Page:Essays on Catholicism, Liberalism, and Socialism.djvu/232

whose solution depends upon the universal order of creation, in the same way and for the same reasons as the question relating to the human and angelical prevarications. Considered under a more restricted point of view, it finds its solution in a direct and fundamental manner, in the special order which God has established in the various elements that compose human nature; for, if the voluntary acceptation of suffering produces. those wonderful effects of which we have spoken, it is because it possesses the astounding virtue of radically changing all the economy of our being. Through it, the rebellion of the flesh is subdued, and it is compelled. again to submit to the will; through it, the will is vanquished and made to yield to the power of the understanding; through it, the understanding is again subjected to the law of duty; and through the fulfillment of duty, man returns to the worship of and obedience to the laws of God, from which sin had separated him. These miraculous transformations take place when man heroically conquers himself, and with generous ardor seeks to subject his appetites to his will, his will to his understanding, and his understanding to the will of God; that henceforth united to God by the ties of duty, he may be enlightened in God, and through God.

We will not here explain upon what conditions and by what aids the human will is enabled to acquire such exalted and supernatural strength. What is here essential to remark is, the evident fact that, without this elevation on the part of the will, as manifested by its voluntary acceptance of suffering, the sovereign harmony and marvelous and perfect accord which God established in man and in all his faculties can never be restored.