Chapter VII (1)

May smiled. Golden with sunlight, noisy with the song of its birds and the murmur of its insects; odorous with its flowers, laughing, and happy to be the month, of all others, dedicated to Mary.

The wedding day of Ventura and Elvira had arrived, and the sun, like a friend that hastened to be the first to give them joy, rose radiant. They were ready to set out for the church. Anna pressed to her heart the child of her love, the gentle Elvira, so humble and thoughtful in her gladness that she stood with drooping head and eyes cast down, as if oppressed and dazzled by so much joy. Uncle Pedro, who had never been so glad in all his life, exceeded even himself in jokes, hints, and facetious sayings. Maria, transported with her own delight, and that of others, shed tears continually--tears, like the rain drops, which sometimes fall from a clear sky when the sun is bright.

As his rays shine through those drops, so shone Maria's smile through her tears.

"Dear sister," said Marcela to Elvira, "next to mine, my sweet Jesus, your bridegroom is the best and most perfect. See my Ventura, how well he appears; if he had only a spray of lilies in his hand, he would look like Saint Joseph in 'The Espousals.'"

And she had reason to praise her brother, for Ventura, neatly and richly dressed, more animated and gallant than ever, hurrying the others to set out, was the type a sculptor would have chosen for a statue of Achilles.

Perico forgot even Rita. His large, soft brown eyes were fixed upon his sister with a look of deep and inexplicable tenderness. Rita only was indifferent and petulant.

They were leaving the house when a strange sound reached their ears. A sound which seemed to be made up of the bellowing of the enraged bull, the lamentations of the wounded bird, and the growl of the lion surprised in his sleep.

It was the cry of alarm and rage of the flocks of fugitives that were arriving, and the exclamations of astonishment and indignation of the people of the village that were preparing to imitate them.

The French had entered Seville with giant strides, and were hurrying on in their devastating march toward Cadiz.

Perico having foreseen this event, had prepared a place of refuge for his family, in a solitary farm-house, far apart from any public way, and had horses standing in the stables ready against surprise.

While the men rushed into the yard to prepare the animals, the women, wild with fear, gathered and tied together the clothes and whatever else they could carry with them in the panniers.

"What a sad omen!" said Elvira to Ventura; "the day which should join us together separates us."

"Nothing can separate us, Elvira," answered Ventura; "I defy the whole world to do it. Go without fear. We are going to prepare ourselves, and shall overtake you on the road."

Ventura saw them depart under the protection of Perico, and watched them until they were out of sight.

But now was heard at the entrance of the village the fatal sound of drums, which announced the arrival of the terrible phalanx that threw itself upon that poor unarmed people, taken by surprise, and treated without mercy.

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It came in the name of an iniquitous usurpation of which the precedents belong to barbarous times, as the resistance it met with belongs to the days of heroism--a resistance against which it dashed and was broken, fighting without glory and yielding without shame.

"Follow me, father," said Ventura. "Sister, come; we must fly!"

"It is too late," replied Pedro, "they are already here. Ventura, hide your sister; when night comes we will escape, but now hide yourselves."

"And you, father?" said Ventura, hesitating between necessity and the repugnance he felt to being obliged to hide himself.

"I," answered Pedro, "remain here. What can they do to a poor old man like me? Go, I tell you! Hide yourselves! Marcela, what are you doing there, poor child, as cold and fixed as a statue? Ventura, what are you thinking of that you do not move? Do you wish to be lost? Do you wish to lose your sister? Ventura! dear son, do you wish to kill me?"

His father's cry of anguish roused Ventura from the stupor into which he had been thrown by fear, uncertainty, and rage.

"It is necessary," he murmured, with clenched hands, and set teeth. "Father, father! to hide myself like a woman! while I live I shall never get over the shame of it!" and taking a ladder, he lifted it to an opening in the ceiling, which formed the entrance to a sort of loft or garret, where they kept seeds, and worn-out and useless household articles, helped his sister to mount, went up himself, and drew the ladder after him.

It was time, for there was a knocking at the door. Pedro opened it, and a French soldier entered.

"Prepare me," he said in his jargon, "food and drink: give me your money, unless you want me to take it, and call your daughters, if you do not wish me to look them up."

The blood of the honorable and haughty Spaniard rose to his face, but he answered with moderation,

"I have nothing that you ask me for."

"Which means that you have nothing, you thief? Do you know whom you are talking to, and that I am hungry and thirsty?"

Pedro, who had expected to pass the whole of this long wished-for day of his son's marriage in Anna's house, and had therefore nothing prepared, approached the door which communicated with the interior of the house, and pointing to the extinguished hearth, repeated, "As I have already told you, there is nothing to eat in the house, except bread."

"You lie!" shouted the Frenchman in a rage; "it is because you do not mean to give it to me."

Pedro fixed his eyes upon the grenadier, and in them burned, for an instant all the indignation, all the rage, all the resentment he harbored in his soul; but a second thought, at which he shuddered, caused him to lower them, and say in a conciliating tone:

"Satisfy yourself that I have told you the truth."

On hearing this continued refusal, the soldier, already exasperated by the glance Pedro had cast at him, approached the old man and said; "You dare to face me; you refuse to comply with your obligation to supply me. Ha! and worse than all, you insult me with your tranquil contempt. Upon my life, I will make you as pliant as a glove!" and raising his hand, there resounded through the house, dry and distinct, a blow on the face.

