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Let us go back a little in the scale of being, in order to develop this principal more fully. Lifeless matter is capable of indefinite increase in its own order, but this increase has no tendency to elevate it to the grade of vegetative life. A new and different principle of organization must be introduced in order to construct from its simple elements a vegetative form, as, for instance, a flower. So, also, the explication of vegetative life has no tendency to generate a sentient principle. The plant may go on producing foliage, flowering, germinating, and reproducing its species for ever, but its vital activity can never produce a sentient soul, or proceed to that degree of perfection that it requires a sentient soul as its last complement or the form of its organic life. Suppose a plant or flower to receive a sentient soul; this soul must be immediately created by God, and it would be the principle or form of a new life, which, in relation to the natural, vegetative life of the flower, would besuper-natural, elevating it to an order of life above that which constitutes it a flower.
A sentient creature, as a dog or a bird, has no tendency to explicate from the constitutive principle of its animal soul intelligence, or to attain a state of existence in which an intelligent personality is due to it as its last complement. If the animal soul could have an intelligent personality, it must be by hypostatic union with an intelligent nature distinct from itself, which would then become thesuppositum, or principal of imputability to the animal nature. The animal would then be elevated to a state which would besuper-natural, relatively to the animal nature, or entirely above the plane of it's natural development.
In like manner, the rational nature has no tendency or power to rise above itself, or to do more than explicate that principle which constitutes it rational. If it is elevated to a higher order, it must be by a direct act of omnipotence, an immediate intervention of the creator, producing in it an act which could never be produced by the explication of its rationality, even though it should progress to all eternity. This act is supernatural in the absolute sense. That is, it lies in an order above created nature as a totality, and above all nature which might be created;supra omnem naturam creatam atque creabilem.
It is beyond the power even of divine omnipotence to create a rational nature which, by its intrinsic, constitutive principle of intelligence, is affiliated to the Father through the Holy Spirit. Such a nature would be equal to the Word, and another Word, and therefore equal to the Father, or, in other words, would be a divine nature although created; which is absurd. The Father can have but one Son, eternally begotten, not made; and the only possible way in which a created nature can be elevated to a strictly filial relation to the Father, is by a hypostatic union with the divine nature of the Son in one person, so that there is a communication of properties between the two natures, and but one principle of imputability to which all the divine and human attributes and acts can be referred. This union can be effected only by a direct intervention of God, or by the Word assuming to himself a created nature. For rational nature finds its last complement of personality, itssubsistentia, or principle of imputability, within its own limits, which it never tends to transcend, even by infinite progression. The human nature individuated in the person of Jesus Christ, by its own intrinsic principles was capable of being completed in a finite personality, like every other individual human nature. The fact that the place of the human personality is supplied by a divine person, and the human nature thus completed only in the divine, is due to the direct, divine act of the Word, and is therefore supernatural. In this supernatural relation it becomes the recipient, so to speak, of the divine vital current, and participates in the{150}act in which the divine life is consummated, which is the procession of the Son and Holy Spirit from the Father. This act consists radically and essentially in the immediate contemplation of the divine essence. Created intelligence, therefore, elevated to the hypostatic union, contemplates the essence of God directly, without any intervening medium, by the immediate intuition or beatific vision of God.
Thus, in the incarnation, the creation returns back to God and is united to him in the most perfect manner, by participating in the good of being in a way sublime above all human conception, exhausting even the infinite idea of God. Created intelligence is beatified, glorified, and deified. In Jesus Christ, man, in whose essence is included the equivalent of all creation, and God meet in the unity of one person. The nature of God becomes the nature of man in the second person, who is truly man; and the nature of man becomes the nature of God in the same person, who is truly God. Creation, therefore, attains its final end and returns to God as final cause in the incarnation; which is the most perfect work of God, the crown of the acts of his omnipotence, the summit of the creative act, the completion of all grades of existence, and the full realization of the divine archetype.
In Jesus Christ, the creative act is carried to the apex of possibility. In his human nature, therefore, he is the most pre-eminent of all creatures, and surpasses them all, not only singly but collectively. He has the primogeniture, and the dominion over all things, the entire universe of existences being subordinated to him. Nevertheless, his perfection is not completed merely by that which he possesses within the limits of his individual humanity. He is the summit of creation, the head of the intelligent universe, the link nearest to God in the chain of created existences. The universe, therefore, by virtue of the principle of order and unity which pervades it, ought to communicate with him through a supernatural order, so that the gradation in the works of God may be regular and perfect. The chasm between rational nature in its natural state and the same nature raised to the hypostatic union is too great, and demands to be filled up by some intermediate grades. Having taken created nature, which is by its very constitution adapted to fellowship between individuals of the same kind; and, specifically, human nature, which is constituted in relations of race and family, the Son of God ought, in all congruity, to have brethren and companions capable of sharing with him in beatitude and glory. Being specifically human and of one blood with all mankind, it is fitting that he should elevate his own race to a share in his glory. Being generically of the same intellectual nature with the angels, it is also fitting that he should elevate them to the same glory. This can only be done by granting them a participation in that supernatural order of intelligence and life which he possesses by virtue of the hypostatic union; that is, a participation in the immediate, beatific vision of the divine essence.
