Page:Essays on Catholicism, Liberalism, and Socialism.djvu/143

remains as a perpetual testimony to truth, notwithstanding all its false applications. The multitude may err, and frequently do so when they affirm that a certain sin is the cause of a certain disturbance; but they cannot err when they assert that disorder is caused by sin. It is precisely because tradition, considered in its generality, is the manifestation and visible form of an absolute truth, that it becomes difficult and almost impossible to withdraw people from those concrete errors which are the result of their practical applications. What there is true in tradition gives consistency to what is false in the application, so that error, in the concrete, lives and grows under the protection of absolute truth.

History is not wanting in remarkable examples which help to confirm this universal tradition, transmitted from father to son, from family to family, from race to race, from nation to nation, from country to country, even to the ends of the earth; because whenever crime has exceeded a certain limit, and has filled a certain measure, some terrible punishments have overtaken nations, and dreadful convulsions have shaken the world. The first perversion was that universal wickedness of which the holy Scripture speaks, when, in the antediluvian epoch, all men were united in a common apostacy and forgetfulness of God, and lived without any other god or law than their criminal desires and frenzied passions. Then the measure of divine wrath was filled, and the earth was overwhelmed by that fearful inundation of waters which leveled the mountains with the valleys and wrapped all the earth in one common distress and ruin. Afterward, when time had run his course midway, the Desired of Nations came, in fulfillment of ancient promises and prophecies. The period of his coming was distinguished by