we name as representing the whole heathen world, had no other rule for their actions than the natural reason of man. By nature, as we have already said, their intellect tended to truth, and their will to good; but the truth and the good were confined to the natural order which they saw around them. Thus they had well divided the whole sphere of human action among the four cardinal virtues: prudence, which is the reason directing itself rightly in the choice of means; justice, directing man to what is due and right in all his conduct towards others; temperance, which restrains all the passions of the part in him which desires; and fortitude, which arms him with firmness against all passions of the part which fears. And the good which they had in view was the good of the individual and of society as limited to this present life. And as, when so limited, the good of the multitude is superior to that of the individual, the highest form of good which they could set before them was the wellordered human commonwealth, and to this therefore, if need were, the good of the individual must in all cases be sacrificed. Thus the wealth, power, and extension of the state, and its just government, were the highest result of the virtue which they contemplated, and man had in himself no intrinsic value which could outweigh or vie with this result. Their whole virtue consisted, therefore, in obedience to the dictates of reason within this sphere. But now Christian Grace came upon this same natural reason, elevating all its powers to a higher end and a superior good, and bestowing on it, in accordance with such end and good, a rule above itself, the divine reason, which is the absolute good. In and by the gift of adoption it disclosed God to the soul as loving each soul with an infinite love; and as the love of God is not barren, as bestowing on its object a quality answering to that love. This was the virtue of Charity, the affection on man's part answering to its cause, the previous love of God, the creature's movement to meet the Creator's embrace. The Holy Spirit Himself, the perfect Gift, began all by implanting grace in the soul, and in this grace charity rooted itself, and became the mother of all other virtues, because it directed them all to the end of pleasing God. The parallel between Nature and Grace is complete.* Just as the natural light of reason is something before and beside the virtues acquired by the right use of it, and directed to the end which it sets before them, so this infused light of grace, this participation of the divine nature, is something before the virtues which spring from it, before even Charity, which, however, taking possession of the will, becomes the exact representative of Grace. And as the political good was the highest object at which natural reason aimed, so reason, informed by Grace, aimed at an object connatural to grace, the possession of God Himself, the full St. Thomas, Summa, 1, 2, q. 110, a. 3. inheritance belonging to the adoption. Yet it did not exclude those virtues of human society, prudence, justice, temperance, and fortitude; but whereas in their natural state they are tendencies rather than virtues, and do not always cohere together in the bond of prudence, but rather men are brave, or temperate, or just, or prudent, by a sort of natural disposition, here on the other hand, Charity, the mover of the will by Grace, produced these virtues on a new stock, with a perfect ripeness, cohesion, and completeness; produced them with the spontaneity of an affection, and the unfailing force of a divine origin. It produced them on a new stock, for in the eyes of Charity the political good, to which in their natural condition they were related, was in itself transitory, and subordinate to a higher good; and so Charity bestowed on their acts the value of this higher good. And it produced their several acts with perfect ripeness, cohesion, and completeness, because it took possession of the whole will, and was the motive power of all actions. And here again the highest form of Christian excellence was seen in prophecy as attached to the Person of Christ, its well-head and fountain, and streaming forth from Him upon His brethren, when it was said that on the Flower arising from the root of Jesse should rest the sevenfold spirit of wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, know * Isai. xi. 1, 2. ledge, piety, and fear. For inasmuch as the reason of man has two perfections, one natural, according to the light of reason, and one supernatural, according to the light of grace, though this second perfection is greater than the first, the first is more perfectly possessed by man.* For whereas he has full and complete possession of reason, he knows and loves God but imperfectly by the light of Grace in the reason. So that a special divine instinct is necessary to quicken the action of reason, and therefore the Holy Spirit breathes these gifts as a Spirit, transforming the intellectual and moral virtues, which the heathens themselves named and in some sort possessed, into movements of His own in the will. Thus the motives respectively guiding the heathen and the Christian were, for the first reason in its rectitude, for the second the Holy Spirit moving the reason in perfect accordance with its freedom. The virtue of Charity held all these gifts together, by which all the powers of the human soul were guided into willing obedience to the divine prompting. And the bestowal of them on each Christian in various degrees was an emanation from the fulness with which they rested on His divine Head. And to complete what we have to say we must add that so far as the virtue of Christian Grace exceeded the virtue of natural reason in the individual, so much did its consummation in the mass St. Thomas, Summa, 1, 2, q. 68, a. 2. exceed any thing which the human commonwealth could reach. These virtues are of a different origin, a different order, and point to a different end, both in the individual and in the mass; but further, in the natural polity the good of the individual and the good of the whole do not concur. The State is perpetually sacrificing for objects of its own those whom it treats not as members, but as instruments, and this without respect to their moral goodness, as, for instance, the victims of war, and those who perish in the conflict with their wiser or stronger fellows in the struggle for advancement in life. But in the divine polity of sons adopted through the grace of the only-begotten Son, the good of the individual and of the whole perfectly concur. There none are treated as instruments to be used, broken, and thrown aside, on whose ruins others may rise, but the incorruptible Seed grows up into an impregnable Kingdom.* Thus when Christianity came into the ruined fabric of human nature and society, it appealed to no violated rights; it set up no political means of redressing wrong; but having presented the one God in an effulgence of moral glory, it attached itself to the individual human soul as a counterpart to this vision of God: and the doctrine of a dependent immortality, a continual but never-ceasing gift of a self-eternal Giver, drew man, as a magnet, upwards: this faith knit again the creature * 1 Pet. i. 23, σπορὰ ἄφθαρτος ; Heb. xii. 28, βασιλεία ἀσάλευτος, |