This supernatural order is denominated the order of regeneration and grace. It is cognate with the order of the hypostatic union, but not identical with it. The personality of the divine Word is communicated only to the individual human nature of Jesus Christ, who is not only the first-born but the only-begotten Son of God. God is incarnate in Christ alone. The union of his created substance with the divine substance, without any permixture or confusion, in one person, is something inscrutable to reason. The knowledge, sanctity, beatitude, and glory of his human nature are effects of this union, but are not it. These effects, which are due to the humanity of Christ as being the nature of a divine person, and are its rightful and necessary prerogatives, are communicable, as a matter of grace, to other individuals, personally distinct from Christ.{151}That is to say, sanctity, beatitude, and glory do not require as the necessary condition of their community ability the communication of a divine personality, but are compatible with the existence of an indefinite number of distinct, finite personalities. All those rational creatures, however, who are the subjects of this communicated grace, are thereby assimilated to the Son of God, and made partakers of an adopted sonship. This adoptive sonship is an inchoate and imperfect state of co-filiation with the Son of God, which is completed and made perfect in the hypostatic union. The order of grace, therefore, though capable of subsisting without the incarnation, and not depending on it as a physical cause, can only subsist as an imperfect order, and cannot have in itself a metaphysical finality. The incarnation being absent, the universe does not attain an end metaphysically final, or actualise the perfection of the ideal archetype. The highest mode of the communication of the good of being, the most perfect reproduction of the operation of Godad intra, in his operationad extra, which the Father contemplates in the Word as possible, remains unfulfilled. Those who hold, therefore, that the incarnation was not included in the original creative decree of God must maintain that in that decree God did not contemplate an end in creating metaphysically final. They are obliged to suppose another decree logically subsequent to the first, by virtue of which the universe is brought to an metaphysically final in order to repair the partial failure of the angelic nature and the total failure of human nature to attain the inferior, prefixed end of the first decree. Nevertheless, decrees of God are eternal, God always had in view, even on this hypothesis, the incarnation as the completion of his creative act; and only took the be occasion which the failure of his first plan through sin presented to introduce one more perfect. Billuart, therefore, as the interpreter of the Thomist school, maintains that God revealed the incarnation to Adam before his fall, though not the connection which the fulfilment of the divine purpose had with his sin as itsconditio sine qua non. If this latter view is adopted, it cannot be held that the angelic and human natures were created and endowed with supernatural grace in the express view of the incarnation, or that the angels hold, and that man originally held, the title to glorification from Jesus Christ as their head, and the meritorious cause of original grace. Nevertheless, as the incarnation introduces a new and higher order into the universe, elevating it to an end metaphysically final of which it previously fell short, all angels and all creatures of every grade are subordinated to Jesus Christ, who is the head of the creation, reuniting all things to the Father in his person.
This explanation is made in deference to the common opinion, although the author does not hold this opinion, and in order that those who do hold it may not feel themselves bound to reject the whole argument respecting the relation of the creative act to the incarnation.
It is in regard to the doctrine of original grace, or the elevation of the rational nature to that supernatural order whose apex is the hypostatic union, that Catholic theology comes into an irreconcilable conflict with Pelagianism, Calvinism, and Jansenism. These three systems agree in denying the doctrine of original grace. They maintain that rational nature contains in its own constituent principles the germ of development into the state which is theultimatumof the creature, and the end for which God created it, and was bound to create it, if he created at all. They differ, however, fundamentally as to the principles actually constitutive of rational nature. The Pelagian takes human nature in its present condition as his type. The advocates of the other two systems take an ideal human nature, which has become essentially{152}corrupted by the fall, as their type. Therefore, the Pelagian says that human nature, as it now is, has in itself the principle of perfectibility by the explication and development of its essence. But the Calvinist and Jansenist say that human nature as it was first created, or as it is restored by grace to its primal condition, has the principle of perfectibility; but as it now is in those who have not been restored by grace, is entirely destitute of it. The conception which these opponents of Catholic doctrine have of the entity of that highest ideal state to which rational nature is determined, varies as the ratio of their distance from the Catholic idea. Those who are nearest to it retain the conception of the beatific union with God, which fades away in those who recede farther, until it becomes changed into a mere conception of an idealised earthly felicity.
The Catholic doctrine takes as its point of departure the postulate, that rational nature of itself is incapable of attaining or even initiating a movement towards that final end, which has been actually prefixed to it as its terminus. It needs, therefore, from the beginning, a superadded gift or grace, to place it in the plane of its destiny, which is supernatural, or above all that is possible to mere nature, explicated to any conceivable limit. At this point, however, two great schools of theology diverge from each other, each one of which is further subdivided as they proceed.
