no other biographies

have been so jealously guarded in

their integrity by those who have

copied them and later printed them

in their 1900 years of history. Yet

no one has proved that they are

faked.

The light of modern scholarship

has established that these documents

were written by four men vastly dif-

fering in temperament and aim.

Three of them, Matthew, Mark and

Luke wrote for the first generation

of Christians when the words and

deeds of Christ were enshrined in

the memory of the followers and

disciples of Christ. The accounts all

have accidental differences indicat-

ing that their composition was indi-

vidual and not collective, but sub-

stantially the resemblances between

them are so striking that one feels

24



that here is history at first hand.

Though primarily the Gospels were

not written as historical documents,

the findings of modern archaeology

confirm the rare instances when

exact chronology is given. Thus in

the 3rd Chapter of St. Luke the

preaching of John the Baptist is pin-

pointed "In the fifteenth year of Ti-

berius Caesar, Pontius Pilate being

Governor of Judea and Herod being

tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother

Philip being tetrarch of Iturea and

of the region of Trachonitis and

Lysanus, the tetrarch of Abilene.”

Every name mentioned here is

known from other sources and in-

scriptions, as belonging to the period

and time Luke is pin-pointing.

When John writes (Chapter 5,
verse 2) of how Christ cured a para-

lyzed man in Jerusalem by a "pool

with five porches,” archaeologists

discover in our time the foundations

of a rectangular pool with galleries

on four sides and a division across

the center of the pool dividing it into

two basins with five porches.

Christ claimed to be God

According to the Gospels, and to

the earliest writings by the first

Christians about the central charac-

ter of the Gospels, Christ was a man

who claimed to be God, and to speak

with authority on what man must

believe and do in order to be united

with God.

He belonged to a tiny and obscure

province of the Roman Empire as

far removed from the importance of

living as a small tribe today in cen-

tral South America. His public life

was only three short years. He died

ignominiously crucified on a Cross

by the Roman authorities. His fol-

lowers claimed that He rose from

the dead. And by human standards

that should have been the end of

the affair—a public execution and

the growth of a myth. Within less

than 300 years, however, the religion

that He preached and His followers

after Him had become the official

religion of the Western World, and

a little later it dominated all of Eu-

rope. This spread was combatted in

the beginning by the whole organiza-

tion of the Roman Empire. Despite

wave upon wave of persecution this

religion rose from the ruins like a

phoenix; and upon it is built today

our constitution and our democracy,

while those who are hostile to it

comprise the Communist world. And

the vast majority of those who are

indifferent to the message still show

unconscious acceptance of it every

time they date a letter and write

down the year of our Lord. All his-

tory for the Western world falls into

two divisions—the years before and

the years after Christ. By Him the

Western world still sets its clocks.

In the Gospels Christ is seen as a

teacher and as a worker of miracles.

The purity and excellence of His

moral teaching are such that even

the Moslems who do not believe He

is God, honor Him as a prophet. He
claims to do miracles by the power

of God, so that the teaching that He

gives must stand or fall, in the sense

that the perfection of His moral

teaching disappears if it is based on

a lie.

This is particularly true of the

key miracle—namely His prophecy

that He would rise from the dead

25



and its fulfillment. This miracle was

the divine guarantee on His entire

life, for if He rose from the dead by

the power of God and at the same

time was falsely claiming to be the

Son of God, then God was a partner

to deceit.

It has been truly said that Christ

was either a lunatic or was the Son

of God He claimed to be. Jewish and

Gentile history, incidentally, are full

of characters who claimed to be the

Messias sent by God and in every

case they appear as mad. Attempts

have been made to prove that Christ

was mad. But they convince no one.

All through the Gospels the won-

derful and absolutely sane personal-

ity of Christ appears, far more bal-

anced than those who accused Him

to Pilate and those who put Him to

death. The mob hysteria which

shouted for His blood swirls about

the victim Who is Himself un-
moved. Pilate is swayed in the end

by fear of Caesar; the leaders of the

people are consumed by blood lust

and ferocity; the crowd round the

Cross insults and reviles Him; and

in the middle of it all at the height

of His sufferings. He forgives them

and prays for them.

