pride, and Thomas's salvation his humility, whereby he falls, not faithless but believing, at the Saviour's feet and cries: " My Lord and my God."
Brethren, strictly speaking, rationalists are those who deny the existence of revealable or revealed truths. But more widely and just as truly the name may be applied to all those who, while admitting revelation, reject from the word of God whatever, in their private judgment, is inconsistent with human reason. Thus, not only downright unbelievers, but all Protestants and in general all non-Catholics are rationalists. They deify reason, claiming there is no truth necessary for man to know which reason will not teach him, so that they take natural rather than supernatural science as their way to the truth and life everlasting. Catholics on the other hand hold that since God is truth, truth, like God, must be infinite; and it is only by following the truth that a soul can come to God. Now, on its way to truth and God, the soul passes through three stages, the state of nature, of grace, and of glory; through three antechambers before arriving at the Holy of holies. Now, each of these states has truths proper to itself, and the darkness which hides these truths from view is dense in the first state, denser in the second, and densest in the third. But God does not leave the soul in darkness. He gives her a light for her guidance proportioned to the darkness to be dispelled. In the first, the state of nature, He gives the light of reason to know natural truths; in the second, He gives her the still stronger light of grace to know supernatural