The radical conception of one school is, that nature is in itself an incomplete thing, constituted in the order of its genesis in a merely inchoate capacity for receiving regeneration in the supernatural order. Remaining in the order of genesis, it is in a state of merely inchoate, undeveloped, inexplicable existence, and therefore incapable of attaining its destination. There is, therefore, no end for which God could create rational existence, except a supernatural end. The natural demands the supernatural, the order of genesis demands the order of regeneration, and the wisdom and goodness of God require him to bestow on all rational creatures the grace cognate to the beatific vision and enabling them to attain it.
The radical conception of the other school is, that rational nature,per serequires only the explication and perfection of its own constituent principles, and may be left to attain its finality in the purely natural order. The elevation of angels and men to the plane of a supernatural destiny was, therefore, a purely gratuitous concession of the supreme goodness of God, in view, as some would add, of the merit of the incarnate Word.
These different theories are entangled and interlaced with each other, and with many different and intricate questions related to them, in such a way as to make a thicket through which it is not easy to find a sure path. It is necessary, however, to try, or else to avoid the subject altogether.
The obscurity of the whole question is situated in the relation of created intelligence to its object which constitutes it in the intelligent or rational order. It is evident that a created substance is constituted an intelligent principle by receiving potentiality to the act connoted by this relation of the subject to its object, and is explicated by the reduction of this potentiality into act. The end of intelligent spirit is to attain to its intelligent object, by the act of intelligence. In the foresight of this, the exposition of the relation between intelligence and the intelligible has been placed first in this discussion.
It is agreed among all Catholic theologians: 1. That created intelligence can, by the explication of its own constitutive principles, attain to the knowledge of God ascausa altissima;or, that God is,per se, the ultimate object of reason. 2. That there is a mode of the relation of intelligence to its ultimate object, or to God, a permanent state of the intuition of{153}God, by a created spirit, called the intuitive, beatific vision of the divine essence, which can be attained only by a supernatural elevation and illumination of the intelligence.
The point of difference among theologians relates to the identity or difference of the relations just noted, Is that relation which intelligence hasper seto God, as its ultimate object, the relation which is completed by supernatural elevation, or not? If not, what is the distinction between them? Establish their identity, and you have established the theory which was mentioned in the first place above. Establish their difference, and you have established the second theory.
If the first theory is established, rational creatures areipso factoin a supernatural order. The natural order is merely the inchoation of the supernatural, cannot be completed without it, and cannot attain its end without a second immediate intervention of God, equal to the act of creation, by which God brings back to himself, as final cause, the creature which proceeded from him as first cause. This second act is regeneration; and creation, therefore, implies and demands regeneration. It follows from this, that reason is incapable of being developed or explicated by the mere concurrence of God with its principle of activity, or his concurrence with second causes acting upon it, that is, by the continuance and consummation of the creative, generative influx which originally gave it and other second causes existence. A regenerative influx is necessary, in order to bring its latent capacity into action, and make it capable of contemplating its proper object, which is God, as seen by an intuitive vision.
One great advantage of this theory is supposed to be, that it leaves the naturalists no ground to stand upon, by demonstrating the absolute necessity of the supernatural, that is, of revelation, grace, the church, etc. This presupposes that the theory can be demonstrated. If it cannot be, the attempt to do too much recoils upon the one who makes it, and injures his cause. Beside this, it may be said that the proposed advantage can be as effectually secured by proving that the natural order is actually subordinated in the scheme of divine Providence, as it really exists, to a supernatural end, without professing to prove that it must be so necessarily.
The great positive argument in favor of this hypothesis is, that rational nature necessarily seeks God as its ultimate object, and therefore longs for that clear, intellectual vision of him called the beatific. If this be true, the question is settled for ever. Those who seek to establish its truth state it under various forms. One way of stating it is, that reason seeks the universal, or the explanation of all particular effects, in thecausa altissima, This is the doctrine of St. Thomas. God is thecausa altissima, the universal principle, and therefore reason seeks for God.
Again, it is affirmed that there is a certain faculty of super-intelligence, which apprehends the super-intelligible order of being, not positively, but negatively, by apprehending the limitation of everything intelligible. Intelligence is therefore sensible of a want, a vacuum, an aimless, objectless yearning for something unknown and unattainable; showing that God has created it for the purpose of satisfying this want, and filling this void, by bringing intelligence into relation to himself as its immediate object, in a supernatural mode.
In a more popular mode, this same idea is presented under a countless variety of forms and expressions, in sermons, spiritual treatises, and poems, as a dissatisfaction of the soul with every kind of good attainable in this life, vague longing for an infinite and supreme good, a plaintive cry of human nature for the beatitude of the intuitive vision of God. "Irrequietum est cor nostrum donec requiescat in te"—"Our heart is unrestful until it finds repose in thee," is the language{154}of St. Augustine, which is echoed and reechoed on every side.
