hardly find enough to keep himself alive, and is moreover despised and contemned, perhaps by those very godless people themselves who live in prosperity! Can such an arrangement come from a God of infinite wisdom, holiness, and justice? Or does that God really interest Himself in even the most minute of our affairs, as we are taught to believe? Is He capable of acting so harshly towards His friends, while He is so generous to His enemies? Truly that father has a hard heart who admits his disobedient, obstinate servants to his own table, while he drives away from it his children who love him and are ready to obey his least sign, and allows them to suffer the pangs of hunger! How can we dare to attribute such a mode of action to the God of goodness and mercy to whom we daily cry out: “Our Father who art in heaven”! And what could possibly be the result of it, if not to make virtue and goodness detestable, and sin and vice agreeable and laudable?
Even the holiest have found it hard to understand this. We are not the only ones who entertain such thoughts. Even the holiest servants of God have sometimes had a difficulty in finding a reason for the action of the Almighty in this respect. “I see.” says the great and enlightened St. Augustine, “before my eyes a most difficult problem”[1] to understand, namely, how to reconcile the justice of God and His all-ruling providence with the claims of equity and right, when I behold sinners generally prosperous on earth, while the good are tormented by temptations, persecutions, and trials. “It is a most difficult thing to explain.”[2] And I believe you, great Saint! Many centuries before you the prophets of God studied the same point, and had to confess that it puzzled them. “Why,” asks Jeremias in astonishment, “why doth the way of the wicked prosper; why is it well with all them that transgress and do wickedly?”[3] Why is this, O Lord? The same difficulty made David totter in his faith and hope. Hear what he says in the seventy-second Psalm. " But my feet were almost moved: my steps had well-nigh slipped.” Why? “Because I had a zeal on occasion of the wicked, seeing the prosperity of sinners. They are not in the labor of men, neither shall they be scourged like other men,” so that they may do whatever pleases them. But, thought I to myself, how is that possible? “Behold! these are
