Chapter III (4)

The aim of the foregoing exposition has been to prepare the way for presenting, in the natural element which exists in supernatural beatitude, that which is the purely natural good due to the intellectual nature left to itself in its own native sphere, the underworld below heaven. We call this sphere of pure nature native to the intellectual nature in general, because it belongs there by virtue of its essential being, prescinding from any higher destination given to it gratuitously, whether simultaneously with its original creation or subsequently to it. It is an underworld relatively to the supernatural order whose last complement is in the hypostatic union realized in the Incarnation. The state of pure nature in respect to the only species of simply intellectual or rational creatures known to us, is treated by Catholic theologians in a merely hypothetical manner; as a possible state, in which angels and men might have been constituted by the Creator, or in which he could, if he pleased, place other beings generically similar to angels or men, in other spheres of the universe which are distinct from our earth and the celestial abode of the angels. Whether there are now or ever will be such beings, inhabiting the numerous worlds with which the vast extent of real space is filled, can only be matter of conjecture. But the human species, and the hierarchy of pure spirits with which it is in present relation, were destined for the supernatural order immediately depending from the royal seat of Immanuel, the sovereign head of the host of deified intelligences, as its centre. In respect to the human race, therefore, the state of pure nature is presented under another aspect as a state of lapsed nature, and the sphere of the underworld is its native sphere actually and by virtue of natural generation, by reason of a fall and a sentence of deprivation. On this account, the permanent future state of all human beings who are finally excluded from heaven, in Christian eschatology is primarily considered as a state of loss. Whatever felicity is possible in this state appears as something remaining from the original destination of mankind, and not as the complete good of human beatitude. For this reason, we have presented first the total ratio of beatitude in respect to human destiny, before considering what remains after the sum of supernatural good has been deducted.

Substantially, the state of lapsed nature as denuded is the same with pure or nude nature. The question of the object and nature of pure natural beatitude is the one to be decided, in order to determine what amount of good in the endless life of human beings who lack the beatific vision of God is conceivable and possible. There is only one serious difficulty in this question. It arises from the consideration of the very essence of intelligence as related to the universal truth, and will as related to the universal good. The intellect, as such, by its very nature, seeks for the deepest cause, and for an adequation with the intelligible being of its universal object, and the appetite of the will follows it. How, then, can the intellect rest in any object except the absolute, necessary, infinite essence of God, apprehended by a clear and immediate intuition, or any other object but this perfectly quiet the appetite of the will? It is evident that if the intellectual nature, as such, has in it an exigency and a longing which cannot be satisfied with any good to which its faculties are commensurate, beatitude is something essentially supernatural. In this case, the natural order must be merely inchoate, potential, needing to be completed by the supernatural. Intellectual beings could not, then, be created for a purely natural end and destiny; the only end suitable and fit for them would be that which reaches its consummation in the beatific vision. Defrauded of this in any way, even without any voluntary fault of their own, they must be miserable during eternity through the suffering of the pain of loss, or at least continue for ever in a state of arrested and imperfect development, in which absence of suffering would be due only to insensibility, with an imperfect kind of felicity similar to that which men possess in this earthly condition, from the common enjoyments of human life.

We deny, however, that there is any exigency in created nature for the supernatural good. The difficulty above stated, that God is necessarily the supreme object of the created intellect and the created will, we answer as follows. Intellect, by nature, seeks God, according to its own mode and measure. The operation of the will is determined by the intellect. _Nil volitum nisi prius cognitum._ The divine intellect, which is the divine essence considered as intelligent subject, is in adequation with the divine essence considered as intelligible object. God has immediate, comprehensive cognition of himself by his essence. Every created essence is infinitely different from the divine, and therefore has an operation intrinsically unequal to the act in which the divine life consists. _Operatio sequitur esse._ The being of an intelligent creature is within the order of the finite, of the imitated, participated existence, activity, enjoyment, which is a diminished image of the archetypal reality in the Creator. All this is within the circle of nature, and when this circle is perfect, including whatever belongs to it, there is no exigency of anything beyond. The knowledge of God, not as he is in his essence, within his circle of immanent being, but as he is in the terms of his creative act, in the universe, in the intellectual light and intelligible essence of the created spirit itself, is within the circle of nature. As the Author of nature he is knowable and lovable, by perfect and well-ordered faculties of pure nature without grace and without defect. Natural beatitude does not require the immediate and intuitive, but only the mediate and abstractive cognition and contemplation of God, and does not exact any kind of union of the will to God as the sovereign good, except that which terminates by natural sequence its own rightly directed and completed spontaneous movement. Even now we can find God by reason, and take complacency in his perfections. Much more can beings of a higher perfection attain to the knowledge of God in a manner proportionate to their kind or degree of perfection, and with a complacency corresponding to their knowledge, if their intelligence and will are rightly co-ordinated, and directed toward their proper object. As respects the universal verity and good of being in the created universe, there is no difficulty whatever in supposing that it can be attained within any finite limits, in a state of pure nature.