These considerations are not without great weight; nevertheless, they do not appear to us sufficient to prove conclusively the hypothesis in support of which they are adduced, or to over-balance other weighty considerations on the opposite side.
Reason seeks for thecausa altissima, but it remains to be proved that it seeks for any other knowledge of it but that which is attainable by a mode connatural to the created spirit.
Reason is conscious of its own limitation. But this does not prove that it aspires to transcend this limitation. Beatified spirits are conscious of their own limitation. Those who are in the lowest grade are aware of numerous grades above them, and the highest are aware of their inferiority to the exalted humanity of Jesus Christ, united to the divine nature in his person. All together, including Jesus Christ himself, as man, are aware of an infinite incomprehensibility in the divine nature. In the words of the greatest of all mystic theologians, St. John of the Cross: "They who know him most perfectly, perceived most clearly that he is infinitely incomprehensible. To know God best, is to know he is incomprehensible; for those who have the less clear vision do not perceive so distinctly as the others how greatly he transcends their vision." [Footnote 33]
[Footnote 33: Spiritual Canticle, stanza vii. Oblate Ed. vol. ii. p. 44.]
Beatified spirits do not feel any void within themselves, or any unsatisfied longing for the comprehension of the super-intelligible. Neither do they aspire even to those degrees of clearer vision which are actually conceded to spirits of a higher order than their own. Why then should a rational creature necessarily desire to transcend its own proper and connatural mode of intelligence? The apprehension of the super-intelligible shows that the intellect cannot be satisfied with a limitation of itself to a mere knowledge of second causes and the contingent—that it must think about God, and apprehend in some way without infinite, eternal, necessary being and attributes of the creator and first cause of all things. But it does not show that it must apprehending God in the most perfect way possible, much less in such a way that he does not remain always infinitely beyond its comprehension.
The dissatisfaction of the human heart may proceed in great measure from the fact that God purposely disquiet's it by withholding from it the good it naturally seeks, in order to compel it to seek for supernatural good. Another cause of it is, that most persons have committed so many sins themselves, and are so much involved in the consequences of the sins of others, that they cannot possess the full measure even of that natural enjoyment of which human nature is capable. That the human heart in its misery and unhappiness turns longingly toward the hope of a supreme beatitude in the contemplation of God as he is revealed to the saints in heaven, may be owing to the fact that God, who proposes this beatitude to men, stirs up a longing for it in their souls by a supernatural grace.
The question, therefore, reverts to this, as has been repeatedly said already, What is the principle constitutive of the intelligent life and activity of a created spirit? When this principle is evolved into act, the created spirits fulfils its type, and realises its ideal perfection in its own order. Now, according to the preliminary doctrine we have laid down, this is an active power to apprehend the image of God in the creation, or to contemplate a created image of God which is a finite similitude of the infinite, uncreated image of God, that is to say, the Word. Beatific contemplation is a contemplation of this infinite, uncreated image without any intervening medium. Yet is an intellectual operation of which God is both the object and the medium. It is not therefore the operation which{155}perfects created intelligence in its own proper order, but one which elevates it above that order, giving it a participation in the divine intelligence itself. Created intelligence is perfected in its own proper order by its own natural operation; and although the intervention of God is necessary in order to conduct it to that perfection, so that it is strictly true that a supernatural force is necessary to the initiation, explication, and consummation of the natural order of intelligence, yet this does not elevate it to a supernatural mode and state of activity in the strict and theological sense of the word. Created intelligence is perfected by the contemplation of the Creator through the creating, and has no tendency or aspiration to rise any higher. True, it has an essential capacity to become the subject of a divine operation elevating it to the immediate intuition of God, or it never could be so elevated. This is the really strong argument in favor of the hypothesis that God, if he creates at all, must create an intelligent order determined to the beatific union. It is equally strong in favor of the hypothesis, that he must complete his creative act in the incarnation, because created nature is essentially capable of the hypostatic union. For what purpose is this capacity? Does it not indicate a demand for the order of regeneration, and the completion of this order in the incarnation? It is not our purpose to answer this question definitely, but to leave it open, as it has no practical bearing upon the result we are desirous of obtaining. Presupposing, however, that God determines to adopt the system of absolute optimism in creating, and to bring the universe to an end metaphysically final, as he actually has determined to do, this question, as we have previously stated, must be answered in the affirmative. There is no metaphysical finality short of the hypostatic union of the created with the uncreated nature, which alone is the adequate, objective externisation of the eternal idea in the mind of God. The metaphysical, generic perfection of the universe demands the incarnation, with its appropriate concomitants. But this demand is satisfied by the elevation of one individual nature to the hypostatic union, and the communication of the privileges due to this elevated nature to one or more orders of intelligent creatures containing each an adequate number of individuals. It does not require the elevation of all intelligent orders or all individuals, but admits of a selection from the entire number of created intelligences of a certain privileged class. It is only on the supposition that God cannot give an intelligent nature its due perfection and felicity without conceding to it the beatific vision, that we are compelled to believe that God cannot create intelligent spirits without giving them the opportunity of attaining supernatural beatitude. And it is merely this last supposition against which we have been contending.
