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BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME
OP THE
John Elliott Fund

giihU fflbatat.
GEORGIUS JOYCE, S.J.,
Censor Depdtatus.
imjjrjmatnr. EDM. CAN. SURMONT, VlCAEIUS Generalis,
Westmonasterii, Dieiojuliiy 1922.

THE CHURCH
BT A. D. SERTILLANGES
Translated by ^A. G. ^McDOUQzALL

New York, Cincinnati, Chicago
BENZIGER BROTHERS
PRINTERS TO THE I PUBLISHERS OF
HOLY APOSTOLIC SEE BBNZIGER'S MAGAZINE

C-,

Madf and Printed in Great Britain

CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION, p. ix.
BOOK I
THE NATURE AND PURPOSE OF THE CHURCH
CHAP. I. RELIGIOUS FEELING IN GENERAL. P. I.
CHAP. II. THE NECESSITY AND PERMANENCE OF RELIGIOUS
FEELING. P. 7.
CHAP. III. RELIGIOUS FEELING AND CHRISTIANITY. P. 1 3.
CHAP. IV. THE CHRISTIAN SUPERNATURAL. P. 20.
CHAP. V. THE SOCIAL CHARACTER OF RELIGIOUS FEELING.
P. 27.
CHAP. VI. THE SOCIAL CHARACTER OF CHRISTIANITY. P. 39.
CHAP. VII. THE CATHOLIC RELIGIOUS SOCIETY. P. 45.
BOOK II
THE GENERAL CHARACTERS OF THE CHURCH
CHAP. I. THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH. P. 53.
CHAP. II. THE HOLINESS OF THE CHURCH. P. 61.
CHAP. III. THE CATHOLICITY OF THE CHURCH. P. 66,
CHAP. IV. THE CONQUERING CHARACTER OF THE CHURCH.
P- 75-
CHAP. V. THE APOSTOLICITY OF THE CHURCH. P. 85.
CHAP. VI. THE "ROMAN" CHURCH. P. 91.
CHAP. VII. THE PROGRESSIVE CHARACTER OF THE CHURCH.
P. 97.
CHAP. VIII. THE DOGMATIC CHARACTER OF THE CHURCH.
P. 104.
CHAP. IX. ON INTELLECTUAL LIBERTY IN THE CHURCH.
P. III.
CHAP. X. THE GOVERNMENTAL CHARACTER OF THE CHURCH.
P. 121.
CHAP. XI. ON FREEDOM OF CONSCIENCE IN THE CHURCH.
P. 128.
BOOK III
THE SACRAMENTAL LIFE OF THE CHURCH
I. — The Sacraments
CHAP. I. THE GENERAL IDEA OF THE SACRAMENTS. P. 135.
CHAP. II. BAPTISM. P. 14I.

vi Contents
CHAP. HI. CONFIRMATION. P. I49.
CHAP. IV. THE EUCHARIST. P. 1 5 4.
CHAP. V. PENANCE. P. 1 6 1.
CHAP. VI. EXTREME UNCTION. P. 168.
CHAP. VII. HOLY ORDER. P. 1 73.
CHAP. VIII. MATRIMONY. P. l8o.
II. — The Sacramentals
CHAP. I. the general IDEA OF THE SACRAMENTALS. P. 187.
CHAP. II. THE MASS. P. 193.
CHAP. III. THE PATER NOSTER. P. 200.
CHAP. IV. RITUAL ALMS. P. 2o6.
CHAP. V. HOLY WATER. P. 2 1 3.
CHAP. VI. BLESSINGS. P. 2 1 9.
CHAP. VII. THE SIGN OF THE CROSS. P. 225.
CHAP. VIII. THE WORD OF GOD. P. 23I.
CHAP. IX. INDULGENCES. P. 237.

BOOK IV
THE CHURCH'S ATTITUDE IN REGARD TO
THIS WORLD
CHAP. I. THE church's ATTITUDE TO THE RELIGIONS THAT
PRECEDED HER. P. 245.
CHAP. II. THE church's ATTITUDE TO CONTEMPORARY RE
LIGIONS. P. 252.
CHAP. III. THE church's ATTITUDE TO SEPARATED RELIGIOUS
BODIES. P. 256.
CHAP. IV. THE church's ATTITUDE TO RELIGIOUS AND LAY
MORALS. P. 262.
chap. V. THE church's ATTITUDE TO CIVILISATION IN
GENERAL. P. 268.
CHAP. VI. MATERIAL CIVILISATION. P. 274.
CHAP. VII. INTELLECTUAL CULTURE. P. 280.
CHAP. VIH. ART. P. 286.
CHAP. IX. SOCIAL LIFE. P. 291.
CHAP. X. POLITICS. P. 301.
CHAP. XI. INTERNATIONAL LIFE. P. 306.
CHAP. XH. PEACE. P. 312.

