revelation of God: and the highest science of the human intellect is that which, taking its preamble from the light of nature, begins in faith; and receiving its axioms from faith, expands by the procession of truth from truth.
The great value of Scheeben’s work is in its scientific method, its terminology, definitions, procedure, and unity. It requires not only reading but study; and study with patient care and conscientious desire to understand. Readers overrun truths which they have not mastered. Students leave nothing behind them until it is understood. This work needs such a conscientious treatment from those who take it in hand.
Valuable as it is in all its parts, the most valuable may be said to be the First Book, on the Sources of Theological Knowledge, and the Second Book, on God in Unity and Trinity. Any one who has mastered this second book has reached the Head of the River of the Water of Life.
Of all the superstitious and senseless mockeries, and they were many, with which the world wagged its head at the Vatican Council, none was more profoundly foolish than the gibe that in the nineteenth century a Council has been solemnly called to declare the existence of God. In fact, it is this truth that the nineteenth century needs most of all. For as St. Jerome says, “Homo sine cognitione Dei, pecus.” But what the Council did eventually declare is, not the existence of God, but that the existence of God may be known with certitude by the reason of man through the works that He has created. This is the infallible light of the Natural Order, and the need of this definition is perceived by all who know the later Philosophies of Germany and France, and the rationalism, scepticism, and naturalism which pervades the literature, the public opinion, and the political action of the modern world. This was the first dominant error of these days, demanding the action
