The Divine Lamp

Chapter 5
Every Difficulty Against The Government Of Divine Providence, When Solved, Dispels Man’s Ignorance; When Adored, It Enhances His Virtue.

But let us for a while set aside this consideration, and turn back to the fact already mentioned, that the secondary rules of judgment, drawn from a narrowercircle of experience, differ from those founded on one that is wider.

I ask: can all these rules, sl discordant from one another, be at one and the same time equally true and complete?  To say this would be a contradiction; but each of them will be at once true and false: true so long as it is applied to matters falling within that sphere of things from which it was drawn; false if applied to things lying outside that sphere.  It follows that such scondary rules as were drawn from a larger experience and a wide sphere of action will be available for judging aright of a greater number and of a more extended order of things, than are the more limited and restricted rules.  Those only will be finally complete which are founded on the observation of all the component parts of the universe, considered in their mutual relations; for, as from this grand sphere nothing would be excluded, so, in the formation of such rules, no possible experience would be wanting; every species as well as every accident would be taken into account and, as it were, set face to face in a universal comparison.  Now, in this we can see a fresh reason why virtuous men, when meeting with those difficulties which are apt to suggest themselves to the mind in the consideration of the manner in which human sorrow and human happiness are apportioned by Providence, instead of giving way to sadness or discouragement, feel internally moved to rejoice.  Indeed, if one of these upright and faithful men happens to observe anything difficult to understand, and so contrary to all his expectations that is suggests strangeness of action on the part of God, he is filled with sentiments of heartfelt gratitude; for in the very darkness of that deep secret of Divine Wisdom he sees a reminder of his own nothingness before God, and of the immense abyss which lies between the judgments of the Creator and of his creature.  That ray of Divine Greatness gladdens him beyond measure.   Nevertheless he meditates diligently and hopefull y on that secret, trying to search out those reasons which are at present hidden from his view; for he is persuaded, that should it please God to discover them to him in any degree, the narrow borders of his human understanding will be thereby immensely enlarged, and the cramped maxims of human prudence corrected, by the infinite breadth of the Wisdom of God.  Excerpted from Theodicy, Volume 1, by Blessed Antonio Rosmini.