dontettts vii
BOOK V
THE ORGANISATION OF THE CHURCH
CHAP. I. THE DIVINE ORDER OF THE CHURCH. P. 3 1 9.
CHAP. II. THE MONARCHICAL GOVERNMENT OF THE CHURCH.
P- 325-
CHAP. III. THE PART OF THE GOVERNED IN THE GOVERNMENT
OF THE CHURCH. P. 331.
CHAP. IV. THE POPE. P. 337.
CHAP. V. THE INFALLIBLE MAGISTERIUM. P. 343.
CHAP. VI. INFALLIBILITY IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.
P- 350-
CHAP. VII. THE EPISCOPAL ORDER. P. 356.
CHAP. Vlir. THE PRIESTLY ORDER. P. 368.
CHAP. IX. THE MONASTIC ORDER. P. 377.
CONCLUSION, p. 392.

INTRODUCTION
To Him be glory in the Church and in Christ Jesus. — Eph. iii. 21.
THE reader of this work is placed at a point of
view at once doctrinal and apologetic ; but to
convince him the writer counts much less on
apologetic than on straightforward statements
saying This is so, and very frequently leaving it
to the soul, that is by nature Christian, to infer for itself :
This must be so.
It is our firm conviction that the Church, when looked
upon with the " simple eye " of the Gospel, is its own defence.
It is only needful that the authenticity of what is seen should
correspond to the simplicity of the eye that sees it : and it is
because our experience has shown that in this matter a
crowd of prejudices are current, a great number of truths
are weakened, and many others are presented under their
least favourable aspect by ill-informed or impassioned minds,
that we have not thought it overbold to undertake once more
a task which has been so often done better.
There is a diversity of spirits, and the Spirit blows where
it wills. Those who have never approached learned
researches or eloquent pleadings pro domo Dei will perhaps
find scattered up and down these pages some little truth to
acknowledge, some little religious substance whereon to
feed. That this may be so is the prayer of one who wishes
nothing for himself, and does not intend to put forth any
thing on his own authority : but submits all to the intentions
and judgements of his Church, which as a son he accepts and
loves.

BOOK I
THE NATURE AND PURPOSE OF
THE CHURCH
CHAPTER I
RELIGIOUS FEELING IN GENERAL
BEFORE one makes a study of an organism, esti
mates its value, or even understands it, it is
indispensable to know what purpose it serves.
Men of science tell us that the need creates the
organ, and they mean this of things made in fact :
but the axiom has its place in the moral order also. Apart
from some end to be realised, an organ is a useless thing,
and one organ is wanted rather than another for some special
end. In the sphere of religion, ¦we who are Catholics, it is
true, say : It is the Spirit of God that acts : but how would
we have Him act, except to meet essential needs?
Even the idea of the supernatural has nothing to do with
all this ; for in the sight of God the supernatural is nature
also. When God actually establishes us in a state by means
of an immediate act of creative will, that state is, in fact,
our nature.
What this nature demands, what it needs in order that it
may function and attain its purpose : this we must unceas
ingly ask ourselves when we wish to justify the Church in
any way.
But without speaking as yet either of the supernatural or
of the Catholic Church, it is certain that the idea of any
special organisation called a religious society rests in general
on the fact that there is in us a special need corresponding
to such an organ of religion. The nature of this need is the
first question to clear up.
*****
Religion, taken in Its most universal acceptation, may be
aefined as the bond which attaches the human creature to
the mysterious reality whereon he feels himself to depend,
himself and his immediate environment : and on which in
consequence depends his destiny.
Whoever looks around and within himself : whoever is
living, however destitute he be, realises, at least by a vague
intuition, that there are two orders of facts which condition
the whole of man's existence.
There is the interior fact : the effort of life which goes
out from us, the desire for knowledge, for power, for expan-

