Page:Essays on Catholicism, Liberalism, and Socialism.djvu/336

petual. All united form the code of laws constitutive of moral order in humanity and the universe; and these, joined to the physical laws to which matter is subject, form the supreme law of order, which regulates and governs creation.

It is so essential that all things should be in a perfect order that, although man has put all things in disorder, yet he cannot conceive of disorder. This is why all revolutions, in subverting ancient institutions, accuse them of exercising an absurd and disturbing influence; and, in order to replace them by those of individual invention, they affirm that these changes will produce a more excellent order. This is the meaning of that consecrated phrase among revolutionists of all ages, when they attempt to sanctify disorder, calling it a new order of things. Even Mr. Proudhon, the most audacious of all, only defends his anarchy, because he assumes that it is the rational expression of a perfect, that is to say of an absolute, order.

From the perpetual necessity of order results the perpetual necessity of the existence of the physical and moral laws which constitute it; and for this reason, they have all been created and solemnly proclaimed by God from the beginning of time. When God formed the world out of nothing, when he made man of the dust of the earth, and when he took from the side of man a rib, out of which he made woman, when he constituted the first family, God then declared, once for all, the physical and moral laws which establish order in humanity and in the universe, and he removed them from out the jurisdiction of man, and placed them beyond the reach of his vain speculations and foolish fancies. Even the dogmas of the incarnation of the Son of God and the