Page:Essays on Catholicism, Liberalism, and Socialism.djvu/290

dogma of the transmission of sin and of penalty, without which Adam alone would have had to suffer punishment; and it also proclaimed the dogma of solidarity, without which Abel would not have inherited sin. This sacrifice was at the same time an acknowledgment of the justice of God, and of the care that Providence exercises over human affairs. If we consider it, as regards the victims offered to the Lord, it was a commemoration both of the promise made to the true criminal at the time that the penalty was inflicted, and also of the reversibility in virtue of which those who were punished for the fault of Adam were to be ransomed through the merits of the Saviour; and of that substitution in virtue of which He who was to come was to offer himself as a sacrifice for mankind; and finally, these victims being lambs without blemish, and the firstlings of the flock, the sacrifice of Abel typified the true sacrifice in which the most pure and meek Lamb, the only Son of the Father, offered himself as a holy and perfect sacrifice for the sins of the world. In this manner Catholicism, in its entirety, which explains and includes all things, is, by a miracle of condensation, itself explained and contained in the first bloody sacrifice offered by man to God. What a surprising virtue does the Catholic religion possess, which gives it so infinite a power of expansion and condensation! How wonderful is the immense variety of those doctrines which we behold comprised in this one symbol! And how perfect and comprehensive is this symbol which contains so many and so great things! Such sublime consonances and harmonies and perfections of so surpassing a beauty are beyond the comprehension of man, and they not only