The view we have taken, that rational nature precisely as such is not necessarily created merely in order to become the subject of elevating grace, but may be determined to an end which does not require it to transcend its natural condition, comports fully with the Catholic dogma of sanctifying grace. The church teaches that affiliation to God by grace is a pure boon or favor gratuitously conferred by God according to his good pleasure and sovereign will. It is not due to nature, or a necessary consequence of creation. The beginning, progress, and consummation of this adoptive filiation is from the grace of God, both in reference to angels and men. It was by grace that the angels and Adam were placed in the way of attaining the beatific vision, just as much as it is by grace that men are redeemed and saved since the fall. If rational nature cannot be explicated and brought to a term suitable for it, which satisfies all its exigencies, without this grace, it is not easy to see how it can be called a grace at all, since grace signifies gratuitous favor. Rather it would be something due to nature, which the goodness of God bound{156}him to confer when he had created it. It would be the mere complement of creation, and an essential part of the continuity of the creative act as much as the act of conservation, by virtue of which the soul is constituted immortal. In this case, it would be very difficult to reconcile the doctrine of original sin, and the doom of those who die in it before the use of reason, with the justice and goodness of God. It would be difficult also to explain the whole series of doctrinal decisions which have emanated from the Holy See, and have been accepted by the universal church, in relation to the Jansenist errors, all of which easily harmonise with the view we have taken.
Moreover, the plain dogmatic teaching of the church, that man, as he is now born, is "saltem negative aversatus a Deo," "at least negatively averted from God," and absolutely incapable of even the first movement of the will to turn back to him without prevenient grace, cannot be explained on the theory we are opposing without resorting to the notion of a positive depravation of human nature by the fall, a notion completely irreconcilable with rational principles. If rational nature as such is borne by a certain impetus toward God as possessed in the beatific vision, it will spring toward him of itself and by its own intrinsic principles, as soon as he is extrinsically revealed to it, without grace. To say that it does so, is precisely the error of the Semipelagians which is condemned by the church. It is certain that it does not; and therefore we must explain its inability to do so, either with the Calvinists and Jansenists by maintaining that its intrinsic principles are totally perverted and depraved, or by maintaining that rational nature, as such, is determined by its intrinsic impetus to an inferior mode of apprehending and loving God as its last end, which is below the plane of the supernatural.
This view accords fully with the teachings of the great mystic writers, who are the most profound of all philosophers and theologians. They all teach most distinctly, that when God leads a soul into a state of supernatural contemplation it has an almost unconquerable repugnance and reluctance to follow him, and is thrown into an obscure night, in which it undergoes untold struggles and sufferings before it can become fit for even that dim and imperfect light of contemplation which it is capable of receiving in this life. Why is it that the human soul turns toward the supernatural good only when excited, illuminated, and attracted by the grace of God, and even then with so much difficulty? Why does it so easily and of preference turn oh wait from it, unless it is, that it naturally seeks to attain its object by a mode more connatural to its own intrinsic and constitutive principles?
The conclusion we draw is, that rational nature of itself is capable of attaining its proper perfection and felicity, without being elevated above its own order, by the mere explication of its rationality, and aspires no higher, but even prefers to remain where it is. The fact that it is in a state which in comparison with the state of elevation is merely inchoate existence, and isin potentiâto a state not realisedin actu, does not show that its felicity or the good order of the universe requires it to be elevated any higher, unless it is elected as a subject of elevating grace. [Footnote 34]
[Footnote 34: This does not mean that any human being is at liberty to choose to decline proffered grace. The human raceen masseis elected to grace, and at least all those to whom the faith is proposed have the proffer of grace, with a precept to accept it. Moreover, God has not provided any order except the supernatural for mankind in which the race can attain its proper perfection and felicity.]