Like an eagle darting upon its prey, Ventura dropped down, threw himself upon the Frenchman, forced the sword from his hand, and ran it through his body. The soldier fell heavily, a lifeless bulk.

"Boy, boy, what have you done?" exclaimed the old man, forgetting the affront in the peril of his son.

"My duty, father."

"You are lost!"

"And you are avenged."

"Go, save yourself! do not lose an instant."

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"First, let me take away this debtor, whose account is settled. If they find him here, you will have to suffer, father."

"Never mind, never mind," exclaimed the father, "save yourself, that is the first thing to be thought of."

Without listening to his father. Ventura took the corpse upon his shoulder, threw it into the well, turned to the old man, who followed him in an agony of distress, asked for his blessing, sprang with one bound, upon the wall which surrounded the yard, and to the ground on the other side. The poor father, mounted upon the trunk of a fig-tree, holding on by its branches, with bursting heart, and straining eyes, and breath suspended, saw his son, the idol of his soul, pass with the lightness of a deer, the space which separated the village from an olive plantation, and disappear among the trees.

TO BE CONTINUED.

------

[ORIGINAL.]

SAPPHICS.

SUGGESTED BY "THE QUIP" OF GEORGE HERBERT

Stratus in terram meditans jacebam;
Saeculum molle et petulans procaxqae,
Asseclas tristem stimulabat acri
Laedere lusu.

Pulchra, quam tinxit Cytherea, rosa,
"Cujus, quaeso," inquit, "manus, infaceta
Carpere inaudax?" Tibi linquo causam,
Victor Iesu!

Tinnitans argentum: "Melos istud audi:
Musicae nostine modes suaves?"
Inquit et fugit. Tibi linquo causam,
Victor Iesu!

Gloria tunc tollens caput et coruscans,
Sericis filis crepitans, me figit
Oculis limis. Tibi linquo causam,
Victor Iesu!

Gestiit scomma sceleratis aptum,
Callida lingua acuisse Ira;
Conticescat jam. Tibi linquo causam,
Victor Iesu!

Attamen cum Tu, die constituto,
Eligisti quos Tibi vindicassis,
Audiam o, dextro lateri statatus,
"Euge fidelis"

Sti. Lodoiel, in Ascensione Domini, 1866.

R. A. B.

------

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[ ORIGINAL.]

PROBLEMS OF THE AGE.

IV.

THE REVELATION OF GOD IN THE CREED DEMONSTRATED IN THE CONSTITUTIVE IDEA OF REASON.

As soon as we open the eye of reason we become spectators of the creation. The word creation in this proposition is to be understood not in a loose and popular sense, but in a strict and scientific one. We intend to say, not merely that we behold certain existing objects, but that we behold them in their relation to their first and supreme cause. We are witnesses of the creative act by which the Creator and his work are simultaneously disclosed to the mind. This is the original constitutive principle of reason, its primal light preceding all knowledge and thought, and being their condition. It is the idea which contains in itself, radically and in principle, all possible development of thought and knowledge, according to the law of growth connatural to the human intelligence. It includes--God with all his attributes: the work of God or the created universe; and the relation between the two, that is, the relation of God to the universe as first cause in the order of creation, and final cause in the order of the ultimate end and destination of things. The different portions of this idea are inseparable from each other. That is, our reason cannot affirm God separately from the affirmation of the creative act, or affirm the creative act separately from the affirmation of God. The being of God is disclosed to us only by the creation, and the creation is intelligible to us only in the light given by the idea of God. [Footnote 89] God reveals himself to our reason as creator, and by means of the creative act. This is the limit of our natural light, and beyond it we cannot see anything by a natural mode, either in God, or in the universe.

[Footnote 89: A careful attention to the succeeding argument will
show that by the idea of God given to intuition, is not meant the
evolved idea, but the idea capable of evolution, or the idea of
infinite, necessary being, which is shown to be the Idea of God by
demonstration.]

The idea of God must not be confounded with that distinct and explicit conception which a philosopher or well-instructed Christian possesses. If the human mind possessed this knowledge by an original intuition, every human being would have it, without instruction, from the very first moment of the complete use of reason, and could never lose it. The idea of God is the affirmation of himself as pure, eternal, necessary being, the original and first principle of all existence, which he makes to the reason in creating it, and which constitutes the rational light and life of the soul. This constitutive, ideal principle of the soul's intelligence exists at first in a kind of embryonic state. The soul is more in a state of potentiality to intelligence, than intelligence in act. The idea of God is obscurely enwrapped and enfolded in the substance of the soul, imperfectly evolved in its most primitive acts of rational consciousness, and implicitly contained but not actually explicated in every thought that it thinks, even the most simple and rudimental. The intelligence must be educated, in order to bring out this obscure and implicit idea of God into a distinct conception in the reflective consciousness. This education begins with the action of the material, sensible world on the soul through the body, and specifically through the brain. The human soul was not created to exist and act under the simple conditions of pure spirit; but as is incorporated in a material body. The body is not a temporary habitation, like the envelope of a larva, but an integral part of man. The {519} intelligence is awakened to activity through the senses, and all its perceptions of the intelligible are through the medium of the sensible. The sensible world is a grand system of outward and visible signs representing the spiritual and intelligible world. Language is the science and art of subsidiary signs, the equivalents of the phenomena of the sensible world and of all that we apprehend through them; and forming the medium for communicating thought among men. For this reason, all language so far as it represents the conceptions of men concerning the spiritual word is metaphorical; and even the word _spirit_ is a figure taken from the sensible world.

