Page:Essays on Catholicism, Liberalism, and Socialism.djvu/338

wild uproar, the thunderbolt that falls, and the fleeting clouds.

All this and much more was given to man; yet, notwithstanding all this power was granted to him, the stars pursue their appointed courses and forever continue in harmonious progression; and the seasons succeed each other in their prescribed order, and the earth has never ceased to yield her harvests and to be clothed with verdure since the first day on which she received from God the command to fructify; and all physical things fulfill to-day, even as they fulfilled yesterday and the day before, the divine commands: ever moving in perpetual peace and concord, without the slightest transgression of the laws of the all-powerful Creator, whose sovereign hand assigned to them their limits, restrained their impetuosity, and regulated all their movements.

All this and much more was given to man; yet, notwithstanding all these things were given to him, he could not set aside the punishment which follows sin, nor prevent the penalty of his crime, nor avoid death as a consequence of his first transgression, nor avoid condemnation for his impenitence, nor the decisions of justice according to his use of liberty, nor prevent the mercy which was granted to the penitent, nor shun the reparation due to scandals, nor the catastrophes incurred by disobedience.

Man has been allowed to crush society, agitated by the discord which he has fomented; to destroy the strongest means of defense; to plunder the most opulent cities; to overthrow the most extensive and populous empires; to bring utter ruin upon the highest forms of civilization, obscuring their splendors in the dense clouds of barbarism: but it has not been permitted him