Page:Essays on Catholicism, Liberalism, and Socialism.djvu/287

and the institution is commemorative of the universality of the dogmas, and is symbolical of the only person in whom the perfection of universality exists; and, considered in itself, it fills the earth and extends beyond the limits of history.

Abel was the first man who, after the great tragedy of the terrestrial paradise, offered to God a bloody sacrifice, and this sacrifice, in that it was bloody, was agreeable in the eyes of God, who angrily rejected the offering of Cain, which consisted of the fruits of the earth. And what is here singular and mysterious is; that Abel, who offers blood as an expiatory sacrifice, holds its effusion in such horror that he prefers to die rather than shed the blood of him who would kill him; while Cain, who refuses to shed blood as a symbol of expiation, does not hesitate to take the life of his brother. Why is it that, according to the manner in which it is done, the effusion of blood is here regarded either as a means of purification or as a crime? Why do all shed blood in one manner or the other?

Since the day of the first effusion of blood, it has never ceased to flow, and it has never been shed in vain, always preserving intact either its condemnatory or its purifying virtue. All men who have lived since Abel the just, and Cain the fratricide, resemble, more or less, the one or the other. Abel and Cain are the types of those two kingdoms which are governed by contrary laws, and by different masters, and which are called the kingdom of God and the kingdom of the world. These kingdoms are not distinguished from each other because blood is shed in one and not in the other, but because in the one life is offered through love, and in the other it is taken in revenge. In the