When the obscure idea is completely evolved, and the soul educated, through these outward and sensible media, the reflective consciousness attains to the distinct conception of God. This education may be imperfect, and the reflective consciousness may have but an incomplete conception expressed in language by an inadequate formula; but the idea is indestructible, and the mental conception of it can never be totally corrupted. This would be equivalent to the cessation of all thought, the annihilation of all conception of being and truth, and the extinction of all rational life in the soul. It is a mere negation of thought, which cannot be thought at all, and a mere non-entity. There is no such thing as absolute scepticism. Partial scepticism is possible. Revelation may be denied as to its complete conception, but the idea expressed in revelation cannot be utterly denied. The being of God may be denied, as to its complete conception, but not completely as to the idea itself. No sceptic or atheist can make any statement of his doubt or disbelief, which does not contain an affirmation of that ultimate idea under the conception of real and necessary being and truth. Much less can he enunciate any scientific formulas respecting philosophy, history, or any positive object, without doing so. Vast numbers of men are ignorant of the true and formed conception of God, but every one of them affirms the idea in every distinct thought which he thinks; and every human language, however rude, embodies and perpetuates it under forms and conceptions which are remotely derived from the original and infallible speech of the primitive revelation. Although the mass of mankind cannot evolve the idea of God into a distinct conception, and even gentile philosophy failed to enunciate this conception in an adequate form, yet when this conception is clearly and perfectly enunciated by pure theistic and Christian philosophy, reason is able to recognize it as the expression of its own primitive and ultimate idea. It perceives that the object which it has always beheld by an obscure intuition, is God, as proposed in the first article of the Christian formula. The Christian church, in instructing the uninstructed or partially instructed mind in pure theism, interprets to it, and explicates for it, its own obscure intuition. Thus it is able to see the truth of the being of God; not as a new, hitherto unknown idea, received on pure authority, or by a long deduction from more ultimate truths, or as the result of a number of probabilities; but as a truth which constitutes the ultimate ground of its own rational existence, and is only unfolded and disclosed to it in its own consciousness by the word and teaching of the instructor, who gives distinct voice to its own inarticulate or defectively uttered affirmation of God. So it is, that God affirms himself to the reason originally by the creative act which is first apprehended by the reason through the medium of the sensible, and interpreted by the sensible signs of language to the uninstructed. Thus we know God by creation, and the creation comes into the most immediate contact with us on its sensible side.

It has been said above, that we cannot separate the creative act from God in the primitive idea of reason. It is not meant by this that reason has {520} an intuition of God as necessarily a creator. What is meant is, that the idea of God present to an intelligent mind distinct from God, presupposes the creative act affirming to it an object distinct from itself, and itself as distinct from the object. When the subject is conscious of this truth, "God affirms himself to me," there are two terms in the formula, "God," and "Me;" involving the third uniting term of the creative act. The perception of other existences is simultaneous with the perception of himself, but logically prior to it; and his first rational act apprehends the existence of contingent, created substances, as well as the being of the absolute, uncreated essence. The elements of God and creation are in the most ultimate and primitive act of reason, and therefore in its constitutive idea. The creation is the idea of finite essences in God externized by the Word who speaks them into existence. By the same Word, the intelligent, rational portion of creation is enlightened with the knowledge of this idea. It beholds God, as he expresses this idea in the creative act, and in no otherwise. It cannot see immediately, the necessity of his being, or, so to speak, the cause why God is and must be, but only the affirmation of this necessity in the creative act. But this affirmation is necessarily in conformity with the truth. It presents being as absolute, and creation as contingent, and therefore not necessary. False conceptions may not discriminate accurately between the two terms, being and existence; but when these false conceptions are corrected, and the idea brought fully into light, the very terms in which it is expressed clearly indicate God as alone necessary, creation as contingent, and the creative act as proceeding from the free will of the Creator.

God, and creation, are thus simultaneously affirmed in the creative act constituting the soul; although God is affirmed as first and creation second, in the logical order: God as cause and creation as effect; and although creation may be first distinctly perceived and reflected on, as being more connatural to the reflecting subject himself, and more directly in contact with his senses and reflecting faculties. The knowledge of God is limited to that which he expresses by the similitude of himself exhibited in the creation. Our positive conceptions of God in the reflective order are therefore derived from the imitations, or representations of the divine attributes in the world of created existences. An infinite, and, to natural powers, impassable abyss, separates us from the immediate intuition of the Divine Essence. The highest contemplative cannot cross this chasm; and the ultimatum of mystic theology is no more than the confession that the essence of God is unseen and invisible to any merely human intuition, unknown and unknowable by the natural power of any finite intelligence. We know _ut Deus sit, sed non quid sit Deus--that _God is, but not _what_ he is. We know that God is, by the affirmation of his being to reason. [Footnote 90] We form conceptions that enable our reflective faculties to grasp this affirmation, by means of the created objects in which he manifests his attributes, and through which, as through signs and symbols, images and pictures, he represents his perfections.