This inferior sphere of natural beatitude being thus theoretically possible, it is most reasonable to suppose that all human beings who at the general resurrection are dispossessed of any right to the kingdom of heaven, and at the same time free from all actual sin, receive their ultimate destination in such a sphere. There is no reason in the order of justice why they should be deprived of any perfection or good of which they are naturally capable. In the “restitution of all things,” the ἀποκατάστασις, there will be no deordination left in the universe, and no imperfection of order belonging to an inchoate condition of nature. _Venit dies, dies tua, in quâ reflorent omnia._ Inanimate creation will become resplendent with the beauty which the last touches of the divine Artist have given to his consummate work. The influence of the life-giving Spirit will be poured in a full torrent through all parts of the universal realm of living being. In this general restitution we may be certain that the thousands of millions of human infants who have never attained to the use of reason in this world, and have never received the grace of regeneration, will be raised up, by the bounty of their Creator, in the full perfection of their human nature, both corporeal and intellectual, to live for ever in the enjoyment of all the good which is due to pure nature, participating in their own inferior degree in that excellence and felicity which in its highest perfection belongs to the blessed in heaven as an adjunct of their supernatural glory and beatitude. Moreover, it is altogether congruous to the order of redemption in Jesus Christ, and probable, that they will receive, in common with the whole creation, their own special benefit and increase of natural good, through the Incarnation. There is no obstacle in their nature to the reception of any good except that of the beatific vision. They may, therefore, enjoy the vision of the glorified humanity of the Lord, worship him and love him as their creator and benefactor, see and converse with the angels and saints, and in every respect enjoy a better and more desirable immortality than that which would be possible in another system of divine providence which did not contain a supernatural order.

Besides those who die in infancy, there are many adults who may be considered as on the same level with infants in respect to moral responsibility. Balmes proposes the opinion that a large proportion of the most ignorant and spiritually undeveloped part of mankind, especially those who are born and brought up in a low state of barbarism, never attain the rational level of a well-instructed Christian child of five or six years old, who, nevertheless, is regarded in Catholic theology as incapable of mortal sin.[120] Among the whole multitude of those who are destitute of the ordinary means of salvation, each and every individual either has the use of reason sufficiently for full moral responsibility, or he has not. If he has not, he is, in the moral relation, an infant, at most capable of venial sin; but if he has, either he has divine faith sufficient for obtaining salvation, or the sufficient grace and means for attaining the faith, or neither of these requisites for working out his salvation by his own voluntary efforts. In this last case his lack of faith is no sin, and he is only accountable for the observance of the natural law according to his own conscience. If he keeps this natural law, he is subject to no eternal penalty besides the privation of supernatural beatitude. All men, therefore, who really incur the responsibilities and the risks of a moral probation, have an opportunity of meriting heaven, or at least of attaining that natural felicity hereafter which is the lot of infants who die without baptism.

From all these premises we deduce one general conclusion, that the notion of a doom to everlasting infelicity and misery, which is a dire and inevitable calamity involving the great mass of mankind, by reason of the state in which they are born into this life, is a chimera of the imagination, and not any part of the Catholic faith or a just inference from any revealed doctrine. The sufferings of those who have not deserved punishment by their own voluntary transgressions of the divine law are temporary, disciplinary, intended for a final good, and in the end abundantly compensated. Many of the sufferings which have the nature of punishment are condoned altogether, and many others are temporary and in their last result beneficial to those who are subjected to their infliction. No rational and immortal being is permanently deprived of the proper perfection and good of his nature by fate or destiny, or by the arbitrary will of the Creator and sovereign Lord of the universe. The order of reason and justice of itself produces only universal good, and this universal good embraces the private and personal good of each individual being, except in so far as he has freely and wilfully made himself unfit and unworthy to participate in it. Eternal retribution is awarded solely to personal merit or demerit in proportion to its quantity. Outside of the order of just retribution, there is no action of God upon his creatures except that of pure goodness and love, bestowing gratuitously, unmitigated good without any mixture of evil. The desire for permanent beatitude in endless life, and the natural principle of beatitude implanted in every rational nature, are not frustrated and thwarted through any deficiency in nature, or failure of divine Providence to carry out his original design and intention to its complete and ultimate term. The only failure is in the free and concreative cause to which God has given dominion over itself and its acts and the effects of those acts, with power to produce in prescribed limits as much or as little good as it chooses. This free cause is free-will, which is the only cause, in every rational creature finally deprived of his original right to beatitude, of the state of irreparable privation in which he is placed by the “restitution of all things.” The restitution brings all nature into order and to perfection, in so far as each thing in nature is receptive of its proportionate good. Rational nature is receptive according to its rational appetite or the attitude of the will. Those rational beings who have determined themselves to a state of volition contrary to the order of reason and justice are, in so far as they are affected by this state, receptive only of a violent reaction of order against their will, repressing and confining their inclination to a perverse activity. The privation of beatitude is co-extensive with the contrariety between the will and the permanent, irreversible order of reason; and this contrariety is proportional to the misuse of freewill by sinning during the term of probation. Their evil is nothing but spoiled good, and they are themselves the spoilers. It is through no defect of goodness in God, or deficiency of good in the order of nature, that they are what they are. Every thing and every person in this order is in the right place and the due relation, according to the highest reason and the most perfect justice. God has made all things well, they are what they ought to be, and there is no flaw or defect in the _bonum honestum_ of the universe. God must take complacency in the fulfilment of his own wise and just will, and every rational being must concur with intellect and will in that which God wills. This is precisely what St. Thomas affirms when he says that the beatitude of the just will be increased by their knowledge of the eternal punishment of sinners, and there is no sense or reason in the diatribes of rationalists against him or any other theologian who does not overpass the limits of Catholic and rational doctrine on this head.

