Page:Essays on Catholicism, Liberalism, and Socialism.djvu/305

is not so perfect as to be capable of resisting the efforts of human reason. If Catholicism neither says, teaches, nor contains anything more than has been declared, taught, and comprised by these solutions, then it is merely a philosophical system which is less imperfect than any that have preceded it, and, according to all probability, less perfect than others which are yet to come. In this case, it may be charged with a notorious incompetency to solve the great problems respecting God, the universe, and man. God is not perfect, if he does not love with an infinite love; order does not exist in the universe, if there is nothing in it which displays the love of God; and as to man, the disorder into which he has fallen through sin is so great that only infinite love can save him.

Nor let it be said that God being infinitely good and merciful, love is supposed, and as it were hidden in his infinite goodness and mercy; because love is in its nature so engrossing, that where it exists it necessarily governs and predominates over all other things. Love is not contained, but containing; it is not hidden, but it makes itself known; such is its nature, that wherever it is it subjects all things, and seems alone to exist. It is the great finality which subdues all things and arranges them with reference to itself. He who loves, if he love truly, would seem to be as one mad, so that when his love is infinite his folly appears to be infinite.

I hear a voice which cries aloud in my heart, and which is my heart itself—a voice that speaks within me, and which is even myself—and this voice says to me: If thou wishest to know the true God, consider who it is that loves thee so as to become as a fool for thee, and who it is that aids thee to love Him, even