2 XEbe Cburcft
sion of the affections, for happiness, which is ourselves.
For man is just this : a walking desire for happiness : an
effort to know, to feel, and to have power.
.'-'-And then there is the environment wherein this effort of
/life makes itself manifest. An environment in two principal
compartments : one, which is enclosed within the limits of
our very being, and which may, to borrow a phrase from
the physiologists, be called the interior environment — that
is to say, all that assemblage of internal conditions with
which we have to count in order to think, to feel, to 'will,
to be happy and strong; the other, that which is outside,
the exterior environment, social or natural, whose limits are
untraceable, and which weighs like a fate, benevolent or
inimical, over all that we do, think, will, or undertake for
the sake of living.
Then, if one reflects, if one takes stock of oneself, one
sees that religious feeling springs up in the heart of man
from the clash of these two realities ; the interior reality
represented by the will-to-live, and the surrounding reality
which is its field of action.
With our minds we want to know. The very savage
seeks to comprehend what he sees, and endeavours to
explain to himself the cause behind the effects.
So, under all this nameless functioning, under this entangle
ment of phenomena which the world causes us to see,
we feel that a mysterious power lies hidden.
Whether it be to explain existence, or to supply the force
which it consumes, or to trace the paths which it follows in
its vertiginous evolution, a source of being and movement, a
thought, seems to us indispensable, and we think of God, or
of gods, as the explanation of the phenomena.
Moreover, as we have to live and not only to philosophise,
we come to say to ourselves that the power which explains
everything is also the power which it would be well to have
favourable to us if we wish, in this complex and difficult
life, to find what we seek, to realise what we regard as the
motive of Ife.
Life does not belong to us ; it is the result of a thousand
conditions, most of which escape us. When we set out to
/the 'war of Ufe, we have the feeling that everything is going
/ to yield, that everything is going to respond to this appeal
j from within, which would readily became imperious and
make boundless demands. But no, the created world
resists ; the pitiless wave of events casts back the swimmer ;
and though we may have been what is called happy, yet
always, on some point, resistances gather in us and around
us, oppositions reveal themselves, sometimes merely restric
tive, sometimes oifensive and painful, sometimes deserved

IReligiotts jfeelina in (Bcncral 3
but more often unjust ; and at the last comes death, which
destroys everything, reduces all to nothing, and opposes its
silent irony to our thirst for life.
I Life does not bring us what we demand ; it brings us
what we resist with all our might, and at the end it takes
from us, not only our aims, but our very selves ; it is a
threefold contradiction to that sovereign liberty of willing,
to that expansion, which seems to us to be the law of our
heiag. Now, here is a new source of religious feeling. For
suffering, and above all unjust suffering, causes to spring
jup instinctively in all of us, first a question, then a call for
[help. Death^isappoints.,^>uiL, dejire of unfailing life, and
wmakes ouFTieart leap up to welcome~"aii)rttnrfgThat'ihay'"save
|its flame from extinction. And, moreover, when we are
'airve an3' ex^FTour'SBIveS, and our effort is too brief to attain
its goal, this limiting of the action that we desire to see
dominant arouses in us, firstly astonishment, and then
another call for help. And this time the call is not for a
lessening of our wretchedness, but — what comes to the
same thing — for an increase of strength drawn from the
sources of that sovereign activity which seems to us to set
everything in motion with so much liberty and power.
[Life, then, does not belong to us; but neither does life
Isatisfy^ us. Always, everywhere, we see minds, imagina-
jfTdns, hearts, finding points of contact with this dream.
At hours which are slightly overcast, but which for that
very reason are more clear-sighted than of wont, when
everyday objects cease to obstruct and to fascinate our
sight, every soul feels itself more or less straitened in
reality, vaguely anguished by its native distress, anxious for
an unknown which escapes from its grasp and yet calls out
to it.
To the unknown God: this was the dedication of an altar
at Athens. This altar is spread always in all of us. Even
the most positive people feel somewhat stifled until a
breath of the Infinite has come to suffuse the atmosphere
wherein they live. In the eternal and invisible alone does
our higher life find its fulfilment, something that may satisfy
that excess of interior activity which nothing material can
use up.
Without some transcendent reality which we can grasp,
with which we can have intercourse, which gives to our
daily actions a superior sanction and some vague glimmers
of the Infinite, the poverty of the world is too plain.
Man wills to grow, even though it be at the cost of illu
sion. All superstitions prove it. All our methods of lend
ing unreal colours to the real, of joining to what is experi-

4 Ube Cburcb
enced the charm of the dream — are not these the flagrant
proof of our vital insufficiency ? Exclusively on solid earth
we cannot live, and we need to believe the saying of Cicero :
A divine power surrounds the life of man.
Lastly, there is in us not only a call to truth and happiness,
a call to life, a call to sufficiency, but also a call to goodness.
We feel quite sure that our life cannot be conducted at
random. Here is something decided on, and it seems to us
to be good ; that alternative appears an evil, and the order of
good and evil is imposed upon us as something fixed in the
eternal, the most solid bond, perhaps, that attaches us to a
transcendent reality.
Then, as we believe in the good, we wish to perform it :
we approve it, not only in itself, but in ourselves. And what
prevents us from attaining to it? This contradiction which
we feel between certain tendencies which favour it and cer
tain others which thwart it. / urge myself to will that which
I will not, said St. Augustine. I wish for the good and
approve it, and yet I do evil, said Ovid. Wretched man that
I am ! cried St. Paul ; the good which I will I do not, and
the evil which I hate, that I do.
Every human soul, from the highest who thus despair of
themselves to the most undiscerning and the vilest — every
human soul feels that it is the slave of an interior fatality
which does not allow it to make its life conformable to what
it wills.
Against this interior slavery our nature must needs rebel,
seek to break the meshes of the net, to escape towards
greater liberty and mastery of itself.
Now this effort, which it finds not indeed altogether power
less and useless, but imperfect and insufficient, invites it to
seek the assistance of a force foreign to itself. And yet it
is not foreign : it must needs be inward, since its task is to
set in motion our very selves : it must not be violent, since
its task is to come to the aid of our liberties, not to take
their place.
(Then our soul, sounding its utmost depth, comes into con-
act there, in its moral effort, with this supreme Reality
vhich is indeed the deepest depth of all, and even of our
fery selves : which supports all, even that which thinks itself
ndependent, and can bring all into action, even that which
s free.
r^he life of religion thus becomes recourse to God inwardly
and morally, as just now we saw it to mean recourse to God
-as the power underlying nature and society, working happi
ness and justice, discovering the ideal.
And 'vvhat it asks of God under this relation is, first of all,
tojielp it to the good by means of an interior urge : but, in