Another conclusion which may be reasonably deduced from sound theological principles and probable opinions is, that the majority of mankind, and of rational beings in general, are in a state of perpetual felicity in the world to come. There is no reason whatever for supposing that more than a third part of the angels fell with Lucifer. It is probable that the greater number of adults who live and die in the faith and communion of the church are finally admitted into heaven. We cannot deny that numbers of those who have lived under the natural law, without any explicit faith in Jesus Christ, have been also saved by extraordinary grace. Nor is it possible for us to determine what proportion of the great mass remaining may eventually attain some degree of inferior natural felicity similar to that which is the lot of infants dying in original sin. The number of infants who have received baptism and have died before the use of reason at least equals the number of the baptized who have attained adult age, and to these must be added all those who died in infancy before the sacrament of baptism was instituted, and had received remission of original sin under the ancient covenant of grace. The entire multitude of infants who have died since the beginning of the world at least equals the number of adults, and it is therefore certain that the majority of all human beings will possess in the future life either supernatural or natural beatitude. There is no reason, therefore, for the supposition that the Christian and Catholic doctrine represents the vast majority of human beings as destined to a state of everlasting misery. If any one is disposed to entertain the hypothesis that the universe is filled with a multitude of rational beings who are neither angels nor men, whose number bears a quantitative proportion to the physical magnitude of the vast cosmical system of the starry heavens, there is as much reason for supposing that they are all eternally good and happy as for supposing that they have existence. In respect to mere extensive and numerical quantity, the amount of good resulting from the creative act of God far surpasses the sum of that possible additional good which has been frustrated by the failure of free, concreative causes to co-operate with the first cause toward the great, final end of creation. In reality, the absolute, eternal decrees of God are not in any way frustrated by the failure of a certain number of creatures to attain the good for which they were destined. They leave no gap in the universal order which the foresight of God has not filled up. Their loss is exclusively their own, and their sins have only furnished an occasion for bringing out of the evil which they have attempted a far greater good than they could have effected by a faithful co-operation with the will of God, greater glory to the Creator and to the universe, more splendid merits in the just, a more magnificent exhibition of wisdom and love in the cross, through which the divine Redeemer of men triumphed over sin and death. “He humbled himself, becoming obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. Wherefore God hath also exalted him, and hath given him a name which is above every name: that in the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those that are in heaven, on earth, and in hell; and that every tongue should confess that the Lord Jesus Christ is in the glory of God the Father.”[121] The perfection of the whole creation, in subordination to the sphere of supernatural glory inhabited by the sons of God, is also clearly declared by St. Paul to be a consequence of the exaltation of Jesus Christ through the cross. “For the expectation of the creature waiteth for the revelation of the sons of God. For the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him that made it subject, in hope: because the creature also itself shall be delivered from the servitude of corruption into the liberty of the glory of the children of God. For we know that every creature groaneth, and is in labor even until now. And not only it, but ourselves also, who have the first fruits of the spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption of the sons of God, the redemption of our body.”[122]

Satan himself, with all those whom he has seduced into sin in the mad hope of thwarting the divine work of the Incarnation, has only contributed by his efforts to destroy the universal order, under the overmastering intelligence of God, to increase its splendor. In the end he will be found to have wound himself up by going around in his circuit. A few years ago there was a bear in the Central Park, who was permitted to live on a grass-plat, fastened by a long chain to a stake in the middle. By going continually round and round his post, he used to wind himself up so tightly that he could not stir. Satan is like this bear. His great achievement, and masterstroke of policy, was the crucifixion of the Son of God, by which he was exalted and obtained a name above every name, before which every knee _in hell_ shall bow and every tongue confess that the Lord Jesus Christ is in the glory of God the Father. This is the one great example of the universal action of divine Providence in bringing out of all evil a greater good than that which the evil destroys or prevents.

