not, any more than a human individual, become wholly bad; the ruler is still the minister of God.1

The second corruption of society is found in the toleration of evil. This is a necessary consequence of the fallen state, extending, as we shall see, even to renovated human society in the Church. It is necessary because of the impossibility in many cases of discerning accurately between good and evil, and also because man, while imperfect himself, cannot root out the imperfection of his fellows. The aspiration of the Psalmist, "I shall soon destroy all the ungodly that are in the land,” is an ideal beyond the reach of fallen man. But there are degrees of such toleration, which mark the progress of the corruption or the recovery of human society.

Harder to understand is the toleration of evil by the will of God. In the generations gone by, says St. Paul, God suffered all the nations to walk in their own ways, though leaving himself not without witness among them. These times of ignorance, he says, God overlooked. The nations were left to frame their own laws and customs according to the light of nature, however obscured, and these laws and customs had a sanction from the Divine permission, though they tolerated or even commanded things that were evil. But more is to

be said. The Divine Law given by revelation contains precepts which directly countenance actions contrary to the will of God. Of the divorce allowed by the Law of Moses our Lord said, "For your hardness of heart he wrote you this commandment." In the Epistle to the Hebrews, the law of the Aaronic priesthood is spoken of as a carnal commandment, which is disannulled because of its weakness and unprofitableness. The precepts of the Law, says St. Paul, were weak and beggarly rudiments. Rom. xiii. 4.

Our Lord said that he was come to fulfil, not to destroy the Law; but his mode of completing it indicates grievous imperfections.1

The explanation is that God's Law, given by revelation under the Old Covenant, was designed for human society in the condition of fallen nature, and for that society in a certain state of development. It was to be administered by men, according to the method of human law, and was consequently subject to the necessary limitations of human law, working in the same condition. It therefore not only tolerated imperfections in the way of leaving them unforbidden, but also commanded actions in themselves contrary to the absolute measure of right. Such actions were relatively good, by virtue of the mediate or temporary end to which they were addressed. Because of the hardness of men's hearts divorce and polygamy were relatively good, though absolutely evil, and as such were provided for in the law. In like manner we read of men being specially moved by God to actions, such as the intended sacrifice of Isaac, which are absolutely evil, but are good in relation to the condition of the agent and the end proximately set before him.

These considerations clear the way for a conclusion about human actions in general. In the state of fallen nature every ordinary human action, individual or social, is mingled of good and evil. It is good in so far as it is an act of nature; it is evil in so far as it is affected by the fall of nature. It is good because ultimately moved by the will of the Creator, in whom alone we live and move and have our being; it is evil because moved in part by the perverted habit of the agent or by his

1 Acts xiv. 16; xvii. 30; Mark x. 5; Heb.' vii. 16-18; Gal. iv. 9; Matt. v. 17-45.

rebellious will.1 Every such action is absolutely both good and evil; it is relatively either good or evil according to the balance of the forces determining the agent, or, in other words, of the ends proposed. An action done by constraint is counted neither good nor evil, since the will has no part in it. But if the chief determination be that of the will acting in harmony either with the natural habit and disposition to do the will of the Creator, or with a special indication of God's will, then the action is counted good, whatever the admixture of perversity or ignorance. If the chief determination be that of the will acting in harmony with evil habit or yielding to temptation, then the action is counted evil. For example, the

individual act of taking human life is counted good, if determined either by the natural instinct of self-preservation or by obedience to law; it is counted evil if otherwise determined. The law which commands this act is counted good if the end be justice and the bettering of human life; evil, if the end be tyranny or a callous avoidance of responsibility. An individual act of war is counted good if determined by obedience to authority evil, if baser motives predominate. A national act of war is counted good if the end be justice, and the means be duly proportioned to the end; evil, if otherwise ordered.

It remains to be said that every individual action which is rightly to be counted evil is actual sin. Sin is lawlessness. Original sin is a condition of habitual contrariety to the eternal law of God. Actual sin is a voluntary action contrary to the known law of God. Where there is no law, says St. Paul, sin is not imputed.

"If ye were

1 August., De Civitate Dei, xix. 13: "Esse autem natura in qua nullum bonum sit, non potest. Proinde nec ipsius diaboli natura, inquantum natura est, malum est, sed perversitas eam malam facit."

blind," said the Lord Jesus Christ, "ye would have no sin but now ye say, We see: your sin remaineth." The light, either of nature or of grace, is granted in varying measure to every man. Every action done against the light which a man has, or may have if he will, is actual sin.1

SECT. IV. The Promise of Salvation

2

St. Thomas Aquinas distinguishes the states of fallen and unfallen nature by saying that while in both alike the help of grace is needed, unfallen man requires it for one purpose, that he may will and do supernatural good; fallen man requires it for two purposes-first for the healing of his nature, and secondly that he may do supernatural good. By supernatural good we mean that perfection which is beyond man's natural powers considered in themselves. Man was indeed created by God for this, and therefore it is in a sense natural to him, as being the perfection of his nature, but the attainment of it is due to a separate gift of God. The Tree of Life in the original Paradise is the symbol of that gift, by eating of which man was to be raised to powers beyond his nature. Of the Tree of Life in the final Paradise the leaves are for the healing of the nations.3

This healing or salvation was promised by God from the first. It is that about which, says Zacharias in his

1 Rom. v. 13; John ix. 41.

2 Sum. Theol., 1-2. 108. 2: "Virtute gratuita superaddita virtuti naturae indiget homo in statu naturae integrae quantum ad unum, scilicet ad operandum et volendum bonum supernaturale; sed in statu naturae corruptae quantum ad duo, scilicet ut sanetur, et ulterius ut bonum supernaturalis virtutis operetur."

3 Rev. xxii. 2.

song, “he spake by the mouth of his holy prophets which have been since the world began." In the mysterious judgment pronounced on the serpent at the Fall, there is indeed but the faintest adumbration of what was to come: "I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed: it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.” But this crushing of the serpent implies the undoing of his mischief, and St. Paul uses the figure to express the complete renovation of man: "The God of peace shall bruise Satan under your feet shortly.” 1

1

The hope of salvation, the conviction that what is gone wrong in human nature will in some way be set right, appears dimly shadowed in the beliefs of many nations. We cannot however safely attribute this hope to any other source than a consciousness of evil as a disturbance in the order of nature, which it is reasonable to suppose will pass away. There is a desire for perfect happiness, and for the reign of perfect justice; the desire breeds a hope; but, as Hooker well says, in the natural constitution of man there is no possibility of attaining it, nor even the power of imagining a means to its consummation. "There resteth therefore either no way unto salvation, or if any, then surely a way which is supernatural, a way which could never have entered into the heart of man as much as once to conceive or imagine, if God himself had not revealed it extraordinarily. For which cause we term it the Mystery or secret way of salvation." 2

The hope of salvation rested therefore on the promise of God, obscurely intimated from the beginning, repeated

1 Rom. xvi. 20.

2 Eccl. Pol., i. II. 5. See also the eloquent passage in § 6, "Concerning Faith," etc.