[Footnote 90: That is, after we have demonstrated that which is
involved in the idea of being.]

This is the doctrine of St. Paul, the great father of Christian theology.

"Quis enim hominum, scit quae sunt hominis, nisi spiritus hominis
qui in ipso est? Ita, et quae Dei sunt, nemo cognovit, nisi Spiritus
Dei."

"For what man knoweth the things of a man, but the spirit of man which is in him? So the things also that are of God, no one knoweth but the Spirit of God."

We understand this to mean, that God alone has naturally the immediate intuition of his own essence and of the interior life and activity of his own being within himself.

{521}

"Quod notum est Dei manifestum est in illis, Deus enim illis manifestavit. Invisibilia enim ipsius, a creatura mundi, per ea quae facta sunt intellecta, conspiciuntar; sempiterna quoqne ejus virtus et divinitas." "That which is known of God is manifest in them. For God hath manifested it to them. For the invisible things of him, from the creation of the world, are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made; his eternal power also and divinity."

That is, God affirms himself distinctly to the reason by the creative act, and simultaneously with the showing which he makes of his works.

"Videmus nunc per speculum in enigmate."

"We see now through a glass in an obscure manner, or more literally, in a riddle, parable, or allegory." [Footnote 91]

[Footnote 91: 1 Cor. ii. 11; Rom. i. 19, 20; 1 Cor. xiii. 12.]

That is, we understand the attributes and interior relations of God as these are made intelligible to our minds by analogies derived from created things, in which, as in a mirror, the image of God is reflected. The original and obscure idea of God given to reason in its constitution--but given only on that side of it which faces creation, including therefore in itself creation and its relation to the creator--may be represented in various forms. It must be distinctly borne in mind that our natural intuition is not an intuition of the substance or essence of the divine being, or an intuition of God by that uncreated light in which he sees himself and his works. God presents himself to the natural reason as Idea, or the first principle of intelligence and the intelligible, by the intelligibility which he gives to the creation. He does not disclose himself in his personality to the intellectual vision, but affirms himself to reason by a divine judgment. Our natural knowledge of God is therefore exclusively in the ideal order. The intuition from which this knowledge is derived may be called the intuition of the infinite, the eternal, the absolute the necessary, the true, the beautiful, the good, the first cause, the ultimate reason of things, etc. Real and necessary being, considered as the ground of the contingent and as facing the created intellect, adequately embraces and represents all. This intuition enters into all thought and is inseparable from the activity of the intelligent mind. The intellect always does and must apprehend, the real, which is identical with the ideal, in its thought; and when this reality or verity which it apprehends is reflected on, it always yields up two elements, the necessary and the contingent, the infinite and the finite, the absolute and the conditioned. In apprehending God, we necessarily apprehend that the soul which apprehends and the creation by which it apprehends him, must exists. In apprehending creation, we apprehend that God must be in order that the creation may have existence. If we could suppose reason to begin with the idea of God, pure and simple, we could not show how it could arrive at any idea of the creature. Neither could we, beginning with the exclusive idea of the conditioned, deduce the idea of the absolute and necessary. We can never arrive by discursive reasoning, by reflection, by logic, by deduction or induction, at any truth, not included in the principles or intuitions with which we start. Demonstration discovers no new truth, but only discloses what is contained in the intuitions of reason. It explicates, but does not create. All that we know therefore about being and existences is contained implicitly in our original intuition.

Real being is the immediate object apprehended by reason, as St. Thomas teaches, after Aristotle. "Ens namque est objectum intellectus primum, cum nihil sciri possit, nisi ipsum quod est ens in actu, ut dicitur in 9 Met. Unde nec oppositum ejus intelligere potest intellectus, non ens." "For being is the primary object of the intellect, since nothing can be known but that which is being in act, as it is said in the 9 Met. Wherefore the intellect cannot {522} apprehend its opposite or not being." [Footnote 92] This appears to be plain. Either the intelligible which the intelligence apprehends is real or unreal, actual being or not being, entity or nonentity, something or nothing. If the intelligence apprehends the unreal, not being, not entity, no thing; it is not intelligence, it does not apprehend. These very terms are unstatable except as negations of a positive idea. I must have the idea of the real, or of being in act, before I can deny it. I must have the idea of my own existence before I can deny I existed a century ago. If I deny or question my present existence, I must affirm it first, before I deny it, by making myself the subject of a certain predicate, non-existence, or dubious existence.

[Footnote 92: Opus. cxiii. c. 1.]

There is only one door of escape open, which is the affirmation of an intuition of possible being. But what is the intuition of the possible without the intuition of the actual? How can I affirm that being is possible, unless I have an intuition of a cause or reason situated in the very idea of being which makes it possible, and if possible necessary and actual? The very notion of absolute being which is possible only, that is, reducible to act but not reduced to act, is absurd. For it is not reducible to act except by a prior cause which is then itself actual, necessary being, and ultimate cause. Potentiality or possibility belongs only to the contingent, and is mere creability [sic] or reducibility to act through an efficient cause. Wherefore we cannot apprehend possible existence except in the apprehension of an ultimate, creative cause. All that is intelligible is either necessary being, or contingent existence having its cause in necessary being. The abstract or logical world is only a shadow or reflection of the real in our own minds, and instead of preceding and conditioning intuition, it is its product.

