The laws of Providence ...

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Introduction

Providence is that attribute of God by which He directs the action of all His creatures, and in particular that of beings endowed with reason, toward the end He assigned them in creating them.

From this simple notion there is an evident consequence. We can understand nothing in the happenings of this world unless we know the laws of Providence. Those who seek elsewhere than in the knowledge of these laws the explanation of the destinies of society are as wise as he w T ho would seek outside of the laws of astronomy for an explanation of the movements of the heavenly bodies.

A wilful and culpable ignorance of these laws of Providence is at the bottom of all the gross errors into which a great number of pretended philosophers have fallen in our day. But, for many Christians also, the forgetfulness of these laws is the cause of a fatal discouragement.

How can we otherwise explain the strange contrast between the spirit of the Christian religion and the character of the greater number of those who practise it ? In this holy religion everything tends to uplift souls and to enkindle in them boundless desires. " Lift up your hearts on high," the Church cries without ceasing — Sursum corda / Whatever is earthly and finite she calls on us to despise as un-

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worthy of us. She shows us the Infinite alone as the goal toward which we should tend — the Infinite in duration, the Infinite in greatness, the Infinite in bliss. To reach this glorious goal she offers us, once again, the infinite power of grace as our armor of strength : the infinite price of the Blood of God, which she gives us for our redemption ; the infinite dignity of Divine adoption, which she confers upon us even here as the pledge of the inheritance prepared for us in a better life.

It would seem, then, that Christians should be the most courageous and most confident of all men. While they scorn all that springs from their own nothingness, they should join with this generous humility a proud esteem of the heavenly gifts which they have received from God. You would expect to see them holding high their heads in the midst of their more unfortunate fellows, who have no other support than error and no other hope than final nothingness.

And yet it is almost just the contrary which we see. Little-mindedness is the capital vice of the servants of God, just as pride is the capital vice of His enemies. How often do we see the heirs of the promises wretchedly wavering and finally yielding to fatal discouragement? At the most, they think they are doing quite enough if they can preserve faith and hope in the midst of the scandals around them.

Once more, how can you explain this deplorable state of things, unless you acknowledge that a very

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great number of Christians do not know how to consider in their true light the happenings of the world around them? They know the laws of Providence, but they mistake their application. They have a divine torch ready to their hand, but because they know not how to hold it up with a firm hand, they let themselves go forward in the midst of darkness. Instead of looking upon the facts of which they are witnesses as a shining confirmation of the truths taught them by their faith, they imagine that they find in them, on the contrary, a constant refutation of her divine teachings. The moral world offers to their bleared eyes only a confusion a thousand times darker than the chaos whence sprang the physical world.

In consequence, what is sure to happen ? At the very moment of victory, discouragement seizes hold of the soldier. Lost in the midst of the boundless field of battle, blinded by the dust and deafened by the cries of contending warriors and worn out by fatigue, he sees around him only tumultuous movements and discerns not the end toward which they tend, nor the result which they should produce. Meanwhile the general, whose genius animates and directs this immense multitude, sees his orders executed with care by his soldiers; and the enemy himself helps unknowingly to the realization of his plan. The general, then, already feels the certainty of success, and is intoxicated with the glory of his triumph.

A like assurance should be the fruit of the con-

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siderations which we are to present to the Christian reader in the course of this book. Evidently, we cannot produce this result, unless we can keep steadily to the point of view whence the Supreme Arbiter of things directs human events. This is the only end of the present work.

We shall lay down, as exactly as possible, the laws which Divine Providence imposes on the wills of men and obliges them to work out, without in any way destroying their free will. We shall set forth the plan of battle which the Mighty Head of the City of God has followed without variation from the beginning of the world, in the strife waged against Him by the passions of men and the malice of hell. Thus we may succeed in dispelling the sad illusion which causes us to see only disorder in that moral order which is a thousand times more admirable than the physical order.

Chapter I

FIRST LAW OF PROVIDENCE: WHATEVER IS DONE IN THE WORLD, TENDS TO GLORIFY GOD.