St. Paul anticipates an objection, which is likely to occur to some minds, in respect to the justice of God in the unequal distribution of grace, and the withholding of mercy from those whom he permits to work out their own final perdition. “Thou wilt therefore say to me: Why doth he then find fault? For who resisteth his will?” The answer is a rebuke of the presumption of those who pretend to dispute the sovereign right and dominion of God over his creatures, and thus in reality make the divine Majesty subservient and responsible to his own subjects. “O man, _who art thou that repliest against God_? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it: Why hast thou made me thus? Or hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honor and another to dishonor?”[123] The whole mass of mankind being destitute of any right to supernatural grace and beatitude, there can be no complaint against the sovereign will of God for conferring the grace of regeneration upon some and withholding it from others. None of those who have made themselves positively unworthy of everlasting glory by their sins are entitled to mercy. That God withheld all hope of pardon from the fallen angels and gave that hope to men, that to some sinful men he gives more grace than to others, and that he compels those who rebel against him to glorify him against their will in their own defeat and the overthrow of all their plans, is no ground of complaint against the divine justice. “Jacob I have loved, but Esau I have hated”; that is, loved less, and excluded from certain special, gratuitous blessings bestowed on Jacob. “What shall we say then? Is there injustice with God? _God forbid!_” No creature is made to suffer without sufficient reason or deprived of any natural or acquired right. But in respect to gratuitous gifts, and especially graces conferred upon the unworthy, God is absolute master. “For he saith to Moses: I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy.” It enters into the very notion of grace and mercy that they should be purely gratuitous. The whole order of grace in respect both to angels and men is purely gratuitous. It is therefore absurd to argue from the justice and goodness of God, and from the superabundant mercy which he shows toward sinners in this world, especially when they are within his special circle of grace, the Catholic Church, that he will give grace or show mercy after the day of judgment, in derogation of the order of justice. It was a purely gratuitous act of goodness in God to elevate human nature by the hypostatic union, and to give angels and men a share in the privileges of the sacred humanity. The rewards conferred on merit in this order are indeed rewards of justice, but the whole basis of the justice by which glory is proportioned to merit is laid in a gratuitous grant of the very conditions of merit, the grace which made it possible, and the promise of reward on which the title to the kingdom of heaven rests. Absolute, indefeasible, personal right to the glory of heaven does not exist except in Jesus Christ the Lord, who is a divine person, and whose merits are infinite and equal to all the benefits conferred by the Father upon creation. The rights of all those who share with him, the Blessed Virgin Mary included, have been conferred by him upon them. The beatific vision is a pure boon of goodness to every creature who attains its possession. All might have been left in their natural state without any possibility of attaining it, without any derogation of the order of eternal law in respect to intellectual nature. There is no reason, therefore, why the number of the elect, once completed, should ever be increased, or the gates of heaven reopened to admit new citizens and princes of the celestial Jerusalem. Those who have never forfeited a right to admission through their own fault have no reason to bewail their exclusion.

