Page:Essays on Catholicism, Liberalism, and Socialism.djvu/79

by her hand. I know that if I write, it is because thou hast inspired me with the desire to do so, and that I only write that which thou teachest me, or permittest me to write; I believe that he who attempts to accomplish anything without thee, neither knoweth thee, nor is he a Christian.

I beg that my readers will pardon a laic and a secular for daring to enter upon the abstruse and thorny question of grace. But all must acknowledge, notwithstanding, that the discussion of this vexed question was an imperative exigency, arising from the very grave subject that I have just treated in the preceding chapters. I attempted to give a proper explanation of that prodigy—ever ancient and ever new—the powerful action that Christianity has exercised in the world, in order to understand, through it, the no less stupendous and prodigious mystery of the power it possesses of transforming human societies. The prodigy of its propagation and its triumph is not due to historical proofs, to prophetical predictions, or to the sanctity of its doctrines. In the condition to which man was reduced by the prevarication and the fall, all these were circumstances rather fitted to embarrass Christianity than to carry it triumphant to the remotest corners of the earth. Neither had miracles any part in working this prodigy, because, although considered in themselves, they certainly are supernatural, yet, as exterior evidence, they only constitute a natural proof, subjected to the same conditions as other human testimony. The propagation and the triumph of Christianity are supernatural facts, because its propagation and triumph have taken place in spite of its containing within itself all the elements which would have impeded its advancement and victory. As