Page:Essays on Catholicism, Liberalism, and Socialism.djvu/302

get any portion of the teachings of a religious dogma. With this view we exposed the great error and the great truth which were combined in the institution of human sacrifices, which at first sight appears to be a profound mystery incapable of explanation. Its great error was to attribute to man the expiatory virtue which alone existed in Him who, according to the voice of ancient prophecies and traditions, was to come in the plenitude of time. Its great truth consisted in attributing to the shedding of blood, under certain conditions, the power of appeasing the divine wrath to a certain degree and up to a certain point. The concatenation and connection of these deductions led us to examine the question of the penalty of death. We have seen, in the universal institution of this penalty, a confession of the faith of mankind in all ages and in all countries in the expiatory virtue attributed to the effusion of blood. We have interrogated the rationalist schools upon this vexed question, and their responses and solutions have appeared to us contradictory and absurd. Forcing them from contradiction to contradiction, we finally compelled them to choose between the acceptance of the penalty of death for political crimes as well as for those of the common order, or that of the radical and absolute negation of crime and of all penalty.

It only remains for us, at this point of our discussion, in order to bring it to a successful termination, to recall, with that sentiment of veneration which holy fear and love inspire, the mystery of mysteries, the sacrifice of sacrifices, the dogma of dogmas. We have contemplated the marvels of the divine order, and the harmony of the universal order, and finally, the sublime adaptations of the human order. We must now rise still higher