Those who have lost their right cannot possibly hope to recover it, because they are left in their despoiled nature, utterly impotent to turn back toward the supernatural good, deprived of all grace and beyond the reach of the economy of mercy, which has passed away for ever. In respect to supernatural life they are dead, and as incapable of resuscitation by any effort of their own as a corpse is incapable of repossessing itself of the soul which has departed from it. The ἀποκατάστασις is not a resurrection to spiritual life in grace, for this belongs to the preceding, initial order of regeneration which has terminated with the end of the present world. The bodily resurrection and restitution of nature gives only to human beings the complement of the life which they already possess, whether supernatural or merely natural, and to the physical universe its complement of perfection in the eternal order. The angels remain intrinsically unchanged in their spiritual, incorruptible nature, as God made them in the beginning. The holy angels continue in the possession of the supernatural mode of being which they acquired by their free and active co-operation with grace, before the probation of man commenced, without any increase of essential glory and beatitude. The fallen angels remain in the state into which they voluntarily precipitated themselves at the same time. The change which takes place at the end of human probation is, for the angels, only extrinsic. The holy angels cease to combat with the demons, and to minister in the economy of redemption. The demons are compelled to desist from their war against Immanuel and his kingdom, and are relegated to their destined abode. All human beings are placed in the state and condition in which they are to remain for ever, those who have followed the demons in their rebellion in a state similar to theirs, as those who have obeyed God are in a state similar to that of the holy angels. It is this part of the Christian doctrine which Origen wholly misunderstood. He may be excused from wilful and contumacious heresy, on account of the paucity of means at his command for learning the complete doctrine of the apostles, and the modest, hypothetical manner in which he proposed his erratic theories. We may also give him the benefit of the doubt respecting the entire purport of what he really and persistently did teach out of all that mass of wholly uncatholic and in a great measure absurd opinions, so justly condemned by the patriarchal synod at Constantinople in its fifteen anathematisms, and in a general way by several subsequent œcumenical councils. It is impossible to doubt, however, that one fundamentally erroneous conception was fixed in his mind, and gave occasion to the fanciful hypotheses of aeons and ages, and transitions of spirits up and down through the scale of being. This conception was an exaggeration of the freedom of will inherent in rational nature. Because no creature is either holy or wicked by his essence, but every one is capable of good or evil, he argued the perpetual flexibility and vertibility of free-will between good and evil. Permanence in good must therefore be attributed only to a habit of right determination, and permanence in sin to an opposite habit or obstinacy of purpose to do wrong. Perhaps his various and apparently conflicting statements can be reconciled, if we suppose that he admitted the actual perseverance of some in holiness through a kind of moral impeccability acquired by long and persistent efforts, with a consequent eternity of unchangeable beatitude; and an opposite state of irreclaimable perverseness in others with everlasting misery as its necessary penalty. Those who are in the middle between these two extremes are then variable, vacillating between the opposite poles of moral good and evil, happiness and infelicity, at least during indefinite periods of duration. Our modern rationalistic Christians to a certain extent are involved in the same imperfect philosophical notions which Origen, in the lack, of a Christian philosophy, borrowed from Neo-Platonism. They do not understand the nature of grace, which gives immutable holiness and impeccability as a perfection to a created essence which in itself is capable of defect. Hence, they cannot get a clear idea of a permanent state of indefectibility in good except as a moral habit resulting from a series of acts. Nor can they understand the opposite state of deficiency and privation as something permanent in itself, apart from the habit of sinning which has been contracted by acts of sin and may be removed by contrary acts under the influence of moral discipline. They choose to consider the state of those who become perfectly good, here or hereafter, and attain the felicity of heaven, as something fixed, because it is agreeable to the feelings to think so. They also strive to make the prospects of those who are not very good, and even of those who are very bad, as hopeful as possible, in view of a certain, or probable, or at least possible, future conversion at a more or less remote æonian period, because it is likewise agreeable to the feelings to anticipate this happy change. Moreover, they are very willing to accept the teaching of the Bible and the Christian tradition concerning the eternity of heaven, without seeking too anxiously for metaphysical or moral demonstration of its intrinsic credibility, because it satisfies the natural desire of the heart for perfect good. We do not deny that there is some truth in their reasonings concerning acquired habits of virtue and vice, but they are defective as an argument for the determination of the future destiny of souls. The certainty of a fixed and immutable state of sanctity and beatitude for the just in heaven does not depend either on these reasonings, or on an exegetical and critical interpretation of certain words in Holy Scripture. It has a deeper foundation. The human soul of Jesus Christ is impeccable because of its indissoluble union with the divine nature in his person. The angels and saints are impeccable because they also are united to God by an indissoluble union. The Holy Spirit is in them as the principle of their spiritual life. They love God above all things by a happy necessity, and their intuitive vision of his essence, the infinite good, with the perfect quietude of the will in the enjoyment of this good, raises them above all possibility of attraction toward any object which could allure them from their willing worship and allegiance to their sovereign Lord. Moreover, they actually possess the inferior good in the most perfect manner, with an unbounded liberty to follow all their inclinations, which are all innocent, in conformity to reason, and identical with the will of God. The indestructibility and immortality which belong to their essence as spirits, by nature, pervades their entire actual being with all its accidents, so that they are incapable of suffering any deterioration or injury.

