t Dieu."[52] These words seem to me to
express a great truth. The religious mind conceives of the natural, not
as opposed to the supernatural, but as an outlying province of it; of
the economy of the physical world as the complement of the economy of
Grace. And to those who thus think, the great objection urged by so many
philosophers, from Spinoza downwards--not to go further back--that
miracles, as the violation of an unchangeable order, make God contradict
himself, and so are unworthy of being attributed to the All-Wise, is
without meaning. The most stupendous incident in the "Acta Sanctorum"
is, as I deem, not less the manifestation of law than is the fall of a
sparrow.[53] The budding of a rose and the Resurrection of Jesus Christ
are equally the effect of the One Motive Force, which is the cause of
all phenomena, of the Volition of the Maker, Nourisher, Guardian,
Governor, Worker, Perfecter of all. Once admit what is involved in the
very idea of God as it exists in Catholic theology--as it is set forth,
for example, in the treatise of St. Thomas Aquinas "De Deo"--and the
notion of miracles as abnormal, as infractions of order, as violations
of law, will be seen to be utterly erroneous.

And now one word as to the bearing of physical science upon the doctrine
of the Divine goodness[54]--the second of the theological positions
which, as we have seen, the author of "Natural Religion" assumes to be
discredited by physical science. No doubt he had in his mind what has
been so strongly stated by the late Mr. Mill: "Not even on the most
distorted and contracted theory of good, which ever was framed by
religious or philosophical fanaticism, can the government of Nature be
made to resemble the work of a being at once good and omnipotent."[55]
Now there can be no question that physical nature gives the lie to that
shallow optimism, which prates of the best of all conceivable worlds,
and hardly consents to recognize evil, save as "a lower form of good;"
unquestionably recent researches of physicists have brought out with
quite startling clearness what St. Paul calls the subjection of the
creature to vanity. Ruin, waste, decay are written upon every feature of
the natural order. All that is joyful in it is based on suffering; all
that lives, on death; every thrill of pleasure which we receive from the
outward world is the outcome of inconceivable agonies during
incalculable periods of time. But how does this discredit the teac