This result is not what was aimed at or desired, but it is the logical or necessary result of the attempt to erect the state on atheistical principles.Unless founded on the divine sovereignty, authority can sustain itself only by force, for political atheism recognizes no right but might.No doubt the politicians have sought an atheistical, or what is the same thing, a purely human, basis for government, in order to secure an open field for human freedom and activity, or individual or social progress.The end aimed at has been good, laudable even, but they forgot that freedom is possible only with authority that protects it against license as well as against despotism, and that there can be no progress where there is nothing that is not progressive.In civil society two things are necessary--stability and movement.
The human is the element of movement, for in it are possibilities that can be only successively actualized.But the element of stability can be found only in the divine, in God, in whom there is no unactualized possibility, who, therefore, is immovable, immutable, and eternal.The doctrine that derives authority from God through the people, recognizes in the state both of these elements, and provides alike for stability and progress.
This doctrine is not mere theory; it simply states the real order of things.It is not telling what ought to be, but what is in the real order.It only asserts for civil government the relation to God which nature herself holds to him, which the entire universe holds to the Creator.Nothing in man, in nature, in the universe, is explicable without the creative act of God, for nothing exists without that act.That God "in the beginning created heaven and earth," is the first principle of all science as of all existences, in politics no less than in theology.God and creation comprise all that is or exists, and creation, though distinguishable from God as the act from the actor, is inseparable from him, "for in Him we live and move and have our being." All creatures are joined to him by his creative act, and exist only as through that act they participate of his being.
Through that act he is immanent as first cause in all creatures and in every act of every creature.The creature deriving from his creative act can no more continue to exist than it could begin to exist without it.It is as bad philosophy as theology, to suppose that God created the universe, endowed it with certain laws of development or activity, wound it up, gave it a jog, set it agoing, and then left it to go of itself.It cannot go of itself, because it does not exist of itself.It did not merely not begin to exist, but it cannot continue to exist, without the creative act.Old Epicurus was a sorry philosopher, or rather, no philosopher at all.Providence is as necessary as creation, or rather, Providence is only continuous creation, the creative act not suspended or discontinued, or not passing over from the creature and returning to God.
Through the creative act man participates of God, and he can continue to exist, act, or live only by participating through it of his divine being.There is, therefore , something of divinity, so to speak, in every creature, and therefore it is that God is worshipped in his works without idolatry.But he creates substantial existences capable of acting as second causes.Hence, in all living things there is in their life a divine element and a natural element; in what is called human life, there are the divine and the human, the divine as first and the human as second cause, precisely what the doctrine of the great Christian theologians assert to be the fact with all legitimate or real government.Government cannot exist without the efficacious presence of God any more than man himself, and men might as well attempt to build up a world as to attempt to found a state without God.A government founded on atheistical principles were less than a castle in the air.It would have nothing to rest on, would not be even so much as "the baseless fabric of a vision,"and they who imagine that they really do exclude God from their politics deceive themselves; for they accept and use principles which, though they know it not, are God.What they call abstract principles, or abstract forms of reason, without which there were no logic, are not abstract, but the real, living God himself.
Hence government, like man himself, participates of the divine being, and, derived from God through the people, it at the same time participates of human reason and will, thus reconciling authority with freedom, and stability with progress.
The people, holding their authority from God, hold it not as an inherent right, but as a trust from Him, and are accountable to Him for it.It is not their own.If it were their own they might do with it as they pleased, and no one would have any right to call them to an account; but holding it as a trust from God, they are under his law, and bound to exercise it as that law prescribes.Civil rulers, holding their authority from God through the people, are accountable for it both to Him and to them.If they abuse it they are justiciable by the people and punishable by God himself.