In the natural order of beatitude, the perfect intellectual cognition of God accompanied by perfect natural love to him as the most perfect being, together with the complete possession of all connatural good, removes all tendency to evil. Nature seeks good by a necessary law, rational nature by its spontaneous, voluntary movement. No rational being seeks evil gratuitously or for the sake of evil, but only under the aspect of good, not _sub ratione mali_ but _sub ratione boni_. Where no illusion is possible, no sin is possible. Liberty of choice between the contraries of good and evil is not intrinsic to liberty of will, or a perfection of liberty, but a defect. It belongs to a defective order and to a defective subject, an order of probation and a subject placed under a trial of his obedience. The order and the subject are arranged to suit each other. The subject is required to move toward his end by using his reason and will rightly, and concurring with the Creator in bringing the inchoate order of creation to its due perfection. The order is such that it is not yet perfect, but capable of being made so by the operation of free, intelligent beings upon it. When the time of the end is reached, in the ἀποκατάστασις, this moral order is superseded; there is nothing which can be injured or abused or misdirected. Intelligent creatures which are made perfect have no more scope for election between contraries; their spontaneous and voluntary action is necessarily toward the true, universal good, and their liberty of choice has no possible terms which are not within the circle of order. They cannot think or will otherwise than right, because they are perfect and all things which come in contact with them are perfect. In this way they are brought into a similitude with God. He is what he is by necessity of nature, though he is most pure and simple act, wholly free from any extrinsic limitation or intrinsic contradiction to his will. He does what he will beyond his own being, but only that which is good. It is a perfection of his will that he cannot sin, as it is of his intellect that he cannot err or be ignorant. Falsehood and evil are nothing, and cannot terminate a divine act. _Bonum ex integrâ causâ, malum a quovis defectu_—Good is from complete cause, evil from any defect. God is absolute, infinite, first cause, and no defect in his causality is possible. Second causes, when they possess and exert their integral causality, are deficient in nothing which belongs to them. All those beings which are constituted in their ultimate perfection are in this integral state, and therefore are above all liability to evil throughout eternity.

This flexibility and vertibility in respect to good and evil, imagined by Origen as perpetually inherent in rational creatures, is a mere figment of his imperfect philosophy. He had scarcely any books to read which could help him to satisfy his unbounded curiosity to penetrate into the rational sense of the doctrines of revelation. Besides the Scriptures themselves, there was only pagan philosophy for him to study. Our modern philosophers have cast away the Catholic theology and philosophy, and strive to reconstruct the higher science for themselves, though with very poor success. The old Protestant theology was a doctrine of cruel, inexorable fate, which suppressed all freedom and justice in the moral order. The new theology which has subverted it restores the freedom of the will, and protests against the gloomy exaggerations and perversions of Christian dogmas which make them incredible and insupportable. But, in the effort to substitute more rational ideas, it overthrows or weakens the stability of the whole order of creation in its relation of dependence on the sovereign power and will of God. The wisest and most sober of those who are seeking for some stable and certain doctrine regarding the destiny of man and the final cause of creation, confess that they are in doubt and cannot solve the most momentous of the problems which force themselves on their attention. They never will find the light of truth until they return to the true church of Jesus Christ, and by her lamp recover the lost clew which guides the steps of the wayfarer through the labyrinth. The one dark mystery which like a cloud overshadows the bright disc of light “which enlighteneth every man coming into this world,” the mystery of moral evil and its punishment, cannot be ignored or reasoned away. Catholic theology does not create this mystery but finds it existing. It cannot remove it, but it, so to speak, absorbs it in another, the mystery of moral probation. And this mystery, awful as are the responsibilities and risks which it presents to view as environing those beings who are called to run and to contend for the supernal prize upon the arena, has in it more of light than of darkness. It throws new splendor upon the ἀποκατάστασις in which the order of reason and justice finally and universally triumphs. Its dark spot is reduced by the exposition of the Catholic doctrine as authoritatively taught by the church, in connection with certain or probable and permissible reasoning from revealed or rational premises, to its smallest limits. The gloom of doom and fate in the destiny of rational beings is scattered like an unwholesome mist from the swamps of error, in the light of this doctrine. The universality and perpetuity of the struggle and danger of probation are reduced to the limits of a relatively small number and brief period of duration. The numerical proportion of the losers to the winners in the strife is reduced to the lowest terms which are consistent with a fair and judicious estimate of the probabilities of the question. Moreover, the multitude of beings, whether greater or lesser, who suffer eternal loss as the penalty of their irreparable failure, are not losers through mischance or inferiority to competitors, as in a strife where one person wins at the expense of a less capable or less fortunate rival. Neglect or contempt of their own supreme good, deliberate and wilful wasting of their day of grace, are the sole causes of their failure. Their loss of beatitude is the penalty of their demerit. It is equally proportioned to their ill-desert, and this is limited to the sins committed during the time of probation which have never been remitted. The demerit of the angel which determines his eternal destiny is the demerit of one act only, the sin by which he fell from grace. The demerit of the man is confined to the sins of his mortal life unforgiven at the moment when this life ceases. The notion of an eternal increase of demerit, and a corresponding augmentation of torment without end, is a mere human invention without any foundation in Catholic doctrine. God has set bounds to the dangerous liberty of choice between good and evil, and to the evil as well as the good resulting from its exercise. Hell can become no worse than it is when the last sentence of the Judge has been pronounced, and the active hostility of the powers of hell against the kingdom of God is suppressed for ever when they are made to bend the knee before the name of Jesus, and to confess his glory. “Qui crucem sanctam subiit, _infernum confregit_.” The unending warfare between good and evil, the perpetual strife, the infinite series of changes, the eternal fluctuations and revolutions of Neo-Platonic philosophy, are a wild dream. The inventions and exaggerations and distortions produced by the working of the human intellect and imagination upon a mystery of God, have no value and are not to be confounded with the revealed truth made known through the teaching of the church. Clear and adequate knowledge of the future life is reserved for the future life. In the obscurity of this present state we not only have the veracity of God as the motive and ground of faith, but also the perfect, unerring intelligence of the human soul of Jesus Christ as the medium of transmitting to us the revelation of those things which are not seen but believed, and its pure love for humanity as the warrant of confidence in the divine goodness. Human reason and justice, impersonated in their ideal and integral perfection in union with the divine wisdom in Immanuel, will be the standard and measure of the final judgment by which the destiny of all men and all creatures will be determined for eternity. We need not have any misgivings, lest the ways of God should not be vindicated before the whole rational universe.

