Page:Essays on Catholicism, Liberalism, and Socialism.djvu/21

Mr. Proudhon, in his Confessions of a Revolutionist, has written these remarkable words: "It is surprising to observe how constantly we find all our political questions complicated with theological questions." There is nothing in this to cause surprise, except it be the surprise of Mr. Proudhon. Theology being the science of God, is the ocean which contains and embraces all the sciences, as God is the ocean in which all things are contained. All things existed, both prior to and after their creation, in the divine mind; because as God made them out of nothing, so did he form them according to a model which existed in himself from eternity. All things are in God in the profound manner in which effects are in their causes, consequences in their principles, reflections in light, and forms in their eternal exemplars. In Him are united the vastness of the sea, the glory of the fields, the harmony of the spheres, the