Page:Essays on Catholicism, Liberalism, and Socialism.djvu/22

grandeur of the universe, the splendor of the stars, and the magnificence of the heavens. In Him are the measure, weight, and number of all things, and all things proceed from Him with number, weight, and measure. In Him are the inviolable and sacred laws of being, and every being has its particular law. All that lives, finds in Him the laws of life; all that vegetates, the laws of vegetation; all that moves, the laws of motion; all that has feeling, the law of sensation; all that has understanding, the law of intelligence; and all that has liberty, the law of freedom. It may in this sense be affirmed, without falling into Pantheism, that all things are in God, and God is in all things. This will serve to explain how in proportion as faith is impaired in this world, truth is weakened, and how the society that turns its back upon God, will find its horizon quickly enveloped in frightful obscurity. For this reason religion has been considered by all men, and in all ages, as the indestructible foundation of human society. Omnis humanæ societatis fundamentum convellit qui religionem convellit, says Plato in book 10 of his laws. According to Xenophon, (on Socrates,) "the most pious cities and nations have always been the most durable, and the wisest." Plutarch affirms (contra Colotes) "that it is easier to build a city in the air than to establish society without a belief in the gods." Rousseau, in his Social Contract, book iv., ch. viii., observes, "that a State was never established without religion as a foundation." Voltaire says, in his Treatise on Toleration, ch. xx., "that religion is, on all accounts, necessary wherever society exists." All the legislation of the ancients rests upon a fear of the gods. Polybius declares that this holy fear is always more requisite in a free people