Page:Essays on Catholicism, Liberalism, and Socialism.djvu/151

However deep man may descend into the fathomless abyss of wisdom, however high he may mount in the investigation of the most hidden mysteries, yet he can never ascend so high nor descend so low, as to be able to comprehend the vast ravages inflicted by this first crime, and out of which all other calamities have arisen, as from a most prolific source.

No; never can man, never can the sinner, conceive the magnitude and the deformity of sin. In order to understand how great, how terrible, and how devastating are its effects, we must examine it under the divine point of view, and not as measured by human standards. As in the deity we find the supreme good, and in sin the supreme evil, the deity being order and sin disorder, the deity a complete affirmation and sin an absolute negation, the deity being plenitude of existence and sin its absolute decline, there exists between God and sin, as between affirmation and negation, order and disorder, good and evil, existence and non-existence, an incommensurable distance, an invincible contradiction, and an infinite repugnance.

No calamity, however overwhelming, can disturb the ineffable repose of the Divinity. When the universal deluge overspread the earth, God beheld the tremendous inundation, considered in itself and separated from its cause, with a serene countenance; because the angels, obedient to his command, had opened the floodgates of heaven; and the waters, obedient to his voice, covered the mountains and encompassed the earth; the clouds gathered from every corner of the obscured horizon, and united hung as a black pall over the earth; yet the face of God remained serene, because it was his will that darkness should cover the earth; for he called the