Footnote 119:

These are not the exact words, but they express the exact sense of St.
Thomas in the following passage: Beatitudo est bonum perfectum quod
totaliter quietat appetitum.... Objectum autem voluntatis, quæ est
appetitus humanus, est universale bonum. _Summa Th._, 4, ii. q. 2. a.
5.

Footnote 120:

_Mélanges_, French translation, vol. i. Essay on the Maxim, No
Salvation out of the Catholic Church.

Footnote 121:

Philipp, ii. 8-11.

Footnote 122:

Rom. viii. 19-23.

Footnote 123:

Rom. ix. 19-21.

ENGLISH STATESMEN IN UNDRESS.
EARL DERBY, JOHN BRIGHT, AND MR. GLADSTONE.

The recent resignation of Earl Derby was an act entirely characteristic of the man. He is not at all like Mr. Gradgrind, but he reminds one very forcibly of that unamiable stickler for, and worshipper of, facts. Let one come to Earl Derby with a new fact, or, better still, with a new application of old facts, and he is sure of a patient, candid, and intelligent hearing; but if he approaches him with a theory, or a sentiment, or a hypothetical conclusion based upon “ifs,” Earl Derby will be as unresponsive and immovable as a statue. His ruling passion is to be, or at least to appear, positively practical; the phrase most often on his lips is “common sense.” His illustrious father was a writer of established fame; a gay man of the world; fond of society and proud of his popularity with “the sex”; a captivating orator and an extremely skilful Parliamentary debater; moreover, he did not disdain to stoop to tricky devices when sober argument and sound reason would not ensure success. The present Earl Derby is prosaic to an almost painful degree; he cares little for society, and has not even “a redeeming vice”; his political and personal honesty is unimpeachable; he is as incapable of wilfully deceiving or misleading a foreign diplomatist as he would be of cheating his butcher; his speeches, in and out of Parliament, are models of wise dulness and calm force; they may in vain be searched through and through for a flight of fancy or an extravagant expression; and as for a joke—his lordship, as seen and heard in public, is apparently incapable of either making or understanding one. Sometimes those listening to him are tempted to laugh at him; but he never invites them to laugh with him. To hear him discourse for forty minutes at a time upon the comparative advantages of closed and open sewers, or demonstrating, with mathematical exactness, the superiority of natural manure over artificial compounds, is instructive, but it is not exhilarating. Lord Derby, however, is not without ideas. It was he who furnished Mr. Disraeli with a popular cry in 1874, when, hard pressed for a policy, and finding that appeals concerning the Straits of Malacca failed to fire the popular heart, that versatile and humorous statesman startled the country by declaring that the most pressing, inspiriting, and noble duty of the government at that moment was to improve the drainage of the kingdom. This was Earl Derby’s happy thought, and Mr. Disraeli was enraptured when, on asking his lordship to put it in shape, the latter proposed the formula, “Sanitas sanitatum; omnia sanitas.” There is a belief entertained by some of Earl Derby’s more intimate friends that at heart he is a sentimental, romantic, susceptible person, and that he is so morbidly timid of being suspected of such amiable weaknesses that he has fabricated for himself an artificial disguise for public wear, in which he may appear as the hard, dry, prosy, unsentimental, matter-of-fact business man. It does not stand to reason, it is claimed, that any man, and above all an English nobleman with practically boundless wealth, in the enjoyment of vigorous health, and in the prime of his life (he is now only fifty-two years old), could possibly be so preternaturally dry and skilfully prosaic as is Lord Derby. “It must be put on,” they say, “to hide the natural romance and tenderness of his disposition”; and as one of the proofs of the correctness of this theory they relate the story of his first and only love; of its frustration by accidents not wholly beyond his control; of his long and patient, but not hopeless, waiting for the death of the rival who had carried off the prize; and of his calm confidence, fully justified by the result, that he in his turn would win the lady. The story is true; but it may bear a different moral than the one assigned to it by those who fancy that Earl Derby, reversing the plan adopted by Hamlet, has chosen to put a solemn disposition on to hide the antic joyousness of his real nature. A sufficient acquaintance with Earl Derby will establish the fact that, if he wears a disguise, it fits him so well that no one can detect the imposition. He always seems to be exactly the same; never hot, never cold, never excited, never listless, attentive to everything that is said to him, replying without hesitation but without haste, most often in words that might have been cut and dried six months before.