The real object apprehended by reason has various aspects, but they are aspects of the same object. The intuition of one aspect of being is called the intuition of truth or of the true, including truth both in the absolute and the contingent order. Truth, in regard to finite things, is the correspondence of a conception to an objective reality. This finite reality cannot be apprehended as true without a simultaneous apprehension of necessary and eternal truth as its ground and reason. The mathematical truths, for instance, in their application to existing things, express the relations of finite numbers and quantities. They are, however, apprehended as necessarily and eternally true in an order of being independent of time, space, and all contingent existences; which order of being is absolute: the type of all existing things, the ultimate ground of truth, the intelligible _in se_.

The intuition of the beautiful, which is "the splendor of the true," is the intuition of a certain type and the conformity of existing things to it, causing a peculiar complacency in the intellect. This complacency is grounded on a judgment of the eternal fitness and harmony of things, that is, of an absolute and necessary reason of their order in eternal truth, that is, in absolute being.

The intuition of the good is an intuition of being considered as the necessary object of volition, and of existences as having in their essence a ground of desirableness or an aptitude to terminate an act of the will. Hence good and being are convertible terms. The absolute good is absolute being, and created good is a created existence conformed to the type of the good which is necessary and eternal.

The intuition of the infinite reduces itself in like manner to the intuition of absolute being accompanied by the intuition of the finite or relative with which it is compared. The absolute is being in its plenitude, the intelligible as comprehended by intelligence in its ultimate act, neither admitting of any increase. The finite is that which can be thought as capable of increase, but, increased indefinitely, never reaches {523} the infinite. The term infinite, as Fénélon well observes, though negative in form--expressing the denial of limitation--is the expression of a positive idea. Herbert Spencer proves the same in a luminous and cogent manner, even from the admissions of philosophers of the sceptical school of Kant. [Footnote 93] The intuition of the infinite gives us that which is not referable to an idea of a higher order, but is itself that idea to which all others are referred as the ultimate of thought and being. This intuition of the infinite always presents itself behind every conception, and makes itself the first element of every thought.

[Footnote 93: First Principles of a New System of Philosophy.]

This is clearly seen in the conceptions, commonly called the ideas, of space and time. The intuition of the infinite will never permit us to fix any definite, unpassable limits to these conceptions, but forces us to endeavor perpetually to grasp infinity and eternity under an adequate mental representation, which we cannot do. We must, however, if we are faithful to reason, recognize behind these conceptions of space that cannot be bounded and time that cannot be terminated either by beginning or end, the idea of being infinite as regards both, the reason of the possibility of finite things bearing to each other the relations of co-existence and successive duration.

The same intuition is at the root of the conception of the impossibility of limiting the divisibility of mathematical quantity. Whichever way we turn, the idea of the infinite presents itself. We can never reach the boundary of multiplicability, nor can we reach the boundary of divisibility, which is only another form of multiplicability. The conception of ideal space and number is rooted in the idea of the infinite power of God to create existences which have mathematical relations to each other. The positive multiplication or division of lines and numbers must always have a limit, but the radical possibility must always remain infinite, because it is included in the idea of God, which transcends all categories of space, time or limitation.

The intuition of cause is in the same order of thought. Necessary being and contingent existence cannot be apprehended in the same idea, without the connecting link of the principle of causation. It has been fully proved by Hume and Kant, that we cannot certainly conclude the principle of causation from any induction of particular facts. We always assume it, before we begin to make the induction. It is an _a priori_ judgment that everything which exists must have a cause, and that all finite causes, receive their causality from a first cause or _causa causarum_. For every finite cause has a beginning, which comes from a prior cause, and an infinite series of finite causes being absurd, the idea of causation necessarily includes first cause, and is incapable of being thought or stated without it. Existence is not intelligible in itself, but in its cause, absolute being. Absolute being, though intelligible in itself, is not intelligible to human reason, except by the causative act terminated in existences, and making them intelligible. That is, being and existence, in the relation of cause and effect, are presented, and affirmed to reason, as the one complex object of its original intuition, and its constitutive idea.

This is the point of co-incidence of the _a priori_ and _a posteriori_ arguments, demonstrating the Christian theistic conception. They analyze the synthetic judgment of reason, and show its contents. The argument, _a priori_ analyzes it on the side of being, showing what is contained in being, or _ens_. The argument _a posteriori_ analyzes it on the side of existence, _existentia_. But either argument implicitly contains the other. It is impossible to reason on either the first or last term of the synthetic judgment, without taking in the middle term of causation, which implies the third term, existence, if you begin {524} with being, and the first term, being, if you begin with existence. The theistic conception is God Creator. The theologian who begins to prove the proposition, God creates the world, cannot deduce creation by showing what is contained in the pure and simple idea of necessary, self-existing being. The idea of God includes the creative power, but not the creative act, which is free, and cannot be deduced from the primitive intuition, unless God affirms it to the reason in that intuition; and even the creative power, or the possibility of creation, cannot be deduced by human reason from the idea of necessary being. Thus, the argument _a priori_ really does not conclude the effect, that is, creation, by demonstrating it from the nature of the cause alone, but assumes it as known from the beginning.

