304 VOL UTION AND DOGMA. 



Divine. In man they belong to the lower and 

 created order; in God, to a higher and uncreated 

 order. In man any moral perfection may be present 

 or absent without the essential nature of man being 

 thereby affected ; in God, the absence of any perfec- 

 tion would thereby rob Him ipso facto of His Deity. 

 Whatever the human attribute can perform, the 

 Divine attribute can do in a far more perfect way, 

 and the most exalted exhibition of human perfection 

 is but a faint shadow of the Divine perfection that 

 gave it birth. The most unbounded charity, mercy, 

 gentleness, compassion, in man, is feeble indeed, and 

 miserable, compared with the charity, mercy, gentle- 

 ness, compassion of God. The Divine perfection is 

 the ideal of human perfection, its model, its pattern, 

 its origin, its efficient Cause, the source from which it 

 came, the end for which it was created." ' 



Divine Interference. 



Theistic Evolution, in the sense in which it is 

 advocated by St. Augustine and St. Thomas, ex- 

 cludes also Divine interference, or constant unneces- 

 sary interventions on the part of the Deity, as effectu- 

 ally as it does a low and narrow Anthropomorphism. 

 Both these illustrious Doctors declare explicitly, 

 that " in the institution of nature we do not look for 

 miracles, but for the laws of nature." * 



1 The Month, Sept., 1882, p. 20. 



2 Cf. "Gen. ad Lit.," lib. II, cap. i, of St. Augustine and 

 "Sum." I, LXVII, 4 ad 3 m of St. Thomas. The Angelic Doctor's 

 words are: "In prima autem institutione naturae non quzeritur 

 miraculum, sed quid natura rerum habeat." Suarez expresses 