This law is the essential and immutable basis of the whole moral order. It is the rule by which everything must be measured, and the principle from which all other laws must flow. If this is admitted, the relations of the creature with the Creator and of men among themselves, can be brought into order with the greatest ease. If it is denied, there is no more order or morality or duty. Selfish interests and brutal passions alone remain standing as the foundation of human society: in other words, all that is left from which to bring forth order are those very things which cause disorder.

We cannot, therefore, dispense ourselves from laying down solidly this fundamental law. In view of this necessity, the reader will pardon us for presenting him with considerations more or less abstract. Even should it cost us an effort, we ought to think ourselves happy to be able, under God's own guidance, to lift ourselves up to those luminous heights whence we may contemplate in its sublime unity the immense movement which He imprints on His creation.

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The most precious enjoyment of the scholar is experienced when, after long labors, he at last has grasped the law which governs the movement of a star in its orbit. * How much sweeter should be the satisfaction of our own understanding, if we can but acquire the certainty of having found that highest law which all the worlds obey.

This law is expressed in our formula. To understand it better, we will, first of all, consider it in itself; then we will examine it in its application to the present order of things. But we shall much more easily understand its generality after we have analyzed it into a certain number of particular laws, which form, in a way, its different parts.

i.

The glory of God is the prime and essential end of creation.

I. Let us place ourselves at the beginning of things. Going back through the course of the ages, we come to that first moment when the world came forth from nothingness at the voice of the Most High. Let us go yet further back. If our imagination refuses us here, our reason, at least, has this power. We can very clearly conceive that, before the beginning of time, God existed alone, and that even then He was fully sufficient to Himself. The earth had not yet begun its revolutions around the sun.

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The sun did not yet flood the heavens with its light and heat. Space was dumb and void : or rather, it was full of God alone, speaking unto Himself, showing forth unto Himself His Infinite Glory, and rejoicing in His own bliss.

What motive could have led God, so infinitely rich and happy, to come forth from His repose to create the world ? Evidently, not the desire of perfecting Himself, or the need of acquiring something. What could He expect from His creature, when His creature could have nothing except from Him ? Since He was to give everything, He could receive nothing. Moreover, it is clear that He who exists of Himself must find in Himself whatever is necessary to His own perfection and happiness. Every possible perfection He possesses. There is only one thing which of necessity is shut out from Him — that is, imperfection, nothingness.

God, therefore, could not be moved to create the world by the desire of increasing His own perfection. Only one motive could have determined Him — the desire of spreading beyond Himself something of His own infinite fulness. This desire is an inclination natural to goodness. The less need there is of acquiring, the more is the need felt of communicating. This is a sublime need, infinitely different from that which we experience from the great void we find within ourselves. The need of acquiring something is born from our own poverty and creates in us sorrow and disquiet. Just so the need

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of pouring itself forth which springs from the very plenitude of the Divine Goodness is all calm and supreme.

Undoubtedly, God found in His own infinite perfection an object capable of satisfying His infinite faculties. Therefore, without any loss of bliss to Himself, He might forever have abstained from producing anything outside of Himself. But, on the other hand, in His infinite goodness He saw the model and the reason of an infinity of beings who might reproduce outside of Him and in different degrees those perfections which in Him are gathered up in undivided unity. Thus the sun gathers up into the unity of its light the undefined variety of the rays which go forth over all the points of space and reproduce its image. The created rays of which Uncreated Light might become the source, the possible images of His infinite beauty, God loved, yet not of necessity : for without them He was infinitely perfect and infinitely happy. But there was nothing to withhold Him from stretching out to them that necessary love which He has for Himself. He could not love them apart from Himself, for they have nothing lovable apart from Him. Moreover, His power of love, infinite as it is, is fully satiated in His own infinitely lovable perfection. But He could love them in Himself and for Himself.

It is thus that God could create, without losing anything of His own immutability ; and while de-

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creeing the existence of His creatures, He ceased not to centre in Himself all His acts.

Here, then, is the only end which His wisdom could have had in view when, going forth from His rest, He produced the world : to exercise His own good pleasure and His love in His works ; to reproduce in their boundless variety the wonders of His own infinite unity ; to communicate, to some more and to some less, features of that beauty beyond compare, which is His own possession in its fulness ; and to make them share, each according to its own nature, in His own unutterable bliss.