God alone isactus purissimuswithout any admixture of potentiality. The finite is always inchoate and potential, because finite. Its very nature implies what is called metaphysical evil, or a limitation of the possession of good in act. Every finite nature except that of the incarnate Word is limited, not only in respect to the infinite, but also in respect to some other finite nature superior to itself. It's proper perfection consists in the possession of good, with that limitation{157}which the will of God has prefixed to it as its term. The perfection and order of the universe, as a whole, are constituted by the subordination and harmony of all its parts in reference to the predetermined end. The individual felicity of a rational creature and his due relation to the final cause of the universe, do not require his being elevated to the utmost summit of existence of which he is capable, unless God has predetermined him to that place. The mere inert capacity of receiving an augmentation or elevation of his intellectual and voluntary operation does not give him any tendency to exceed his actual limit, unless that inert capacity begins to be actualized, or unless the principle of a new development is implanted and vitalized. The inert capacity of being united to the divine nature by the hypostatic union, is actualised only in Christ. If, therefore, rational nature could not attain its proper end and completion without the utmost actualization of its passive capacity, Christ alone would attain his final end. We most certainly admit, however, that the blessed in heaven all attain their final end and a perfect beatitude, each one in his own degree. We are not to understand, therefore, that the relation of the creation to God as final cause consists solely and purely in the return of the creature to God in the most sublime manner possible, and that everything which exists is created solely as a means to that end. If this were so, the hypostatic union of the human to the divine nature in the person of Jesus Christ would be the sole terminus of the creative act, the only end proposed by God in creating. Nothing else could or would have been created, except as a means to that end. The rest of creation, however, cannot contribute to that end. The union of the human nature to the divine in Christ and its filiation to God, by which it is beatified, glorified, and deified, is completely fulfilled within itself; and the rest of creation adds nothing to it. If God had no other end in view, in the reproduction of the immanent act within himself by a communication of himselfad extra, except the hypostatic union, he would have created only one perfect nature for that purpose. The beatification and glorification of the adopted brethren of Christ must be therefore included in the end of creation.
This is not all, however, that is included in it. The supernatural order includes in itself a natural order which is not absorbed into it, but which has its own distinct existence.Gratia supponit naturam, grace supposes nature, but does not supersede or extinguish it. The inferior intellectual operations of our Lord are not superseded by his beatific contemplation, nor do they contribute to its clearness of intuition. The operation of his animal soul—that is, of the principle within his rational soul which contains in an eminent mode all the perfection that is in a soul purely animal, and adapts his rational soul to be the form of a body—continues also, together with the activity of the senses and of the active bodily life. This operation does not conduce to the perfection of the act of beatific contemplation, which does not require the mediation of the senses. The same is true of the inferior, natural operations of all beatified angels and men. If supernatural beatitude were the exclusive end of the creation, there would be no reason why these inferior operations should continue, any more than the exercise of faith, hope, patience, fortitude, or works of merit, which, being exclusively ordained as means for attaining beatitude, cease when the end is gained. The beatific act would swallow up the entire activity of the beatified, and all inferior life would cease. For the same reason, all corporeal and material organization would be swept out of the way as a useless scaffolding, and only beatified spirits, exclusively occupied in the immediate contemplation of God, would continue to exist for ever.
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This is not so, however. The body is to rise again and live for ever. The universe is to remain for ever, with all its various grades of existence, including even the lowest, or those which are purely material. There is therefore a natural order coexisting with the supernatural in a subordinate relation to it—a minor and less principal part, but still an integral part of the divine, creative plan. There is acognitio matutinaand acognitio vespertina, a matutinal and vesperal knowledge, in the blessed; the one being the immediate intuition of the trinity in unity, the other the mediate intuition of the idea or infinite archetype of creation in God, through his creative act. There is a natural intellectual life in the angels, and a natural intellectual and physical life in man, in the beatific state. The natural order is preserved and perfected in the supernatural order, with all its beauty and felicity—with its science, virtue, love, friendship, and society. The material world is everlasting, together with the spiritual. All orders together make up the universe; and it is the whole complex of diverse and multitudinous existences which completely expresses the divine idea and fulfils the divine purpose of the creator. The metaphysical finality or apex of the creative act is in the incarnate Word, but the relation to the final cause exists in everything, and is fulfilled in the universe as a totality, which embraces in one harmonious plan all things that have been created, and culminates in Jesus Christ, through the hypostatic union of the divine and human natures in his person.
In this universe there may be an order of intelligent existences, touching at its lowest point the highest point of irrational existence, and at its highest point the lowest in the grade of the beatified spirits. That inferior order of knowledge and felicity may exist distinctly and separately which exists conjointly with supernatural beatitude in the kingdom of heaven. The perfection of the universe requires that there should be a beatified, glorified order at its summit. It may even the maintained that this consummation of created nature in the highest possible end is the only one which the divine wisdom could propose in creating. Yet this does not exclude the possibility of an inferior order of intelligence, upon which the grace elevating it to a supernatural state is not conferred.
We are prepared, therefore, to proceed to the consideration of the nature and conditions of that grace, as a cure, gratuitous gift of God, conferred upon angels and upon the human race through his free and sovereign goodness. From the point of view to which the previous reasoning has conducted us, the angels and mankind appear to us, not as mere species of rational creatures conducted by their creator along the path of rational development by natural law, but as the elect heirs of an entirely gratuitous inheritance of glory—candidates for a destiny entirely supernatural. The relation which they sustain to God in this supernatural scheme of grace will therefore be our topic next in order.
