Disorder is only in the moral order of liberty in the election of contraries, by which the permanent order of those who exercise this power is determined. Those who rise above the moral order go to a higher order which is permanent; those who fall below it go to an order beneath which is permanent. The moral order passes away, and with it all conflict between opposing moral forces. Those who have fallen below their proper destiny receive precisely what is due to them and results naturally from their voluntary choice. Whatever is superadded to the misery naturally involved in the state of alienation from God and the frustration of their proper end, is directed to remove and prevent but not to perpetuate and increase deordination; and thus eternal punishment, whatever its nature, qualities, and instrumentalities may be, really restricts the limits of evil. It is the bonum honestum and not the bonum delectabile which is the just and reasonable object of the primary and direct complacency of intelligent beings. The bonum delectabile is secondary. That which is most contrary to this highest good is the revolt of free-will against the will of God. When the term allowed by the Almighty for the rebellion of Lucifer to run its course has been reached, it will be suppressed by that act of sovereign power, which places each one of those who have merited exclusion from heaven in a fixed and unchangeable state, precisely suited to his character. No further disturbance of the moral order is possible, no further privation can be incurred, no new injuries can be attempted against any of God’s creatures. Those who suffer, actually endure nothing beyond the retribution justly due to the demerits of their state of probation, and their suffering compensates in the order of the bonum honestum for their offences against that order, restoring the disturbed equilibrium of justice. It is an effect of the divine goodness frustrated (in respect to them) of its intention, and deprived of its due quality as bonum delectabile by their own voluntary opposition to the benevolent will of God. Socrates and Plato taught that it is better even for the one who deserves punishment to undergo it than to remain in impunity. Assuredly it is better for the common order which he has violated. Impunity for great political frauds is the greatest of disorders in a community, and the punishment of the criminals is a reparation to the public honor and the sanctity of right, which adds decorum to a state. This is in virtue of an eternal and universal law, and holds good in the supreme order, with which the ethical constitution of human society is in an analogical resemblance. Justice reduces all things to equality, by subjugating the inordinate wills of created beings under the coercive force of the reaction of reason and order against their rebellion. The inequality removed by this violent reaction is measured by the voluntary and free excesses of the rebels and transgressors against the sovereign will of God. Beyond this measure, there is no violence done to the spontaneous desires and natural tendency to good intrinsic to the essence of every intelligent being. Unless there is an inequality caused by voluntary contrariety to the divine will, there is no opposition, and therefore there must be a perfect harmony and equality of proportion between the eternal order and the wills of those who are subject to it. Therefore, there is no such thing possible as pain, discontent, deficiency from the bonum honestum and bonum delectabile of nature, in the eternal world, except that which is the retribution for voluntary transgressions.
The thousands of millions of human beings who never attain the use of reason, never run the risks of probation, and pass into the eternal state without merit or demerit, enjoy the good of being which is consonant to their nature in whatever actual condition it exists. Those whose nature is regenerate, and spontaneously seeks the sovereign good of the supernatural order, go immediately into the kingdom of heaven. Those whose nature is not regenerate possess an immortality in which they enjoy the natural good of being. There is no such thing as fatality, calamity of chance, misfortune, or deordination of any kind in the true ἀποκατάστασις and restitution of all things, which succeeds the present inchoate, temporary order. It is the absolute and universal and eternal reign of God by his eternal law, which is identified with the physical and spontaneous laws of being, and gives liberty of action within the ordained circumference, without any possibility of escape from the orbit assigned to each individual existence.
We return now to that which we proposed at the beginning as a primary question, not for those who are already certain by Catholic faith, but for inquirers into the mystery of human destiny beyond the veil. Is there a heaven, and what is the way by which it can be attained? Modern rationalism presents at best nothing higher that the eternal state into which human nature fell by the transgression of Adam, and from which we are redeemed by Christ. This species of philosophical and semi-Christian Theism, which is respectable in pagans and those who are in a similar condition of dim enlightenment, has no intellectual foundation which can stand or give support, in opposition to the clear Christian revelation. The firm assent to its really sound and rational principles and their logical conclusions, inexorably demands a further assent, to the physical, moral, and metaphysical demonstration by which the certain truth of Christianity is made evident to reason. A consistent and thorough rejection of Christianity reacts with irresistible logical violence against the first premises of natural theology. The prevailing rationalism is materialistic and atheistic. The contrary of Catholic faith, the real error of the age, the logical alternative of genuine undiluted Christianity, is anti-spiritual, anti-theistic Nihilism. To those who have a repugnance for the hell which is the shadow of heaven in Catholic doctrine, the night-side of the supernatural, this system cannot be very attractive; unless they are in despair, and already so unhappy and hopeless that existence seems to them an intolerable evil. In this system there is nothing besides hell. Hell is the necessary, eternal reality, the only being. The negation of all eternal good, of all beatitude whether natural or supernatural, is the one, fundamental dogma of Pessimism.
The aspiration and longing for beatitude which cannot be wholly extinguished in any human soul, and which manifests its vehemence even in the most gloomy and despairing utterances of scepticism, is strong and vivid among the multitude of half-believers, whose Christian descent has left in their minds, as an heirloom, some indistinct idea of the heaven of Christian theology. Even though they practically seek to satisfy their thirst for the true good by the pleasures of the present life, they wish to cherish the hope of a higher future happiness in the next world. Therefore, they eagerly welcome any plausible teaching or speculation which seems to make a happy immortality their sure ultimate destiny, and are glad to think they run no risk of losing it, and need not give themselves trouble to find the way to gain it. Conscience, and the moral sense which has had a semi-Christian education, will not permit those who still cling to their traditional religion to believe that the majority of adults are actually fit for perfect happiness, or capable of passing out of this life at once into heaven, without undergoing some thorough transformation of character. The view presented by the most reasonable and high-toned of the writers and preachers who have recently advocated universal salvation, or a doctrine tending in that direction, places a prospect of indefinite trial and suffering before those who have sinned during their mortal career, as awaiting them hereafter. Its happy termination in the heaven promised to the good is something which is inferred by their own reasonings and conjectures, but which cannot be proved with certainty by reason, much less shown to be a promise of the divine word. Over against this there is the general belief of mankind; the general consent of those who have read the Holy Scriptures in the interpretation of their plain and obvious sense; and the teaching of the Catholic Church from the very beginning, which she will certainly never change. It is much more reasonable to take the authority of the church as the criterion of truth in regard to this momentous matter than to decide it by private reasonings or private interpretations of Christian doctrine. The Catholic doctrine proposes a heaven of supernatural beatitude and glory to every one, and points out a sure way by which any one may secure it, no matter how much he may have sinned in the past. It is the most rational course to begin at once to follow the road which leads to the right end, and leave with God the responsibility of administering his own just and sovereign laws by giving to each one that retribution which he has deserved.
Note.—The reader is referred for a more full exposition of the relation of the supernatural to the natural order, and the other principal topics belonging to the subject of the future destiny of man, to the following works: Aspirations of Nature, by the Rev. I. T. Hecker; Problems of the Age and The King’s Highway, by the Rev. A. F. Hewit; Catholicity and Pantheism, by the Rev. J. de Concilio; The Knowledge of Mary, by the same author; and Catholic Eschatology, by H. N. Oxenham.
LINES.
SUGGESTED BY ST. FRANCIS DE SALES’ TREATISE ON THE “LOVE OF GOD.”
O precious book! in lines of fire I see
Upon each page the record of a soul
Which soared above the clouds, serenely free,
Which read with eagle eye the mystic scroll;