This was the only end worthy of God. It is also the most glorious end for His creatures.

What could be nobler for a being sprung from nothing than to be called to show forth the Supreme Beauty, and to be loved with that very love with which God loves His own infinite goodness ? It is right, then, to say that the external glory of God is the essential end of creation. For by this glory, external to Himself, we mean just this manifestation of perfections of the Creator by His creatures.

This is what Reason, in perfect accord with Faith, reveals to us concerning the origin of things. Creatures can have but one end, because the Creator Himself could have but one end in producing them, namely, His own glory. Undoubtedly, He was free to create or not to create. But if He determined to produce anything outside of Himself, He was not

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free to give it any other end than Himself, for the reason that He alone can be the final end of His own actions. He could not, without destroying Himself, dispense himself from centering all things in Himself. He is the first beginning of all things, and it is necessary that He should be also their last end. It is the law of His being. It is a law supremely glorious, imposed by the supreme perfection of His own nature upon His almighty will. What reason have we for astonishment if, being bound Himself by this law, He should impose it on every work that comes forth from His hand ?

We cannot deny this first law without refusing our minds to evidence, and at the same time destroying both the notion of God and the notion of the creature. To give to the world in general, and in particular to humanity, any other end, we must choose one of two things: either we must uphold that humanity is an effect without a cause, and that instead of being created by God it has been produced simply from nothing ; or we must pretend that humanity has received from God no end worthy of Him, and that the Divine Workman, in producing this masterpiece of His hands, has acted by chance, not knowing what He did. That is, we must deny to God either power or wisdom : and this is equivalent to denying Him any existence, for a God Who should not be infinitely powerful and infinitely wise would no longer be God.

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Before, then, entering on an examination of the relations which human events may have with the glory of God, we can rest assured, in virtue of the most evident of all reasoning, that without fail they must end in exalting the Divine glory. Reason as well as Faith tells us that if the least movement of the least atom did not tend directly or indirectly toward this end, it would be necessary to deny, along with the existence of God, all truth and all evidence.

This assurance is of itself sufficient to strengthen our minds in the midst of the storms that shake the earth. What though darkness surround us and evil seem to prevail? "What though the enemies of God triumph, the ground tremble beneath our feet, and the stars of the firmament fall into the abyss, still we may close our eyes and await with confidence the return of light. Even though the night should last as long as the world lasts, still it could not resist the sun of eternity. The tempest will pass, and its furious disorder will be found to have wrought powerfully for the consummation of God's order.

II. Let us try to understand better yet that what we have said is of the most absolute necessity. For this, it is enough to consider that when God in the counsels of His Wisdom determined to create the world, He foresaw, not confusedly, but in their least details, all the happenings of which this world was to be the stage. He saw, shut up in the treasures of His might, an infinity of other possible worlds, whose production would have given room to a more or less 2

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complete manifestation of His attributes. By a choice that was perfectly free, He preferred the world of which we form a part to all those which He left in nothingness. Now, He would not have been free to make this choice, if a single one of the happenings which He foresaw were to be accomplished in this world had been contrary to His own end. Of course, He was master in His own creation, and might demand of it a higher or a lower degree of that external glory which alone it is capable of giving Him. But He was not master in the sense that He could dispense any of the elements which make up Creation from accomplishing in its whole extent the design which He had conceived when He produced them.

Moreover, we know that nothing is done here below without God's concurrence. A creature is not less incapable of self-preservation, of self-movement, of acting on other creatures, without God's aid, than it was incapable of coming forth from nothing without the help of His hand. It is, then, in God and through God that all men move and act, even those who give no heed to obeying Him and all whose movements tend to the direct contrary of His designs. It is clear to everyone that God could not preserve them in their liberty and lend His concurrence to all their acts, were He not certain of drawing His own glory from each of those acts and of constraining their indocile liberty to His own service, even from their very revolt.

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The animal man, if he chooses, may see in the movements which agitate human society, only what is patent to the eyes of the flesh — the blind and disordered strife of interests and passions. But we should be able, with the double light of Reason and of Faith, to discern God everywhere present, everywhere acting, and making use of the most rebellious instruments to reach His own ends.

