BY THE AUTHOR OF “THE DIVINE SEQUENCE.”
III.
THE CHARACTERISTICS OF GOD’S GOVERNMENT—ABUNDANCE.
We have adverted to the indirect government of the creation by God—to the government which he condescends to administer first through the primary laws which he has stamped upon the universe; and, secondly, through the moral and physical activity with which he has endowed mankind.
We are making vast and rapid strides in this day towards discovering and unravelling these primary laws. At the present moment we seem to have got ourselves somewhat into a tangle of knowledge, which threatens to asphyxiate us with the overpowering perfume of its lavish blossoms, like that of the exuberant growth of the tropical flora.
We are caught as in the meshes of a net, and are hardly allowed time to solve one problem and satisfy ourselves with a conclusion before some new tendril of the ever-growing parasite has flung another
flowering coil of verdure around us and arrested our steps once more. We have come upon the time long ago predicted by the Archangel Michael to the prophet Daniel: “Plurimi transibunt, et multiplex erit scientia.”[60] We are dazzled and bewildered; and some timid souls are like ostriches, which hide their heads in the sand, preferring not to see and know, and hoping that their ignorance and the ignorance of the multitude generally will serve as a dam to the coming flood, and leave us freed from a torrent of questions which, if once they are there, must be answered. It is to be regretted that these persons cannot learn to possess their souls in patience, and to watch calmly and intelligently the progress of this gigantic growth of science, assured that it will all arrange and classify itself in time, in perfect harmony with what they know to be true and enduring, and which they so dishonor by their apprehensions.
However, since this is too much to expect of many, there is nothing for it but to allow such people to keep themselves in peace in the way that suits them best; only not permitting them to discourage others from investigation and reverent inquiry. St. Thomas tells us that the end of all science is contained within the end of all theology and is subservient to it. Theology, therefore, ought to command all other sciences and turn to its use those things of which they treat. But we shall not arrive at this virile steadfastness until the real study of theology has become more general. There is very little in our modern education or habits of thought to teach that calm gaze into the depths of the divine mysteries which imparts such strength of
mental vision that the soul ceases to be dazzled by the false light of falling stars. The robust vigor of the studious habits of old has ceased from among us, and the modern mind is attenuated and enfeebled by a vast variety of subjects indifferently explored, many of them received on trust and without inquiry, and all smoothed down to one dead-level of superficial thought and inadequate expression. Not that for a moment we would imply that mere habits of study are all that is needed. These habits may exist, and do exist to a great extent; but the silence and the solitude do not exist, and the studies themselves have long ago ceased to be of a nature to clear the mind for the gradual, patient, interiorly-evolved contemplation of the eternal truths which lie at the bottom of all things. The old scholastic philosophy and theology laid the only real foundation of all speculative knowledge, and built for us, for all future time, that solid fabric of theological truth in the received and authorized teaching of the great doctors of the church which, like a mighty magnet attracting to itself strong bars of iron, will draw within its own embrace all other truth and all other science, because “the end of science is within the end of theology.” Meanwhile, if we would not find ourselves swamped in the torrent of surmises, partial discoveries, inverted reasonings, and unreverential decisions, we must go back to the spirit and method of the ages which produced the deeply metaphysical thinkers and theological writers of old. The flood of events pours on, and the concussion of each tears through our daily life and ploughs up the hours and the days in hurried disorder, leaving no time for seed to
develop in the fallow soil, for the green blade to strengthen and the harvest to ripen. Modern inventions speed the latest intelligence into the innermost recesses of our homes, and we live like people in a house without doors or windows, open to every blast; while the age, whose needs seem most to call for contemplative recluses, on the contrary stamps contemplation out of the heart of man, and substitutes the paramount necessity for outward activity. There is no solace, there is no rest, but in prayer. There is no consolation but in cultivating thought in the hidden recesses of our minds, and, amid the racket of life, to go deep down into the silent caverns of our souls and dwell in an inner solitude with thoughts of eternal truth. The tendencies of the age have added a new difficulty to the treatment of many of the questions more or less inextricably mixed up with any largely philosophical views of the union of science with divine truth.