Page:Essays on Catholicism, Liberalism, and Socialism.djvu/85

and on the other, between the ordinary phenomena of the natural and supernatural order and miraculous facts, neither supposes, nor can suppose, any rivalry or hidden antagonism between that which exists by the will of God and that which has a natural existence, because God is the author, preserver, and sovereign director of all things.

All these distinctions, beyond their dogmatic limits, have resulted in what we see—the deification of the material, and the absolute and radical negation of Providence and grace.

Finally, to resume the thread of this argument: Providence is a universal grace, in virtue of which all things are maintained and governed according to the divine counsel, as grace is a special providence, by which God takes care of man. The dogmas of Providence and of grace reveal to us the existence of a supernatural world, where we find the reason and cause of all that we see. Without the light which we receive from this direction, all is darkness; without the explanation herein found, all is inexplicable; without this solution and this light, all is phenomenal, ephemeral, and contingent, all things are as smoke that melts away, as phantasms that vanish, shadows that disappear, and dreams that have no reality. We find the supernatural above us, around us, and within us. It surrounds the natural, and penetrates it everywhere.

The knowledge of the supernatural is then the foundation of all the sciences, and especially so of the political and moral sciences. It is useless to attempt to explain the existence of man without grace, or of society without Providence; for, deprived of these, society