Page:Essays on Catholicism, Liberalism, and Socialism.djvu/158

What creature is so presumptuous as to defy those mathematically inflexible laws which have been eternally established by the divine mind? What can be the center of that inexorable circle but those things which are infinitely united in God? What can be the circumference of this circle but those same things which have in God an infinite expansion? And what expansion can be greater than this infinite expansion? What contraction surpasses this infinite contraction? For this reason St. Augustin, the greatest of geniuses and the most illustrious of doctors, who was the embodiment of the spirit of the Church, is amazed, and, as it were, transported at beholding all things in God and God in all things, and man seeking to fly, he knows not how, at one time from the center that attracts him, and then from the circumference that encircles him. This great saint, lost in love and inundated by the fortifying waters of grace, beats his breast, and in anguish exclaims: Poor mortal, thou sleekest to fly from God: throw thyself into his arms. Never have human lips uttered words so lovingly sublime, and of such sublime tenderness. God then points out the end of all things, but the creature chooses the way. In designating the term where all ways meet, God is the omnipotent sovereign; and in choosing the which will bring him to the term, the creature is intelligently free.

Nor can it be said that the liberty which consists only in a choice among many paths by which to reach a necessary end, is a trivial affair. We cannot consider that freedom of little consequence which consists in the choice of salvation or perdition; inasmuch as the various ways of approaching God (who is the necessary limit of all things) are finally reduced to two-heaven