In like manner, the theologian, who argues from the creation up to the creator, or from effect to cause, assumes that the creation is really created, and the effect of a cause exterior to itself; otherwise, the term existence could never conduct him to the term being.

We cannot demonstrate beyond what is given us in intuition, for all demonstration is a simple unfolding of the intuitive idea. The idea presents to us the creative act. If we reflect the causative or creative principle, whatever we logically explicate from it is indubitably true, because in conformity with the idea of first cause. If we reflect the terminus of the causative act, or creation, whatever we logically explicate from it respecting the nature of eminent cause is indubitably true, for the same reason. In both cases we reason validly, and demonstrate all that is demonstrable in the case. In the first instance, we demonstrate what is really contained in the idea of necessary being, and bring this idea--under the form of a distinct conception--face to face with the reflective reason. In the second instance, we demonstrate the order of the universe, and the manifestation in it of divine power, wisdom and goodness. We demonstrate that the theistic conception, or the conception of God and his attributes, contained in Christian Theology, is that which we know intuitively in the light of the primitive idea, logically explicated and represented by analogy in language. What we do not demonstrate, is the objective reality of the idea; for this is indemonstrable, as being the first principle of all demonstration. The idea is intelligible in itself, and illuminates the reason with intelligence. The office of logic and reasoning is to inspect and scrutinize the idea, to represent in reflection that which is intelligible. By this process the idea of necessary being evolves itself, necessarily, into the complete theistic conception of God, as is shown most amply in the treatises of theologians and religious writers. [Footnote 94] We will endeavor to sum up their results in as brief and universal a synopsis as possible.

[Footnote 94: It will be seen, therefore, that the arguments _a
priori_ and _a posteriori_ demonstrating the Christian doctrine of
God, as stated by the great Catholic Theologians, have not been
impugned, but, on the contrary, vindicated from the
misrepresentation of a more modern and less profound school of
philosophers.]

Beginning at this point, real necessary being is in itself the intelligible; we lay down first that which is most radical and ultimate in the conception of the living, personal God and Creator; namely, absolute, infinite _intelligence_.

The absolute intelligible being must be absolute intelligent being. The intelligible is only intelligible to intelligence. What is the idea, or ideal truth or being, without an intelligent subject? What is infinite idea, or infinite object of thought, without infinite intelligent subject? That which is intelligible in itself necessarily, absolutely, and infinitely, must necessarily be the terminating object of intelligence equal to itself, that is infinite. This intelligence cannot be created, for then it would be finite. It must be included in absolute being. {525} Being includes in itself all that is. It therefore includes intelligence. It contains in itself all that is necessary to its own perfection. Its perfection as intelligible requires its perfection as intelligent. Absolute being is therefore infinitely intelligible and intelligent in its own nature and idea. It is the intelligible being which is intelligent being, and only intelligent spirit, which is in its very essence intelligence, can be necessarily and infinitely intelligible; for only self-existent infinite spirit has the absolute infinite activity necessary to irradiate the light of the intelligible. The light of the intelligible irradiates our created intelligence by an act which constitutes it rational spirit. This act must be the act of supreme, absolute, infinite intelligence. Whatever is in the creature, must be infinite in the creator. The world of finite, intelligent spirits can only proceed from an infinite, intelligent spirit, as first and eminent cause. The sensible and physical world also is apprehended by our reason as intelligible, and is intelligible, only in intelligent cause; which throws open the vast and magnificent field of demonstration from the order and harmony of nature. The intelligible in the order of the finite, is a reflection of the intelligible in the order of the infinite. The intelligible in the order of the infinite, is the adequate object of infinite intelligence. The intelligible _in se_ is identical with being in its plenitude; and being in plenitude is necessarily infinite, intelligent spirit. [Footnote 95]

[Footnote 95: Because, if we conceive of any essence that it is not
spiritual, we can conceive of one that is more perfect, namely, that
which has these two attributes; and if we conceive of one that is
finite in intelligence, we can conceive of one that is superior, or
has greater plenitude of being, until we reach the infinite. The
very conception of being in plenitude is being that excludes the
conception of the possibility of that which is greater than itself.]

From this point the way is clear and easy to verify all that theologians teach respecting the essential attributes of God. We have merely to explicate the idea of intelligent spirit possessing being in its plenitude. All that has being--that is, every kind of good and perfection that the mind can apprehend in the divine essence by means of creatures--must be attributed to God in the absolute and infinite sense. We cannot grasp plenitude of being fully under one aspect or form. We are obliged to discriminate and distinguish qualities or attributes of being in God. But this is not by the way of addition or composition of these attributes with the idea of the simple essence of God. It is by the way of identification. Thus, being is identified with the intelligible and with intelligence. All the attributes of God are identified with each other and with his being.

This is what is meant by saying that God is most simple being, _ens simplicissimum_. The pure and simple idea of being contains in itself every possible predicate: hence we can predicate nothing of it that can add to it, or combine with it, to make a composite idea greater than the idea of being in its simplicity. It comes to the same, when we say that God is most pure act, _actus purissimus_, which merely ascribes to him actual being in eternity to the utmost limit of possibility, or to the ultimate comprehensibility of the idea of being by the infinite intelligence of God.

