Encyclopedia of sacred theology - pagina 433

AND THE "WRITTEN WORD

CiiAi'. II]

409

mighty limitations of our human existence, those of time and place. An important statement by Gladstone, spoken in the English Parliament after sundown, is printed before the sun rises again, and in a million copies spread among the masses, in Europe and America. Dislocation, no less than time, is a mighty factor that resists the unit-life of our race. In olden times, Avhen this dislocation was not modified in its fatal effects by quicker means of communication, the sense of the sodality of the nations, and in connection with this the idea of a

common humanity,

Avere in consequence very little

and it is only by these quickened means of communication, which greatly augment the effect of the written word, that now a feeling of international communion has mastered the nations, and a sense of organic unity permeates all the alive;

of our human race. If now, as was shown mystery of Revelation consists in this that our race, even as it was created of one blood, shall sometime shine in the realm of glory as one body under Christ as its head, then it needs no further proof that this catholic

articulations

before, the

:

characteristic of writing agrees entirely with the catholic

character of the Avhole Revelation and the catholic character of the Church. As writing sets thought free from every local restriction, special Revelation in like

from

manner, released

and national restrictions, seeks the human race in the whole world as one organic whole. God has loved not individuals nor nations, but the ivorld. Only by writing, therefore, can special Revelation attain its end and in proportion as the development of human consciousness has made higher demands, printing and afterward more rapid communication have augmented this dispersing power of writing. Writing, therefore, is the means of perpetuating thought and at the same time of dispersing it, i.e. of making it universal in the highest sense, and of bringing it within the reach of all. Writing lends wings to thought. It neutralizes distance of time and place, and thereby puts upon thought the stamp of the eternity and of omnipresence. So far as human thought can formally approach the divine, it owes to writing alone this higher nobility. For this reason, thereall

local

;

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