This visible nature around us pulsates with the spirit of life and progress. The stars wheel onward in the courses marked out for them by their Creator. The interior of the earth is heaving and palpitating with a hidden life of its own, which is ever manifested in richer fulness and strength, in higher and more perfect forms. Nay, the very stone that seems so motionless, the inert metal in the bowels of the earth, comes under the influence of this universal law of life and progress. And what is this but the creative breath of God streaming through the universe, and ever shaping it into new and diverse forms of life? But this law of progress under which the physical universe lies, affects man likewise in a manner worthy of him as the crowning masterpiece of creation. So essentially is progress a law of our being that while material things, in the process of their development, cannot overstep the limits marked out for them, man is called upon to progress even beyond the limits of his nature. God Himself, in all His greatness and Holiness, is the exalted ideal towards which all our aspirations should tend. "Be ye perfect as my Heavenly Father is perfect." Nay, more: not alone is progress a law of man's being; it is a positive duty and command which he is obliged to fulfil. And herein lies another point of difference between the laws of progress, which are stamped into the nature of man, and those we perceive operating in the visible world around us. In nature no backward steps are possible. Every object in the physical universe, in its growth and development, moves within the fixed, unchanging limits of law which God has marked out for it. As a consequence, there is no falling back in the world of nature from a higher to a lower type of existence. The plant ever remains a plant; the mineral ever remains a mineral. But in the case of man, he cannot stand still--he can only retrograde, sink beneath his own level, if he does not continually move forward, in order, by degrees, to reach the supreme end and aim of his existence. Thus does the Catholic Church not alone recognize progress as a great law of our being; she insists upon it, as a divine duty which we are obliged to fulfil. II. From these preliminary remarks, it will be seen that those who charge the Catholic Church with being opposed to progress, must mean _material_ progress; that is, a larger knowledge of the laws of the physical universe, and a wider diffusion and application of the various arts and contrivances which minister to the comforts and conveniences of man's earthly existence, leaving out of account altogether the moral and spiritual advancement of humanity.