His resignation, as previously remarked, was entirely characteristic of the man. He will not be led along a tortuous path; and the policy of Lord Beaconsfield on the Eastern question has been very crooked. Its very success depended on its crookedness. The two earls are great friends; in fact, Lord Beaconsfield would be guilty of ingratitude if he should ever cease to regard Lord Derby with affection. Nor is it to be supposed that Lord Beaconsfield is a whit more patriotic than Derby, or that he has a keener sense of what is necessary for the safety of the empire. The difference between them is the difference between the daring yet keen speculator and the staid and methodical merchant. Lord Beaconsfield is sometimes willing to try the hazard of the die. Something may always turn up; there is the possibility of an alliance with Austria; there is the chance that Italy may be willing to repeat the part that Sardinia played in 1854; it is on the cards that the death of Bismarck or of the Emperor William may effect a radical change in Germany’s foreign policy; it is possible that France may be magnanimous enough to forget how England left her naked to her enemy in 1870, and that the allied French and English armies may again fight together in the Crimea. Lord Beaconsfield is popularly supposed to argue thus; but Lord Derby is subject to no such illusions. At least, he will take no chances. He has no sentimental horror of war, as John Bright has. He would fight soon enough if he saw his way clearly to a successful issue of the conflict; but he does not see his way. For England to enter single-handed into an armed struggle with Russia would in his opinion be madness; and he is convinced that she cannot count upon a single ally. It is true that some of the German people are not much in love with Russia; but the German government, Lord Derby affirms—and he ought to know—is altogether on the side of Russia, and an unkind neutrality is all that England can expect from that source. As for France, not a single French politician would advocate an English alliance for war; the Crimean War was never popular in France, and the 100,000 French lives lost in that struggle are still lamented. Sardinia joined England and France in the war of 1854 because she was in a position in which an adventurous policy was desirable; but now Sardinia is swallowed up in Italy, and Italy has all she can do to make both ends meet at home. The great hope lies in Austria; but Earl Derby knows that Francis Joseph, Alexander, and William are three sworn friends, and he sees, moreover, that one of these would not be likely to break with another of the triumvirate unless he were assured that the third would either aid him or remain neutral. Still more plain is it to Earl Derby’s cool perception that the internal divisions of Austria are so grave that she would be mad to engage in a war which, if unsuccessful, would split the empire in twain. The Magyars sympathize with Turkey, the Slavs with Russia, the Austro-Germans with neither; the army could not be trusted; and the finances of the empire are in such a condition that it was with the greatest difficulty that the government the other day raised a loan of twenty-five millions of dollars. It is clear enough to Lord Derby that England, without an ally, would be worsted; and it is equally clear that she cannot safely count upon an ally. Of course all things are possible. She may secure an ally; but it is only a chance, and Lord Derby will take no chances.

There is another fact that weighs upon him: the consideration that the war, if entered upon, has no definite, practical object. The cant is that it is necessary in order to regain for England influence in Europe; but this is a consideration that has no weight in Lord Derby’s mind. He sneers at it in his dry, prosaic manner as something that is ridiculous. In a certain sense he is a democrat. He recognizes fully the fact that England is practically a democracy, and on a memorable occasion he shocked the Lords by telling them that the people were their “employers.” But he is keenly alive to the fact that a government which shapes its course in accordance with the ever-shifting breeze of popular caprice cannot have an intelligible or consistent record; and the other day he took occasion to point out that the “employers” of the government, in regard to the Eastern question, had not been of the same mind for six months together. Two years ago it was as much as one’s life was worth to say a word in favor of the Turks or against the Russians; now it is all the other way. Turkey might have been saved, and not a voice was raised; now she is irretrievably lost, and every one is crying out that she must be saved. So Earl Derby refuses to help his “employers” to embark in a war without an object well defined, without reasonable hope of success, and without an ally. He does it without the passion that Mr. Gladstone displays; without the rhetoric John Bright uses, without a flourish, or a poetical quotation, or a sarcasm—simply as a dry, shrewd, cold-blooded, and clear-headed merchant would do when asked to imperil his fortune by wild investments on the Stock Exchange.