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What magician pulls the stringThat uncurtains pretty Spring?And the swallow with his wingAgainst the sky 1Who brings the branch its green,And the honey-bee a queen?"Is it I?"Said April, "I?""Yes, 'tis I."What aërial artist limnsRock and cloud, with brush that dimsTitian's oils and Hogarth's whimsIn shape and dye?What Florimel embowersLawn and lake with arching flowers?"Is it I?"Said bright July, "I?""Yes, 'tis I."What good genii drop the grainsOf brown sugar in the canes?Who fills up the apple's veinsWith sweetened dew?Who hangs the painted airWith the grape and golden pear?Is it you,October? You?Yes, 'tis you.Who careering sweeps the plain,Scoffing at the violet's pain.Echoing back and back againHis wild halloo?Who makes the Yule-fire foamRound the happy hearth of home?Is it you,December? You?Aye, 'tis you.T. W. K.
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Shakespeare, the universal teacher, who knew every phase of the heart, and touched every chord of feeling, has declared aphoristically, speaking as Julius Caesar:
"Cowards die many times before their deaths;The valiant only taste of death but once.Of all the wonders that I yet have heard.It seems to me most strange that men should fear;Seeing that death, a necessary end,Will come when it will come."
Notwithstanding this, fear is one of the strongest impulses of our nature—fear of discovery, shame, or punishment when we have done wrong: fear of pain, danger, or death. Dr. Johnson said in conversation: "Fear is one of the passions of humanity of which it is impossible to divest it. You all remember that the Emperor Charles V., when he read upon the tomb of a Spanish nobleman, 'Here lies one who never knew fear,' wittily observed, 'Then he never snuffed a candle with his fingers.'" In opposition to this we may quote an anecdote told of Lord Howe, when in command of the Channel Fleet. One night he was suddenly awakened by an officer, who, in great trepidation, told him the ship was on fire close to the powder-room; the admiral coolly replied: "If it is so, sir, we shall very soon know it." Some minutes afterwards the lieutenant returned, and told his lordship he had no occasion to be afraid, for the fire was extinguished. "Afraid!" replied Lord Howe, hastily; "what do you mean by that, sir? I never was afraid in my life."
No emotions of the human frame are more opposite than cowardice and courage, each taken in its simple sense, yet both spring from the same sources—physical temperament early training. We do not make our own nervous system, which is often grievously tampered with or perverted by silly, ill-conditioned nurses, servants, and teachers, who frightened children with tales of bugbears, monsters and hobgoblins, until they scream if left in the dark for a moment, and dare not sleep in a room by themselves. Pillory or flogging at the cart's tail would be too mild a punishment for those moral Thugs, who strangle wholesome feelings in the first dawn of their existence, and supply their place with baneful impressions, which, strongly implanted in early youth, grow and strengthen to a period of life when reason on to subdue them, but frequently fails to do so. Viewed in this light, constitutional timidity is a misfortune rather than a crime, however contemptible it may be considered; while mere animal insensibility to danger, which readily calls for admiration, has no claim to rank as a virtue. We speak not here of the moral courage which may be engrafted on a nature originally pusillanimous, by pride, education or a sense of duty and station. Henry IV., of France, and Frederick the Great, of Prussia, are illustrious examples of this victory of over matter. Both were instinctively afraid of danger, and both are recorded as evincing perfect self-possession and displaying prodigies of valor in many a hotly-contested field. Henry's flesh quivered the first time he found himself in action, although his heart was firm. "Villanous nature, I will make thee ashamed of thyself!" he exclaimed, as he spurred his horse through a{161}breach before which the bravest veterans paused; and ever afterward the white plume was recognized as the rallying point of battle. Frederick turned from the field of Molwitz, and left his marshals to win the day without him; but it was his first and only moment of wavering through a life of hard campaigns.
Some natures are so constant that no surprise can shake them. An instance occurs in the career of Crillon, called by distinction, "The Brave," in an Army where all were valiant. He was stationed with a small detachment in a lone house. Some young officers, in the dead of night, raised a cry that the enemy were upon them, a company by loud shouts and the firing of musketry. Crillon started from his bed, seized his sword, and rushed down-stairs in his shirt, calling on all to follow him and die at their posts like men. A burst of laughter behind arrested his steps, and he at once penetrated the joke. He re-ascendant, and seizing one of the perpetrators roughly by the arm, explained: "Young man, it is well for you that your trick failed. Had you thrown me off my guard, you would have been the first I should have sacrificed to my lost honor. Take warning, and deal in no such folly for the future."
Charles XII. was gifted from infancy with iron nerves. "What is that noise?" he asked, as the balls whistling past him when landing in Denmark—a mere stripling, under a heavy fire. "The sound of the shot the fire at your majesty," replied Marshal Renschild. "Good!" said the king; "henceforth that shall be my music." And so he made it, with little intermission, until the last and fatal bullet, whether fired by traitor or foe, which entered his brain, and finished his wild career at Fredericshall, eighteen years later.
