Page:Essays on Catholicism, Liberalism, and Socialism.djvu/212

men, past, present, and future, even to the consummation of time, is not to the human understanding, at first sight, compatible with the justice of God, and much less with his inexhaustible mercy.

At first sight, and upon a slight examination, any one might pronounce this to be a dogma taken from those inexorable and gloomy religions of the East, whose idols delight in hearing lamentations, in the sight of blood, and whose voices breathe only anathemas and vengeance. The living God, in the act of revealing himself to us in this tremendous dogma, seems not to resemble the merciful and clement God of the Christians, but appears rather like the Moloch of idolatrous nations, whose insatiable cruelty is not appeased by offerings of the firstlings of the flock, but whose barbaric grandeur demands the immolation of the successive generations of mankind. Wherefore are we punished, ask all the nations converted to God, if we have not been guilty?

When we examine this question fully and directly, it will not be difficult to demonstrate the entire congruity of this profound mystery. We ought previously to observe that the very persons who deny the transmission of sin as a revealed dogma, are compelled to acknowledge that even when this article is considered entirely distinct from what we hold as of faith, yet the same end is attained, however different the ways of treating the subject may be.

Even if we concede that sin and its penalty, being personal, are intransmissible, after making this concession we can still prove that what this dogma asserts remains.

In effect, in whatever way we may consider this subject, the result will always be, that we must admit that