The world in which we live and the social order which regulates its movements has for some time been passing through a crisis, a period of transition. We cannot see into the future, and we know not what it may bring. But we are aware that every change implies a passing-away and a coming-to-be, a re birth following on death which is its price. Only the divine Nature is exempt from the invariable law of change or destruction leading either to the building up of a new life or the falling away into decay by disintegration. Yet God in His goodness has as it were placed limits on His omnipotence and will by not suffering His creatures to be annihilated. Every variation is therefore based on a permanent structure which is itself eternal and unchangeable.

In human nature, whatever modifications a man may undergo, the spiritual element of necessity dominates the material, since in his composite being the soul is created to rule the body. Similarly when the spirit is elevated to the supernatural plane it will by divine ordination and of necessity supersede the purely natural and temporal. The supreme application of this principle, and indeed a reflection in time of the eternal mind of God, is found in the God-man. Here in this most wonderful of mysteries a human nature was made to be the instrument at hand of the Divine Person of the Son.

That which God the Father realized in the Person of His Son He intended in like manner to be accomplished in every Christian. For in being incorporated by baptism into the Mystical Body, the Church, of which the head is the living Christ, each is become a partaker of the divine nature and life. That which is accomplished in each living member must similarly be effected in the body politic, which is the Christian commonwealth.