Page:Essays on Catholicism, Liberalism, and Socialism.djvu/286

by this people, God proclaims it himself in accepting a solidarity with man, and he also proclaims the dogma of reversibility in asking the Father to pardon his enemies as the price of his suffering, and he proclaims the dogma of substitution in dying for them, and finally, that of redemption as the consequence of all the others. For, if the sinner is redeemed, it is because the substitute who suffered death for him, in virtue of the dogma of solidarity, has been accepted, and applies to him His merits in virtue of the dogma of reversibility.

All these dogmas, which were in the same day proclaimed by a people and by a God, and afterward accomplished in the person of this God, and in the successive generations of this people, these same dogmas have all been constantly proclaimed and accomplished, although imperfectly, since the beginning of the world. They were symbolized in an institution before they were fulfilled in a person.

The institution which symbolized them is that of bloody sacrifices. The existence of this mysterious, and, humanly speaking, inconceivable institution is a fact so universal and constant that it has existed among all nations, and in every country; so that of all the social institutions, that which is most universal is the most inconceivable, and apparently the most absurd; and it is worthy of remark that this universality is an attribute common to the institution which is the symbol of these dogmas, to the person in whom they were accomplished, and even to the dogmas thus symbolized and fulfilled. The imagination seeks in vain to find dogmas, a person, or an institution more universal. These dogmas contain all the laws which govern human affairs; in the unity of this person the Divinity and humanity are found united,