Page:Essays on Catholicism, Liberalism, and Socialism.djvu/23

than in others. That Rome might be the eternal city, Numa made it the holy city. Among the nations of antiquity the Roman was the greatest, precisely because it was the most religious. Cesar having one day uttered certain words, in open Senate, against the existence of the gods, Cato and Cicero arose from their seats and accused the irreverent youth of having spoken words fatal to the Republic. It is related of Fabricius, a Roman captain, that having heard the philosopher Cineas ridicule the Divinity in presence of Pyrrhus, he pronounced these memorable words: "May it please the gods, that our enemies follow this doctrine when they make war against the Republic."

The decline of faith that produces the decline of truth does not necessarily cripple, but certainly misleads the human mind. God, who is both compassionate and just, denies truth to guilty souls, but does not deprive them of life. He condemns them to error, but not to death. As an evidence of this, every one has witnessed those periods of prodigious incredulity and of highest culture that have shone in history with a phosphorescent light, leaving more of a burning than a luminous track behind them. If we carefully contemplate these ages, we shall see that their splendor is only the inflamed glare of the lightning's flash. It is evident that their brightness is the sudden explosion of their obscure but combustible materials, rather than the calm light proceeding from purest regions, and serenely spread over heaven's vault by the divine pencil of the sovereign painter.

What is here said of ages may also be said of men. The absence or the possession of faith, the denial of God or the abandonment of truth, neither gives them under-