The Gospels here are marvels of

objective reporting. What was said

and done is recorded without com-

ment or opinion. The centurion in

charge of the detail officially de-

clares that the prisoner is dead. As-

surance is made doubly sure by the

stroke of a lance into the dead man’s

side. Pilate is informed, expresses

surprise that it is over so quickly and

gives permission for the body to be

buried. The Scribes and Pharisees

secure permission for a guard of sol-

diers to watch the tomb lest the

body be stolen, and claim be made

that He had arisen. And there the

matter should have ended, a nine

days’ wonder with the usual ending.

Witnesses of the Resurrection

The Gospels record then that

those who went to the tomb on the

third day, Sunday, found the tomb

empty. Subsequently Christ appears

in different times and different

places. He is seen by so many wit-

nesses that a few weeks later Peter

can face a crowd in Jerusalem and

claim that the man they put to death

is the Son of God because he can

produce witnesses that He has been

seen. The tomb is empty; Christ has

re-appeared; what have they to say

to that? And there is nothing said

against it. The city knew about the

empty tomb, and there were crowds

of witnesses to attest His re-appear-

ance.

After the Gospels come the ACTS

OF THE APOSTLES which record
the growth of the Christian Church

in the first few years after Christ

has departed from earth. Its growth

is seen in Palestine and in Asia

Minor, Malta and Rome. In Athens,

Paul is scorned because he preaches

Christ crucified and risen; to Jewish

communities the Risen Christ is a

scandal because of the hideous mode

of His dying. In Ephesus there is a

revolt at the preaching of Christ by

Paul.

Yet despite opposition, incredu-

lity, and persecution, the growth

went on and as it did so, slowly the

worst abuses of the Western world

begin to go. Marriage and the fam-

ily gain a new dignity; the individual

26



is seen in his proper worth; a new

perspective comes into history; and

at long last the human caravan knows

its destination.

The Roman Empire at last breaks

down only for the Huns and the

Goths to be conquered by the faith

of their victims. A new Europe slow-

ly takes shape in the Dark Ages and

the time comes at the Renaissance

for Columbus to discover the New

World and bring to America the

faith of the old. In all that time and

from that time to this the four small

books that are the Gospels have

spoken to each man that has read

them in a language he can under-

stand. They are more the basis of

American culture than all the laws

of the splendor that was Rome and

all the writings of the glory that was

Greece. They and the Christ they tell

of are so much part of us that we

end by forgetting that we are what

they have made us.

For all men of good will to whom

creation speaks as a wonderful work

of God; for all honest men who feel

within themselves the experience of

emptiness and of hunger for truth

and justice; for all men who search

for a meaning in life and a destiny

to pursue, for all of those and to all

of them Christ offers Himself as the

way, the truth and the life which

begin and end with God.

To the individual and to the na-

tion is offered the liberty of the sons

of God, a liberty which is enshrined

in the Constitution and should be

in the heart of every citizen, that

this nation under God shall have a

new birth of freedom.

Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? de-

clare, if thou hast understanding. Who hath laid the measures thereof,

if thou knowest? or who hath stretched the line upon it? Upon what

are its bases grounded? or who laid the cornerstone thereof, when

the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God made a

joyful melody? Who shut up the sea with doors . . . And I said: Hith-

erto thou shalt come, and shalt go no further, and here thou shalt

break thy swelling waves. Didst thou since thy birth command the

morning, and shew the dawning of the day its place? . . . Where is

the way where light dwelleth, and where is the place of darkness . .

.

Didst thou know then that thou shouldst be born? and didst thou

know the number of thy days? . . . Dost thou know the order of

heaven, and canst thou set down the reason thereof on the earth? . .

.

Who can declare the order of the heavens, or who can make the
harmony of heaven to sleep?

The Book of Job

Chapter 38

27



THREE PERSONS IN ONE GOD

The central teaching of the Chris-

tian religion which distinguishes it

from Judaism and Mohammedan-

ism is that in God, Who is unique,
eternal, infinite and necessary, there

are three Persons truly distinct, the

Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

To this teaching from the earliest

ages of Christianity all converts

from paganism had to subscribe. A

command was laid upon the Apos-

tles (Matthew 28:19), that they

should teach all nations. Christ added

"baptizing them in the name of

the Father, and of the Son, and of

the Holy Spirit.”

