Book Description

It has been my purpose to exhibit the profound unity of the Christian Faith together with the infinite variety of its effects on individual character, on human society, on the action of nations towards each other, on universal as well as national legislation. Like the figure of the great Mother of God bearing her Divine Son in her arms, and so including the Incarnation and all its works, the Faith stands before us in history, "veste deaurata, circumdata varietate". And as the personal unity appears in the symbol of the Divine Love to man expressed in her Maternity, so it appears also in the figure of the Church through the ages in which that Divine Love executes His work.Be it allowed me to quote here words of the present Sovereign Pontiff addressed on the 18th August, 1883, to the Cardinals de Luca, Pitra, and Hergenröther:- "It is the voice of all history that God with the most careful providence directs the various and never-ending movements of human affairs. Even against man's intention he makes them serve the advancement of His Church. History says further that the Roman Pontificate has ever escaped victorious from its contests and the violence employed against it, while its assaulters have failed in the hope which they cherished, and have wrought their own destruction. Not less openly does history attest the divine provision made concerning the city of Rome from its very beginning. This was to give for ever a home and seat to the successors of St. Peter, from which as a centre, being free from all control of a superior, they might guide the whole Christian commonwealth. And no one has ventured to resist this counsel of the divine Providence without sooner or later perceiving the vanity of his efforts. "It cannot be expedient, nor is it wise counsel, to fight with a power for whose perpetuity God has pledged Himself, while history attests the performance of the pledge. Since Catholics throughout the whole world pay it religious veneration, it is their interest to defend it with all their power. Nay even the rulers of secular governments must acknowledge this, and lay it to heart, especially in times so dangerous, when the very foundations on which human society rests appear well nigh to shake and totter."