The man who had lost his memory had piled impression on
impression during the last forty-eight hours. There was first the
case of the German girl. She had been examined by the same
doctors as those who had certified to her state half an hour
before the cure, and the result had been telegraphed over the
entire civilized world. The fracture was completely repaired; and
although she was still weak from her long illness, she gained
strength every hour. Then there was the case of the Russian. He
too had received back his sight, although not instantaneously; it
had come to him step by step. An hour ago he had been pronounced
healed, and had passed the usual tests in the examination-rooms.
But these cases, and others like them which the priests had
investigated, were only a part of the total weight of impressions
which Monsignor Masterman had received. He had seen here for
himself a relation between Science and Faith--a co-operation
between them, with the exigencies of each duly weighed and
observed by them both--which set Nature and Supernature before
him in a completely new light. As Mr. Manners had said at
Westminster a week or two before, the two seemed to have met at
last, each working from different quarters, on a platform on
which they could work side by side. The facts were no longer
denied by either party. Science allowed for the mysteries of
Faith; Faith recognized the achievements of Science. Each granted
that the other possessed a perfectly legitimate sphere of action
in which the methods proper to that sphere were imperative and
final. The scientist accepted the fact that Religion had a right
to speak in matters that lay beyond scientific data; the
theologian no longer denounced as fraudulent or disingenuous the
claims of the scientist to exercise powers that were at last
found to be natural. Neither needed to establish his own position
by attacking that of his partner, and the two accordingly,
without prejudice or passion, worked together to define yet
further that ever-narrowing range of ground between the two
worlds which up to the present remained unmapped. Suggestion, for
example, acting upon the mutual relations of body and mind, was
recognized by the theologian as a force sufficient to produce
phenomena which in earlier days he had claimed as evidently
supernatural. And, on the other side, the scientist no longer
made wild acts of faith in nature, in attributing to her
achievements which he could not for an instant parallel by any
deliberate experiment. In a word, the scientist repeated, "I
believe in God "; and the theologian, "I recognize Nature."
Monsignor sat apart in silence, while the others talked.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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