Page:Essays on Catholicism, Liberalism, and Socialism.djvu/125

In nothing does the incomparable beauty of Catholic solutions show itself so conspicuously as in its universality, that incommunicable attribute of divine solutions. The moment we embrace a Catholic solution, all that was previously dark and obscure becomes clear, night becomes day, and order proceeds from chaos. In each of these explanations may be found that sovereign attribute and secret virtue which produces the great wonder of universal light. The only obscure point, amid the light thus diffused, is the mystery itself, from which proceeds so much brightness; and the reason of this is, that man, not being God, cannot possess that divine attribute, by which the Lord, in his ineffable glory, clearly sees all things created. Man is condemned out of darkness to receive light, and out of light the explanation of what is obscure. For him, there is nothing evident which does not proceed from an impenetrable mystery. But between things mysterious and those that are evident, there is, however, this notable difference: that man may render obscure that which is evident, but he cannot explain the mysterious. When, in attempting to acquire that ineffable knowledge, which is in God, but which he has not himself, he rejects as obscure the divine explanations, he consigns himself to