From the year 100 A.D. there has

existed a Creed called the Apostles’

Creed which defined that in one

God there are three Persons. In its

earliest form, the Creed is as follows:

"I believe in God the Father Al-

mighty, Creator of Heaven and

Earth, and in Jesus Christ His only

Son, our Lord, conceived by the Holy

Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary, suf-

fered under Pontius Pilate, was cru-

cified, died and was buried. The

third day He rose from the dead,

ascended into Heaven, sitteth at the

right hand of God the Father, from

whence He shall come to judge the

living and the dead. And in the Holy

Ghost, the Holy Church, in the re-

mission of sins, the resurrection of

the body and life everlasting.”

There are many early Christian

texts of the second and third cen-

turies A.D. which attest this Creed,

though for a complete quoting of

it in Latin we have to wait until

the fourth century.

The New Testament affirms that

human reason can establish the exist-

ence of God. St. Paul writing to the

Romans (1:20) observes: "For the

invisible things of God, from the

creation of the world are clearly

seen, being understood by the things

that are made.” And to the men

of Lystra (a town in Roman Asia

Minor), he preaches (Acts 14:16):

"God left not himself without testi-

mony, doing good from heaven, giv-

ing rains and fruitful seasons, filling

our hearts with good and gladness.”

God, however, has spoken not

only through what He has made; He

has spoken to His Chosen People,

the Jews, in the books of the Old

Testament. To them He gave His

Law and promised a Kingdom and

a Deliverer. This Deliverer, the Mes-

sias, is, claims the Epistle to the

Hebrews, none other than His Son.

"God, who at sundry times and in

28



divers manner spoke in times past

to the fathers by the prophets, last

of all, in these days hath spoken to

us by his Son, whom he hath ap-

pointed heir of all things, by whom

also he made the world” (Hebrews

1:1-2). These verses show that Christ

is the end-point of God’s Revelation.

All the things that God had to say

were summed up completely and fin-

ally in Christ, the Word made flesh

(John 1:14).

From the things that God made,

and from the things that God re-

vealed in the Old Testament much

can be gathered as to what God is.

It is only in the pages of the New
Testament, however, that we gather

who God is. Christ tells us of the

intimate life of God in the Family

of three Persons. To the question

who is God, God gives a threefold

answer. God is the Supreme and In-

finite Spirit, and this Divine Nature

is possessed by three Persons, distinct

from each other.

This is the great Christian mys-

tery, a mystery because in all of our

experience we only know in man

of one person to one nature. The

word "nature” here means what man

is—namely a rational animal; the

word "person” means that each man

is captain of his soul, responsible,

that is, and incommunicable. We
sometimes call "personality” the cen-

tral self—the center of our being, the

"I myself” who is John or James and

no one else.

The Christian affirms that in God

there is one Nature—one Infinite

Spirit that knows and loves. Three

Persons wholly possess that Nature

in such a way that if one acts all

must act and none can be in isola-

tion, yet in their joint action there is

a triple emphasis which shows their

inter-relationship with each other. A
little later we will return to this

statement and endeavor to elucidate

it by example. At the moment we

must try to define the functions of

the three divine Persons in one Di-

vine Nature. We begin with the
Christian teaching on God the

Father.

The Father

All of us know what we mean by

human fatherhood according to the

flesh. It is the special kind of rela-

tionship that arises when a husband

begets a son in his image and like-

ness. The Fatherhood of God is not

according to the flesh, for God is a

Spirit.

That which is spirit in man shows

itself in our knowing and loving,

the operations of intellect and will.

Quite often we talk of a spiritual

begetting. We call a book an author’s
"brain-child”; we talk of a poet "giv-

ing birth” to a poem; we refer to the

"fertile” mind of a genius; and an

inventor prizes his inventions as if

they were children.

Dimly and with difficulty we can

apply this notion to the mind of

God. St. Paul does in Colossians 1:15.