Murat and Lannes were the admitted paladins of the Imperial army; yet both once came to a stand-still before the battery which vomited forth fire and death. "Rascals!" muttered Napoleon, bitterly; "have I made you too rich?" Stung by the taunt, they rushed on, and the victory was gained. No epidemic is so contagious as a panic. When once caught, it expands with the velocity of an ignited train. A celebrated case occurred in Henry the Eighth's time, at the Battle of the Spurs, in 1513, so called because the defeated force fled with such haste that it was impossible for the best mounted cavaliers to overtake them. Thus the killed and wounded made but a poor figure. Then came Falkirk, in 1746, of which Horace Walpole said: "The fighting lay in a small compass, the greater part of both armies running away." Then the memorable "Races of Castlebar," of which the less that is said the better; then thesauve qui peutof Waterloo; and though last, far from least, the pell-mell rout of Bull's Run, which inaugurated the late American war. Livy records, and Sir William Napier quotes the anecdote, that after a drawn battle a god, calling out in the night, declared that the Etruscans had lost one man more than the Romans! whereupon a panic fell on the former, and they abandoned the field to their adversaries, who gathered all the fruits of a real victory.
There are some who think they can face danger and death until the moment of trial arrives, and then their nerves give way. In the biographies of John Graham, Viscount of Dundee, we find it related that, during the civil wars of that period, a friend of his, a loyal and devoted partisan of the house of Stuart, like himself, committed his favorite son to his charge. "I give him to the king's cause," said the father; "take care that he does not dishonor his name and race. I depend on you to look after him." In the first action, the unlucky youth exhibited undoubted symptoms of cowardice. Dundee took him aside and said "The service in which we are engaged is desperate,{162}and requires desperate resolution on the part of all concerned in it. You have mistaken your trade. Go home, before worse happens." The youth shed bitter tears, said it was a momentary weakness, implored for another trial, and promised to behave better the next time. Dundee relented. The next trial soon came, with the same result. Dundee rode up to the recreant, pistol in hand, and exclaiming, "Your father's son shall never die by the hands of the hangman," shot him dead upon the spot.
Experienced military authorities have delivered their opinion that of one hundred rank and file, taken indiscriminately—Alexanders at six-pence per diem, as Voltaire sneeringly designates them—one third are determined daredevils, who will face any danger, and flinch from nothing; the next division are waverers, equally disposed to stand or run, and likely to be led either way by example; while the residue are rank cowards. Dr. Johnson took a more unfavorable view. At a dinner at General Paoli's, in 1778, when fears of an invasion were circulated, Mr. John Spottiswoode, the solicitor, observed that Mr. Fraser, an engineer, who had recently visited Dunkirk, said the French had the same fears of us. "It is thus," remarked Dr. Johnson, "that mutual cowardice keeps us in peace. Were one half mankind brave, and one half cowards, the brave would be always beating the cowards. Were all brave, they would lead a very uneasy life; all would be continually fighting; but being all cowards, we go on tolerably well."
It is difficult to invest with interest a quality so universally held in contempt as cowardice; yet Sir Walter Scott has succeeded in obtaining sympathy forConachar, orEachin M'Ian. the young Highland chieftain, in the Fair Maid of Perth. He evidently conceived the charactercon amore, and has elaborated it with skill and care.
Montaigne observes of fear that it is a surprisal of the heart upon the apprehension of approaching evil; and if it reaches the degree of terror, and the evil seems impendent, the hair is raised on end, and the whole body put into horror and trembling. After this, if the passion continues, the spirits are thrown into confusion, so that they cannot execute their offices; the usual successors of reason fail, judgment is blinded, the powers of voluntary motion become weak, and the heart is insufficient to maintain the circulation of the blood, which, stopping and stagnating in the ventricles, causes painting and swooning, and sometimes sudden death. The quaint old essayist then illustrates by examples. He tells of a jester who had contrived to give his master, a petty prince of Italy, a hearty ducking and a fright to boot, to cure him of an ague. The treatment succeeded; but the autocrat, by way of retaliation, had his audacious physician tried for treason, and condemned to lose his had. The criminal was brought forth, the priest received his confession, and the luckless buffoon knelt to prepare for the blow. Instead of wielding his axe, the executioner, as he had been instructed, threw a pitcher of water on the bare neck of the criminal. Here the jest was to have ended; but the shock was too great for poor Gonella, who was found dead on the block.
Montaigne also says, that fear manifests its utmost power and effect when it throws men into a valiant despair, having before deprived them of all sense both of duty and honor. In the first great battle of the Romans against Hannibal, under the Consul Sempronius, a body of twenty thousand men that had taken flight, seeing no other escape for their cowardice, threw themselves headlong upon the great mass of their pursuing enemies, with wonderful force and fury they charged, and cut a passage through, with a prodigious slaughter of the Carthaginians; thus purchasing an ignominious retreat at the same price which might have won for them glorious victory.