In the first place, then, we demonstrate the unity of God. There can be but one infinite being. For the intelligible being of God is the adequate object of his intelligence. Therefore there is no other infinite, intelligible object of infinite intelligence.

God is absolutely good. For his own being is the adequate object of his volition, and the definition of good is adequate object of volition, so that being is identical with good.

God is all-powerful. For there is no intelligible idea of power, which transcends the knowledge God has of his own being as including the ability to create.

God is infinitely holy. For the intellect and the will of God terminate upon the same object, that is, upon his {526} own being, and consequently agree with each other; and the very notion of the sanctity of God is the perfect harmony of his intellect and will in infinite good.

God is immutable. For any change or progression implies a movement toward the absolute plenitude of being, and is inconsistent with the necessary and eternal possession of this plenitude.

God is infinite and eternal; above all categories of limitation, succession, time or space; for this is only to say that he is most simple being, and most pure act.

God is absolute truth and beauty, for these are identical with being.

He is infinite love, for he is the infinite object of his own intelligence comprehended as the term of his own volition.

For the same reason, he is infinite beatitude, since beatitude simply expresses the repose and complacency of intelligence and will in their adequate object and is identical with love.

God is an ocean of boundless, unfathomable good and perfection, to whom everything must be attributed that can increase our mental conception of his infinite being. We can go on indefinitely, explicating this conception, and every proposition we can make which contains the statement of anything positive and intelligible, is self-evident; requiring no separate proof, but merely verification as truly identifying something with the idea of being. "We shall say much and yet shall want words; but the sum of our words is, HE IS ALL." [Footnote 96] Nevertheless, our reason is not brought face to face with God by any direct intuition or vision of his intimate, personal essence. Every word, every conception, every thought expressing the most complete and vivid act of the reflective consciousness on the idea of God is derived from the creation, and gives only a speculative and enigmatical representation of the being of God itself, as mirrored in the perfections of created, contingent existences. Though we see all things by its light, the sun itself, the original source of intelligible light, is not within our rational horizon. The creation is illuminated by it with the light of intelligibility, and by this light we become spectators of the creative act of God.

[Footnote 96: Ecclus. xiiii. 99.]

The creative act is not a transient effort of power, but a durable, continuous, ever-present act, by which God is always creating the universe. The creation has its being not in itself but in God. All that we witness therefore and come in contact with, is but the radiation of light, life, truth, beauty, happiness; physical, mental, and spiritual existence; from God, the source of being. We see the architecture which proceeds from his mighty designs; we behold the infinitely varied and ever shifting pictures and sculptures in which he embodies his infinite idea of his own beauty. We hear the harmonies that echo his eternal blessedness; the colossal machinery of worlds plays regularly and resistlessly by the force which he communicates around us; his signs, emblems, and hieroglyphics are impressed on our senses; the perpetual affirmation of his being is always making itself heard in the depth of our reason. The perpetual influx of creative force from him is every instant giving life and existence to our body. We breathe in it, and see by it, and move through its energy. It is every instant creating our soul. When our soul first came out of nothing into existence, it was created by a whisper of the divine word, which simultaneously gave it existence and the faculty of apprehending that whisper, by which it was made. God whispered in the soul the affirmation of his own being as the author of all existence. This whisper is perpetual, like the creative act. It constitutes our rational life and activity. By its virtue we think and are conscious. It concurs with every intellectual act. When the soul is stillest and its contemplation of truth the most profound, then it is most distinctly heard; but it cannot be drowned by any {527} tumult or clamor. "In God we live, and move, and have our being." We float in the divine idea as in an ocean. It meets us everywhere we turn. We cannot soar above it, dive beneath it, or sail in sight of its coasts. It is our rational element, in which our rational existence was created, in which it was made to live, and we recognize it in the same act in which we recognize our own existence. It is necessary to the original act of self-consciousness, and enters into the indestructible essence of the soul, as immortal spirit.

The Creed, therefore, when it proposes its first article to a child who is capable of a complete rational act, only brings him face to face with himself, or with the idea of his own reason. It gives him a distinct image or reflection of that idea, a sign of it, a verbal expression for it, a formula by which his reflective faculty can work it out into a distinct conception. As soon as it is fairly apprehended, he perceives its truth with a rational certitude which reposes in the intimate depths of his own consciousness. It is true that he cannot arrange and express his conceptions, or distinctly analyze for himself the operations of his own mind, in the manner given above. This can only be done by one who is instructed in theology. But although he is no theologian or philosopher, he has nevertheless the substance of philosophy or _sapientia_, and of theology, in his intellect; deeper, broader and more sublime than all the measurements and signs of metaphysicians can express. We have taken the child as creditive subject in this exposition, in order to exhibit the ultimate rational basis of faith in its simplest act, and, so to speak, to show its _genesis_. But we do not profess to stop with this simple act which initiates the reason in its childhood into the order of rational intelligence and faith; rather we take it as only the terminus of starting in the prosecution of a thorough investigation of the complete development which the intelligent faith unfolds in the adult and instructed reason of a Christian fully educated in theological science. Hence we have given the conception God in its scientific form, but as the scientific form of that which is certainly and indubitably apprehended in its essential substance by every mind capable of making an explicit and complete act of rational faith in God as the creator of the world. In the language of Wordsworth, "The child is father of the man." A complete rational act in a child has in it the germ of all science. He is as certain that two and two make four, as is the consummate mathematician. A complete act of faith in a child is as infallible as the faith of a theologian, and has in it the germ of all theology. He is able to say "Credo in Deum" with a perfect rational certitude; and this conclusion is the goal toward which the whole preceding argument has been tending.

