Page:Readings in European History Vol 2.djvu/420

 382 Readings in European History laws, as we lowly human creatures must, but his own general laws, eternal like himself. It never occurred to any of us that God was like a crazy master who gave a fortune to one slave and refused another his necessary food. . . . " Everything from God is grace ; he has conferred his grace on the globe we dwell upon by forming it; upon the trees the grace to grow ; upon the beasts that of finding food. But if one wolf finds a lamb in his way to make a good meal of, and another wolf is famishing, shall we say that God has shown his special grace to the first wolf? Has he by ' preventing ' grace been busied in causing one oak to grow preferably to another ? . . . " How pitiable to suppose that God is continually making, unmaking, and remaking sentiments in us, and what pre- sumption to think that we are different in this respect from all other beings ! Moreover it is only for those who go to confession that all these changes are imagined. A Savoyard or a man from Bergamo shall on Monday have grace to have a mass said for twelve sous ; Tuesday grace will fail him and he will go to the tavern; on Wednesday he will have cooperating grace which will send him away to confes- sion, but without the efficacious grace of perpetual contri- tion; Thursday it may be a 'sufficient' grace which will prove insufficient. God will be continually at work in the head of this man of Bergamo, sometimes strongly, sometimes weakly, without minding any other thing upon earth and without caring what becomes of the inside of Indians or Chinese. . . . " You miserable creatures ! Lift up your eyes to the heavens : see the Eternal Artificer creating millions of worlds all gravitating toward one another by general and eternal laws ! Behold the same light reflected from the sun to Saturn and from Saturn to us ; and amidst this harmony of so many luminous bodies in a course as amazing as swift, amidst this general obedience of all nature, I defy you to believe that God is occupied with conferring versatile grace on Sister Theresa and concomitant grace on Sister Agnes. • • «