Page:Essays on Catholicism, Liberalism, and Socialism.djvu/82

He who has no idea of grace, has no idea of Christianity; and he who takes no heed of the providence of God, is in the most complete ignorance of all things. Providence, understood in its most general acceptation, is the care of the Creator over all things created. Things exist, because God created them; but they would cease to exist without his constant protection, which is truly an unceasing creation. That which, previous to its creation, had in itself no necessity of existence, has no inherent power of continuance after its creation. God alone is life, and the reason of life; being, and the reason of being; subsistence, and the reason of subsistence. Nothing exists, nothing lives, and nothing subsists of itself. Outside of God, these supreme attributes have no existence. God does not resemble the artist who, after making a picture, leaves, abandons, and forgets his work; nor does that which God creates subsist like the painting, which subsists of itself. God created things in a more sovereign manner, and after their creation they depend on him in a more substantial and more excellent way. Those which belong to the natural order, to the supernatural, and also those which, out of the common, natural, and supernatural order are called, and really are, miraculous, though they cease not to have points of difference, under the distinct laws which govern them, still retain in common their absolute dependence on the divine will. We do not affirm all that may be affirmed with regard to fountains and trees, when we assert that the former flow and the latter bear fruit, because this is their nature. Things possess no inherent virtue of their own, independent of the will of their Creator, but only a certain determined mode of their existence, which leaves them