" Behold, " says the Spouse in the Canticles, " He standeth behind our wall, looking through the windows, looking through the lattices." (ii. 9.)

All creation is but this transparent wall through which the Christian soul knows well how to perceive the Eternal Love. Those who have not the sense of God see everywhere only nothingness and disorder ; but the unerring instinct of Faith knows how to discern the all powerful action of the Sovereign Order weaving from all the scattered threads its wondrous web. That which is an impenetrable veil to the eyes of the flesh is to Faith a manifestation full of light. Faith knows that the present is nothing in itself, and has no reality except as a preparation for the eternal future. Faith fixes her gaze on that which is eternal in the present, on that which is divine in the human ; and she knows not how to see aught else. Those who see aught else, see nothing. They see less than nothing, for they see falsehood. What they call great designs, important events, successes, reverses, what are they all but shadows that pass and chase before them other shadows, all alike

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to be seen and then to vanish in the depths of eternal nothingness? And what remains of it ? Just that result which God had in view, and for which His very enemies have labored without willing it.

Great is the peace and sweet the light which has dawned on him who succeeds in piercing through the shades of created things, and sees across the deceitful and fleeting vision the changeless truth. He has lifted himself above the discordant noises of the world, which no longer strike his ear except when, in the mingling concert of the material and spiritual creation, their very dissonances bring out all the Divine harmony.

Yet it must be acknowledged that it is not easy for our understanding to lift itself up to this height, and with the eye of the spirit to embrace this harmonious unity of all things. Reason tells us that everything must be in order under a God Who is infinitely wise; but experience seems to assure us of the contrary, at least so far as the moral world is concerned. How can we reconcile these two opposing witnesses ? How can we bring into accord that which is and that which ought to be? How can we explain the disorder of society in the midst of universal harmony? For this we must know the special designs of God concerning His rational and free creatures. This is to be the object of our second study.

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II

In the present order, God wills to be glorified by making man divine.

I. To understand this law, and to grasp its exact meaning, it is enough to make application to humanity of those general principles which we have established with regard to creation.

God, we said, could have no other motive to determine Him to create than the desire of manifesting, outside of Himself, His divine attributes and of pouring forth upon the beings which have come from His hands the effusion of His own infinite fulness.

Now, among all creatures, those whose nature best represents the divine perfection, those who are the most capable of receiving the communication of His divine bliss, are beyond all contradiction creatures that are endowed with reason, namely, angels and men. It is in them, therefore, that God, most of all, will realize the designs of love which led Him to create. It is in them, most of all, that He will find His glory.

He at once finds His glory in the production of the soul, a substance spiritual like Himself and like Himself immortal; whose simplicity, the image of His own ineffable simplicity, still comprises in itself so wonderful a multiplicity of acts and powers ; and whose being, intelligence, and will reproduce the Trinity of His own Persons : which, last of all,

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knowing Him and loving Him, as He knows and loves Himself, experiences even like Him the glorious impossibility of finding its full satisfaction elsewhere than in the possession of the infinite.

Therefore God draws great glory from the creation of man, but this glory is only the beginning of that which He set before Himself when He gave man being. It is most of all by the happiness of His reasonable creature, by the development of its faculties, by the intercourse of love which He disposes it to enter upon with Himself, that He intends to be glorified.

This is all very different from those purely material beings who receive from the creative action of God every element of their perfection, and who have only to suffer themselves passively to be clothed by His munificence with the adornments of their beauty. On the contrary, the free being is called to work along with God in perfecting itself. According as this being lends or refuses to God its concurrence, the nature which it received when drawn forth from nothing will take the first or the last place in the hierarchy of created beings.

This is why the Scripture notices that, after producing each of His other works, God rejoiced within Himself, and bore witness of their beauty. God saw that they were good. On the contrary, when He had created man, He kept silence. He recognized that there were still many things wanting to this work, which was yet the most perfect of all. // is not good

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that man should be alone. Why, then, should society be necessary to him, unless because he is incomplete in himself and has need to come to the completion of himself by his own labor, aided by the help of those like him. The Divine Workman did not believe it right to rejoice in His masterpiece and declare it to be truly good, until, after long trial, He should have brought it to its perfection and fully developed and fully satisfied the faculties which He had given to it when He created it. Well done, thou good and faithful servant, enter into the joy of thy Lord.