Having given thanks (v. 12) to

"God the Father . . . who has deliv-

ered us from the power of darkness

and translated us into the kingdom

of the Son of his love,” he refers to

Christ as the image of the Invis-

ible God, the first-born of every

creature.”

Just as the son is often the image

29



of his father, so Christ is the image

of God the Father.

St. John calls Christ "the Word.”

"In the beginning was the Word,

and the Word was with God and

the Word was God” (John 1:1). Just
as the word expresses our thought,

so Christ is the complete expression

of God’s thought.

Christians rightly understand in

these phrases a reference to the spir-

itual paternity of God, a begetting

which is everlasting and has always

been of the Son by the Father.

This Heavenly Father is often on

the lips of Christ in the Gospels. In

John 16:28 and 32 Christ declares:

"I came forth from the Father, and

am come into the world ... I am not

alone because the Father is with me.”

In the next chapter Christ declares:

"Glorify thou me, O Father, with
thyself, with the glory which I had,

before the world was, with thee.” He

prays for His followers, "that they

all may be one, as thou, Father, in

me, and I in thee” (John 17:5 and

21 ).

Thus Christ talks of God as

Father, and of Himself as God the

Son made man—as God the Son,
possessing glory which "I had be-

fore the world was, with thee.” Dif-

ficult as the revelation is, it becomes

apparent that as soon as Christ re-

fers to Himself as Son, He must

have a Father; and that when He

calls God His Father, the Father

must have a Son.

"Behold,” writes St. John (1 John

3:1) "what manner of charity the

Father hath bestowed upon us, that

we should be called and should be

the sons of God.” To the Christian,

Baptism is the fact that makes us

children of God. Without Baptism

we are God’s creatures; with its re-

ception the Redeeming death of

Christ upon Calvary is applied to us,

and we become by Divine action the

adopted sons of the Heavenly Father,

and thus united to the Son of God.

God The Son

The Christian belief is that the

Christ of history is the Son of God,

eternally begotten by one ceaseless

action from the Father. When at a
moment in time this Second Person

of the Trinity took upon himself a

body and soul like ours, was born

into our world, grew up and died,

our human nature was raised up to

God.

To the enquirer who asks, "What

is Christ?” the Christian replies that

Christ is fully God and fully man. To

the question, "Who is He?” the an-

swer is that He is God the Son, the

Second Person of the Trinity.

To the question of, "What did He

do?” the answer is that He built a

bridge between us and God, over

an enormous gap made by human

sin and malice and rebellion. He was

able to do this because being the

Son of God, whatever He did was

charged with divine significance,

and by the donation of His life He

made satisfaction for our sins.

But this is only half of what He

accomplished. He gave to us all the

possibility of a new and higher kind

of life, if we would accept it.

In this new kind of life above the

demands of our ordinary nature, He

enlightens us, uplifts us to being

children of God, guides us by His

inspirations within us, and animates

us with His own life. "I am the Vine

30



and you are the branches,” He tells

us in the Gospel of St. John, "who-

ever abides in me and in whom I

abide, the same bears much fruit,

because without me you can do

nothing” (John 15:5).

God The Holy Spirit

Who is the Third Person of the
Trinity? The Father begets the Son

as the Thinker begets the Thought

in one eternal action. In this eternal

action the Love that flows between

them is the Third Person, in the

fashion dimly of what happens when

we reflect upon ourselves, and the

"I” that thinks knows the "I” that

is thought of and we rest complacent

in the affirmation of our identity.

God’s Spirit is the Love Who pro-
ceeds from the mutual contempla-

tion of Father and Son.

In the Gospels it is the Holy Spirit

who is responsible for the conceiv-

ing of Christ in the womb of Mary
in Nazareth, by His spiritual power,

of course, and not by way of human

generation (Luke 1:35). He is pres-

ent at the baptism of Jesus by John

(3:22); it is under His impulse that

Jesus retires to fast in the desert

(4:1) and casts out demons and

works miracles (11:20).

Such close union in the earthly

life of Christ is significant of the

eternal union of the Holy Spirit and

the Son of God. When Christ’s earth-
ly task is accomplished, when He has

died, risen from the tomb and

ascended into heaven, then He sends

upon His Church the Holy Ghost.

