Nor is this work of redemption based upon any fundamental change in the eternal idea of God, after which man was created. The eternal idea of God is incapable of change, and the work of grace or redemption is the restoration to a state of grace of the whole race, which, in the person of Adam, fell into a condition of helpless although not total contradiction with the divine idea; and in his restored state of redemption the power has been again given to him of issuing out of his probation through the aid and guidance of the Holy Ghost, conformable to the unchanged, eternal idea of the Father.
To prevent misconception, it may be further remarked, in the words of Professor Staudenmaier, “The second creation (or scheme of redemption) builds itself, on the one side, on all that is indestructible in the divine idea of man, as intelligence and freedom, and at the same time labors to restore again that which was really lost by the original transgression, viz., the supernatural principle and the justice and holiness of life which stands in connection with it. Hence under the scheme of redemption man comes to the perfection of his nature, in the manner in which that perfection was contemplated in the divine idea (in der Idee gesetz war), viz., as the union of grace and free will (in der Einheit von Freiheit und Gnade).” (Die Lehre von der Idee, p. 923).
The divine idea, then, is the exemplar or pattern of perfection (προορισμος παραδειγμα, forma seu exemplar, das Musterbild) which, under the scheme of redemption, man is called to realize. And his term of probation, under the guidance and influence of God the Holy Ghost, is so constituted as to be the trial of both his intellect and will, which in man, as in God, are mutually co-operating and co-ordinate springs of action. But though in man intellect and will must ever move hand in hand and in mutual concert to determine his actions, yet it is possible for him to go astray through the special fault of one or the other, and to be found at the end of his probation not to be what he might and ought to have been, as well through some special error of the understanding as through some vicious act of the will. Hence, after that the sacrifice had been paid which purchased man’s restoration to a state of grace, God the Father, in the Son and through the Eternal Spirit, went on to provide the aid that was found absolutely necessary to protect the erring intellect and the infirm will, in order that men might be preserved in the state of grace, be guided in it onward to their perfection, and be furnished with the medicinal means of restoration in case they might fall from it.
To this end the great society of the Catholic Church was instituted by God the Son, and the command given to the Apostolic College to go forth to collect and organize it out of all the nations of the earth: “As the Father hath sent me, so send I you”; while the work of God the Holy Ghost is the invisible imparting of spiritual gifts to the baptized members of this society, according to the needs of their rank, position, ministry, and functions; and the whole work is directed to the end that man may issue out of his probation fulfilling and realizing the divine idea.
Now, as God recognizes, in the probation of man, the trial of both intellect and will, and wills that not without the free exercise of these he should attain the perfection of his nature, our first parents, in the state of innocence, would, from their then enjoying a communication with heaven, possess, perhaps, partly through intuition, partly from revelation, a knowledge of the divine Exemplar, into conformity with which they were called to bring themselves. But when man fell and lost the illumination of sanctifying grace, then the perception of the divine ideal would be obscured and would cease to exist, except in the way of the few mercifully-surviving glimpses of their higher destination, which the history of our fallen race seems to indicate were never wholly lost.
It must be obvious, then, that a clear and practical view of the divine Exemplar, which we are required to resemble, is as much the natural guide of the intellect in its probation as the view of the moral attributes of God is that which wins the heart and leads captive the will. It was, among other reasons, in order to place this Exemplar before us, that the Eternal Son became man, and thus laid before the intellect of man, in his own most sacred humanity, the incarnate Exemplar of that which humanity was to aim at becoming during the course and at the issue of its probation. And if a doubt could for a moment cross the mind as to the question, What is the likeness or ideal that a Christian, as far as the power is given to him, should seek to aim at bringing himself to resemble? it is answered by the fact of the Incarnation of the Son of God. He is the incarnate Exemplar, or Pattern, for our study. His sacred humanity absolutely answers to the idea of God the Father; and they who, through the aid of God the Holy Ghost, succeed in acquiring a resemblance to this incarnate Pattern, will be found at the issue of their probation so far to realize the end for which they were created.
The sacred humanity of the Eternal Son being now no longer visible in the same manner as in the days when he taught with his apostles in Judæa, the church which he has founded has come to supply his place, and, by her varied means of instruction, to bring the knowledge of this divine Exemplar home to the minds of all. In the words of an author quoted by Professor Möhler, the church is a continuation of Christ (ein fortgesetzer Christus).
And thus with the question of Christian song. The intellect must at once feel that it needs a guide, and cannot be safely entrusted to itself. Nor can this guide be any other than the divine idea. And here, of course, it would be a manifest impiety for a human mind to attempt to construct, à priori, an idea of music, and then to call its own work the divine idea; for the whole value of the inquiry that is to follow is built on the truth that the main features and the subsequently-detailed constituent parts of the divine idea, as they have been laid down, are what they claim to be; and so far as these are capable of being disputed, the comparison will of course fail of its effect. Professor Staudenmaier justly observes, in treating of the creation, “Both ideas, the divine and the human, stand in this relation to each other: that God realizes his own eternal idea of the world in the act of creation, while man has to acquire his idea of the world from reasoning and an experimental examination of the world as it exists after creation. As the idea, then, to God is the first, and the world last, so, on the contrary, to man the world is first and the idea last, as that, namely, which he has had to gain for himself, as the result of a scientific examination of the divine work” (Die Christliche Dogmatik, vol. iii. part 1, p. 42.)
But if it be possible for the human mind to obtain a view of the divine idea of the creation from the study of the world as it exists, it must be also possible, in an analogous manner, to gain a view of the divine idea of Christian music from the history of the church and the legislation of councils, from the doctrine of the apostles and fathers of the church, and, lastly, from the reason of the thing. The contrary supposition would involve the inadmissible alternative that our divine Redeemer, who had done so much to furnish our understanding with its needed measure of guidance in the fact of his Incarnation and his living example, has left us without any principle at all to serve as our guide in the choice and employment of sacred music. This cannot be. The divine Teacher of mankind cannot, for his mercy’s sake, have left us to ourselves in so important a matter, that so much concerns the adoration he has himself taught us to pay to his Father and the Holy Spirit. It must be possible, from his own sacred words, from those of his inspired apostles, from the doctrine of the fathers, from the history and legislation of the church, as well as from our own Christian reason and instinct, as has been humbly and imperfectly attempted in the ensuing inquiry, to gather a view of the divine idea sufficiently clear and intelligible, sufficiently trustworthy and decisive, to serve as a guide for the understandings of those who feel the deep and dear interest of the question and their own liability to fatal error, with all its destructive consequences.