But here we are met with a difficulty. The principle of faith cannot itself fall under the dominion of faith, or be classed with the _credenda_, which we believed on the veracity of God. How then can _Credo_ govern _Deum_. The necessity for an intelligible basis for faith has been established, and this basis located in the idea of God evolved into a conception demonstrable to reason from its own constitutive principles. It would therefore seem that instead of saying "I believe in God," we ought to say "I know that God is, and is the infinite truth in himself, therefore I believe," etc. only on you.

This formula does really express a process of thought contained in the act of faith, and implied in the signification of _Credo_. _Credo_ includes in itself _intelligo_. Divine faith presupposes, and incorporates into itself, human intelligence and human faith, on that side of them which is an inchoate capacity for receiving its divine, elevating influence. Hence the propriety of using the word _Credo_, leaving _intelligo_ understood but not expressed. The symbol of faith is not intended to express any object of our knowledge, {528} except as united to the object of faith. For this reason it does not discriminate in the proposition of the verity of the being of God, that which is the direct object of intelligence, but presents it under one term with those propositions concerning God which are only the indirect object of intelligence through the medium of divine revelation. When we say _Credo in Deum_, if we consider in _Deum_ only that which is demonstrable by reason concerning God, the full sense of _Credo_ is suspended, until the revelation of the superintellible [sic] s introduced in the succeeding articles. The term _Deum_ terminates _Credo_, only inasmuch as it is qualified by the succeeding terms; that is, inasmuch as we profess our belief in God as the revealer of the truths contained in the subsequent articles.

The foregoing statement applies to the use of the word _Credo_ in relation with _Deum_ in the first article of the Creed, taking _Credo_ in its strictest and most exclusive sense of belief in revealed truths which are above the sphere of natural reason. In addition to this, it can be shown that there is a secondary and subordinate reason on account of which the mental apprehension of that which is naturally intelligible in God is included under the term faith, taken in a wider and more extensive sense.

This intelligible order of truth, or natural theology, was actually communicated to mankind in the beginning, together with the primitive revelation. We are, therefore, instructed in it, by the way of faith. The conception of God, and the words which communicate to us that conception, and enable us to grasp it, come to us through tradition, and are received by the mind before its faculties are fully developed. We believe first, and understand afterward; and the greater part of men never actually attain to the full understanding of that which is in itself intelligible, but hold it confusedly, accepting with implicit trust in authority, many truths which the wise possess as science. Moreover, the term faith is often used to denote belief in any reality which lies in an order superior to nature and removed from the sphere of the sensible, although that reality may be demonstrable from rational principles. In a certain sense we may say that this region of truth is a common domain of faith and reason. But we have now approached that boundary line where the proper and peculiar empire of faith begins, and like Dante, left by his human guide on the coasts of the celestial world, we must endeavor under heavenly protection to ascend to this higher sphere of thought.

------

From Once a Week.

THE KING AND THE BISHOP.

Before Roskilde's sacred fane,
(The first the land has known.)
Attended by his courtier train,
And decked, as on his throne,
In costly raiment, glittering gay
Beneath the noon-day sun;
All fresh and fair, as though the day
Had seen no slaughter done--

{529}

As though the all-beholding eye
Of that Omniscient Deity,
Whom, turning from the downward way
His heathen fathers trod,
He guided by a purer ray,
Hath chosen for his God--
Had seen no darker, dreader sight,
Twixt yester morn and yester night,

Beheld by his approving eye,
Who, now, would draw his altar nigh;
Ay, fresh and fair as to his soul
No taint of blood did cling,
As though in heart and conscience whole,
Stands Swend, the warrior-king.

On his, as on a maiden's cheek,
(Though bearded and a knight,)
The royal hues of Denmark speak [Footnote 97]--
The crimson and the white;
But mark ye how the angry hue
Keeps deepening, as he stands,
And mark ye, too, the courtly crew,
With lifted eyes and hands!

[Footnote 97: The Danish king, Swend, soon after his entrance into
the Christian church, slew some of his "jaris" without a trial,
and, on presenting himself, after the commission of this crime, at
the portal of the newly-built cathedral of Roskilde, in Zealand,
found it barred by the pastoral staff of the English missionary
and bishop who had converted him. After receiving the rebuke given
in the poem, and forbidding his attendants to molest the bishop,
he returned whence he came, and shortly after, made his
reappearance in the garb of a penitent, when he was received by
the prelate, and, after a certain time of penance, absolved; after
which they became fast friends.]

Across the portal, low and wide,
A slender bar from side to side.
The bishop's staff is seen;
And holding it, with reverent hands
And head erect, the prelate stands,
A man of stately mien.