"If I go not,” He tells them in John

16:7, "the Paraclete will not come to

you: but if I go, I will send him

to you.”

In this context Christ calls Him

the "Spirit of Truth” and says "he

shall glorify me, because he shall re-

ceive of mine and shall show it to

you” (John 16:14). In the next verse

Christ reminds the Apostles of the

relation between Himself and His

Father—"All things whatsoever the

Father hath, are mine.”

In thus revealing the mystery of

the Trinity to us our Lord illustrates

our statement that none of the Di-

vine Persons act in isolation from

each other yet show in their joint

action a triple emphasis according

to their function. Take for example

the Incarnation, in which the Son

of God was made man, as we have

explained.

1. It is the Second Person Who
takes on human nature, not the

Father and not the Holy Ghost.

2. The Second Person comes from

the Father into the world, but

is not alone and not separate

from Him—I and the Father
are one.

3. The Holy Ghost is the agent

of the Incarnation, and a part-

ner in the work of Redemp-

tion.

St. Athanasius, one of the early

Christian Fathers, summarizes the

matter as follows (Ad Serapionem

1, 23, Migne, 26, 596): "The Trinity

is indivisible by nature, and its oper-

ation is one; for the Father does

everything through the Word in the

Holy Spirit; thus is the unity of the

Holy Trinity safeguarded, and thus

is it that only one God is preached

by the Church, the God Who is
above all, Who compensates all,
Who is in all.”

31



Christ has revealed to us the mys-

tery of the inner life of God in the

relations of the three Persons to-

wards each other. That it should be a

mystery is not surprising. A religion
which explains the inner life of the

Triune God and makes it a trans-

parently clear reality would have the

hall marks of a man-made religion.

Yet in the revelation of the very

life of God in the Blessed Trinity,

of eternal life without evolution or

succession manifested in Divine

Love, God comes closer to us. In the

words of Christ: "If any man love

me he will keep my word; and my

Father will love him and we will

come to him and take our abode in

him” (John 14:23).

St. Augustine shall have the last

word (De Trinitate—Migne, Latin

Fathers, 927, 928). He is recalling
the words of Paul in Ephesians 4:3

exhorting Christians to "keep the

unity of the Spirit in the bond of

peace.”

"In God this bond is the Holy

Spirit Himself, the reciprocal love

Who unites the Father and the Son;
we ought to imitate this union and

thus attach ourselves to God and to

each other; and the divine peace that

passes all understanding will be the

ideal model of that peace which, in

this world, will unite all Christians

together.”

In those old days, with what incredible assurance we ignored God;

finding indeed a million stars, but not the least proof of their Maker!

Evolution and Protoplasm were then words to conjure with. But

granting everything that evolutionists have a right to claim, there

must have been originally an Evolver; and there may be an evolution

obedient to Divine arrangement, as well as one obedient to blind

necessity. The former is indeed the sublimest possible theory of the

Divine method. Allowing that the primal germ contained all possible

potentialities, the question still remains:—’Who made that germ, and

gave it those potentialities?” An infinite Volition must have started

matter on its journey, and ordered the direction of its evolution.

What matters the modus operandi, whether by ages of development,

or by special creation, provided we acknowledge a Divine Mind as

the great Originator? To call a substance "Protoplasm” is not an

explanation of the origin of life, nor does that substance obviate

the need of a First Cause.

John L. Stoddard

32



KNIGHTS OF COLUMBUS - RELIGIOUS INFORMATION BUREAU
4422 Lindell Blvd., St. Louis 8, Missouri

List of pamphlets available at the above address. One title may be requested at a time free

of charge. Several titles, complete sets, and quantities of individual pamphlets may be ordered

at 7^ for each pamphlet, plus postage.

