Page:The Great Encyclical Letters of Pope Leo XIII.djvu/479



CHRIST OUR REDEEMER. 473

of subjects with which reason properly deals. There are many things in nature on the investigation or explanation of which theology sheds considerable light. And often, to pimish men's pride, God suffers them to miss the truth, so as to chastise them in the very thing in which they have sinned. For one or other of these reasons very many men who seem endowed with great intellectual capacity, and of profound erudition, have nevertheless in their investigations of nature fallen into the most absurd and egregious mistakes.

It is certain, therefore, that in Christianity the under- standing should be wholly and unreserv^edly resigned to the di\'ine authority. If when reason thus submits, our spiritual pride, which is so strong in us, suffers repression, and feels pain, that proves all the more that in a Christian there ought to be patient endurance not merely of the will, but of the mind as well. And this we wish especially to note for those who dream of, and openly prefer, some discipline of thought and action in Christianity, wdth precepts less rigor- ous and more indulgent to human nature, that would demand of us to put up with little or nothing. They have no notion of the spirit of faith and of Christian institutions, they do not see that the cross meets us every- where as the standard of Hfe and the baimer under which we must always fight if we would follow Christ, not in name only, but in deed and in truth.

God alone is Life. All other beings partake of, but are not, life. Moreover from all eternity, and by His proper nature Christ is the Life equally as He is the Truth, being God of God. From Him, as from its ultimate and most august beginning, all Hfe has flowed down upon the world and will forever flow ; all that is, has its being from Him; all that lives, Hves by Him, for by the Word "all things were made, and without Him was nothing made that was made."

So much for the natural life. But above we alluded to a much better and much more desirable life, won for us