Problems of the Age. Parts III-IV [pp. 289-300]

THE
CATHOLIC WORLD.
VOL. II., NO. 15.-JUNE, 1866.
[ORIGnAL.]
- PIOBLEMS OF THE AGE.
III.
THE BELIEF IN GOD AS THE FIRST
ARTICLE OF A RELIGIOUS CREED.
THE first article of the Christian
Creed is "Credo in Deum"-" I
believe in God." The Christian
child receives this originally by instruction before it attains the complete use of reason, and believes it by
a natural faith in the word of those
who teach it. Afterward it attains
to a clearer and more distinct conception of its meaning and truth.
This conception, however, is still
furnished to it by Christian theology,
and by theology itself is referred back
to a revelation whose beginning is
coeval with the human race. The
fact just stated in regard to the belief of the Christian child is also true
in regard to the belief of mankind
universally. Wherever the idea of
God, as exhibited by pure, theistic
philosophy, is contained in the com VOL. III. 19
mon belief of the people, it is held as
a portion of some religious system
purporting to be derived from revela
tion. It is learned from the insftruction of religious teachers, and transmitted by a sacred tradition. We do
not attain to the conception of God by
the spontaneous, unaided evolution of
it in our individual reason. Those
nations which remain in the state of
infancy, through a lack of the civilizin,g and instructing power, do not attain to that conception. The only
way in which pure, theistic conceptions have ever been communicated to
any considerable number of persons
previously destitute of them, has been
by the instruction of those who
already possessed them.
This tradition goes back to the original creation of the race. Mankind was
originally constituted by the Almighty
in a state of civilized and enlightened society, fully furnished with that
sacred treasure which tradition Aiffuses universally, and which constitutes