II. But the happiness which God designs for His reasonable creature, by which alone it can give Him the glory which He expects from it ; this intercourse which He designs to set up with His creature, and for which He expects its free co-operation ; this perfection which the creature is to add to that perfection already received from the Creator, may be of more than one kind.

First of all, there was a natural perfection and a natural happiness in store for it. This happiness would, in any case, have consisted in the knowledge and love of God; for God is the essential goal of our tendencies, and so long as we do not rest in Him we shall never find peace. The infinite is the home of the reasonable soul; so long as she is held down by the finite and the created she must experi. ence the torments of exile. But, by its nature, it can know the infinite only by the finite, and reach

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up to the Creator only by means of His creatures. Man, then, will have reached his natural perfection when he shall know perfectly the highest truth, in so far as it is reflected in the two-fold world of spirit and body; when he shall love perfectly the Divine Goodness, in so far as it is the fountain-head of all finite good ; when he shall admire uncreated beauty in the great works of nature and the splendors of reason.

The complete development of the faculties of man under these different aspects, the fulness of the knowledge and love and joy of God in creatures and of creatures in God, joined to exemption from all pain and to the certainty of immortality, would have constituted the natural happiness of man.

Would man, in the possession of this happiness, ever have suspected the possibility of a higher bliss? It is difficult to say. What is certain is that the absence of such bliss would have caused in his faculties no want, properly so called, for our faculties experience a want only when they are deprived of the object which they were naturally destined to attain.

Natural happiness, then, would have sufficed for man. Would it have sufficed equally for God ? Undoubtedly. Who, then, would have had the right to demand from Him aught else ? His creature ? But God owed nothing to the creature and could, had He so wished, have left it in its nothingness. His own wisdom ? But God was bound by His own

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wisdom only to satisfy fully the faculties and desires of the beings sprung from His hands.

Therefore, even though He had granted to His creature no other perfection and no other happiness, still He would have acquired rights to the undying gratitude of His creature. His justice would have been fully satisfied, and His wisdom could have demanded nothing more.

But what would have been sufficient to the wisdom and justice of God could not suffice to His goodness. That natural felicity which would have satisfied fully the faculties of man could not content the unspeakable need which God feels to communicate Himself. It was too little for Him to grant us in an image, however excellent it may have been, His own life and blessedness. It was necessary that He should give us Himself ; that He should make us enter into participation of His own nature, of His own light, of His own love ; and that, at the end of our trial, He should become Himself the object of our bliss, by admitting us to the clear vision of His beauty and the enjoyment of His infinite goodness.

This destiny of the reasonable creature to enjoy during eternity every happiness of God and to share, even during the time of trial, in God's nature and faculties, in God's light and love, is what we call the supernatural order.

III. The supernatural order, indeed, with everything that goes to make it up, is not only infinitely above the weak and wounded nature of man, not

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only above the purest angelic nature and the aspirations of the sublimest cherub, but it is even beyond the most perfect of all the creatures God beholds at the summit of the limitless hierarchy of possible beings. The lowest act which belongs to this order excels the most wondrous of the prodigies of the natural order. For these acts, in a very true sense, are divine acts. I mean acts divine by communication, just as the acts of God Himself are divine by nature.

But it is important to gain a very exact idea of this making divine of man, which is the end of all the designs of Providence and the summing up of the Christian religion.

Here we pass between two rocks which we must shun with equal care ; pantheism, which is the exaggeration or rather the diabolical counterfeit of the supernatural order, and naturalism, which is its negation. We must hold pantheism in abhorrence ; but we must not for that feel obliged to share the timidity of certain minds who, with every good intention, lean far too much toward naturalism, through fear of dashing against the rock of pantheism. Lest they should too closely identify man with God, they dare not seriously consider that union which God's goodness desires to contract with the wretchedness of man. Through excess of reverence for Sovereign Majesty, they do violence to the most express words of Sovereign Truth.

These fears are as unreasonable in their motive