3. The Bible is a Catholic Book

5. Christ’s Seven Sacraments

6. The Holy Sacrifice — the Catholic
Mass

7. Why the Catholic Church says ’‘Inves-
tigate” — Masons, Inquisition, Nuns

8. Speaking of Tolerance — Controver-
sial periods in history

9. These Men They Call "Knights”

10. Why Catholics Believe As They Do
— Existence of God, Immortality

11. A Short Story of the Popes

12. Let’s Stick to Moses — Ten Com-
mandments explained

13. But Can It Be Found in the Bible? —
Bible not sole rule of faith

14. What Happens After Death?

15. Yes ... I Condemned The Catholic

Church

16. What Do You Mean "Only One True
Church”?

17. But How Can Educated People Be
Catholics?

18. No . . . Belief in God is not Enough!

19. The Real Secret of Successful Mar-
riage

20. The Way to Everlasting Life . . . The
Catholic Church

21. Is the Catholic Church a Menace to

Democracy?

22. But Do You Really Understand the
Bible? — Rules for understanding

23. A Letter to Our Non-Catholic Neigh-
bors — Aspects of Catholic faith

24. Yes, the Mother of God Will Help
You!

25. What Makes a Woman Choose Such
a Life? — Life of a Catholic Nun

26. I’ll Tell You Why I Am a Catholic
27. Why So Many Decide to Become

Catholics — Convert stories
28. Let Us Judge Catholics by the Bible

— Prayer to Saints, unmarried priests
29. But Would Christ Call You A Chris-

tian?

30. But Do You Understand What God
Told Us? — Apostles’ Creed

31. Should Children Learn About God-
in School?

32. The Bible Is Not Our Sole Guide

33. This Was the Faith of Our Fathers
34. These Are Our Seven Deadly Enemies

— Seven capital sins explained
35. Let’s Test Catholic Loyalty — A Good

Catholic is a good citizen

36. Remember the Sabbath . . . Keep It
Holy — The "Sabbath Question”

37. I Am a Catholic Priest
38. But Why the Candles, Holy Water

and Beads ? — Sacramentals
39. The Reformation. Was It Reform or

Revolt?

40. Why I Had to Embrace the Catholic
Faith — Convert stories

41. Yes, Miracles Happened at Fatima

42. Does the Bible Contradict Itself? —
Peter the Rock, Faith and/or Works

43. I Was Warned About the Catholic
Church ! — Religious Liberty

44. Why a Woman Needs the Catholic
Faith!

45. The Early Years of the Catholic
Church — First three centuries

46. Yes ... A Priest Can Forgive Your
Sins — Sacrament of Penance

47. But Why Don’t You Pray to the
Saints? — Communion of Saints

48. God’s Story of Creation — Genesis
49. Is the Catholic Church Out of Place

Here? — Catholicism and Loyalty
50. This Is the Catholic Church — Creed,

Sacraments, Mass, Commandments

51. Revelation ... A Divine Message of
Hope — Revelations or Apocalypse

52. Does It Pay to be a Catholic? — How
to be a Catholic

53. Think About Death and Start to Live
— Catholic attitude toward death

54. What Do You Find Wrong With
the Catholic Church?

55. His Name Shall Be Called God With
Us — Divinity of Christ

56. The Infallible Church, Truth or Trick-

ery? — Church of the Scriptures
57. Tell Us About God... Who Is He?

Existence and nature of God
58. The Word Was Made Flesh-

Humanity of Christ

59. Let Us Pray—Prayer

60. Gift of the Holy Spirit—Confirmation

61. The Church Says — Precepts of The
Church



Learn All About

THE CATHOLIC CHURCH

By Mail ... At No Cost

I

You can easily investigate Catholic faith and worship

in the privacy of your home.

Just send us your name and address and advise that

yoii desire to learn about the Church by mail.

We will send you an interesting course of instruc-
tion which is short, yet complete.

The book explaining Catholic faith and worship is

written in an easy-to-understand form, and there are

six tests sheets to be checked. There is no writing to

do, and nobody will call on you unless you request it.

You merely mail your marked test sheets to us. We
correct them and return them to you. This enables

you to determine how well you understand the book

and on what points further explanation by mail may

help you.

There is no cost to you, no obligation.

Write today to:

Supreme Council

KNIGHTS OF COLUMBUS
Religious Information Bureau

4422 LINDELL BLVD.

ST. LOUIS 8, MO.

Imprimatur:

^JOSEPH E. RITTER

Archbishop of St. Louis

St. Louis, October 21, 1959

Published in United States of America

1st Reprinting, April, 1961