\m<

IReligious jfeeling in 6enecal 5
(addition, to make the moral world, whereto we belong,
\ attain to an expansion more rich than the actual arrange
ment of human life admits.
The moral heaven, that is to say the harmony established
Eetween rational creatures and this eternal order which we
3el hovering above us ; such is, once more, the postulate of
11 conscious life.
In every way we find that our life cannot be enclosed within
itself ; that its immediate sources, whether within or without,
demand a more profound source, an ultimate source, which
humanity calls God, and our relations with which — belief,
prayer, ritual actions individual or collective — are called
religion. It suffices, with these brief remarks, to show that religion,
the appanage of the churches, is not an arbitrary thing, a
thing purely exterior, hanging heavy constraints upon us as
excrescences, or, let us say, superstitions: it is a vital neces
sity. It is called forth by an effort, to adapt, and if one may
say so, to complete life.
Nothing is complete for us, if the object of religion, and
religion itself, be omitted.
" Kno'wjedge is not complete, since, if it stops at the edge of
the InySterious and refuses to envelop it by faith, it excludes
the utmost depth of the truth which is the object of its
researches.
' Exteriox life is not complete, since we forget the power
i which supports it, which is most active for happiness, most
I helpful in trouble, the only thing in which the ideal is realised,
'the One, or in any case, the Prime necessity.
And the interior life, lastly, is not complete, when we
/neglect the fundamental resource, that which is in a certain
J way our very selves — since the divine source whence our life
I gushes up can only be within it, and, as it were, in line with
/ it — and which yet infinitely surpasses ourselves, being
capable of supplying the complement of activity which we
lack. We are founded in God, and lack the best of ourselves if
He is not there. Our life, devoid of relations with Him,
that is to say, devoid of religion, is a life essentially incom-
pletg^ life not only crownless ; the case is much more serious
ffian that ! A coping-stone, cornice, or roof-ornament, a
building can dispense with ; but its foundation it can by no
means do without. Thus, life is mere nothingness, if it be
deprived of divine support, and of all relation with the
Divine. It rests on air : it remains in insufficiency, and
finally in emptiness : for what is not enough ... is not
enough, and what is not entirely itself is nothing.
This is the first thing to be said to a man who asks what

6 ziic Cburcb
religion is, and what purpose is served by the institutions
which exist on account of it.
CWe must go further : for it is not self-evident that religious
eeling must create institutions, churches. But before set
ting out on this central question, we must pass through other
stages, and first of all ask what there is in an objection which
some people think formidable, for it is a stumbling-block to
many minds, though at bottom so slight.
This object which we propose as a supplement to life, who
knows if we cannot conquer it for ourselves, without religion
being mixed up in the matter, without churches claiming to
have been founded to preserve its exclusiveness ? Who
knows if religion, which we say comes to supply what we
lack, be not simply on this head the rough outline of pro
gress, destined to be replaced, like every rough outline, by
the finished picture of temporal life?
Knowledge, we say, is goiflg to vanish in the mysterious.
But the mysterious shrinks back day by day, and knowledge
may become entire.
Exterior life shows itself to be incomplete, sad, famished
for the ideal : but the labour of the ages is employed pre
cisely in bringing these insufficiencies to an end. More than
one scourge has been already overcome, more than one force
conquered, and as for the ideal, is it not being placed on the
plane of the real itself by our new points of view in all
departments ?
Lastly, the interior life seems to resist progress most.
Humanity progresses without stay, said Goethe; man is
always the same. But how do we know that this is not
one of those approximations wherewith polemic is satisfied,
through its inability to apprehend great spaces ? The moun
tains too are always the same, and the shape of the oceans,
and the regular course of rivers. And yet the earth is inces
santly being transformed. Once the sea washed Paris :
Paris is dry to-day. So also man can conquer the animal in
himself and win that interior liberty which he lacks.
We must look at this objection, not so much by reason
of its value, which is little, as by reason of the useful oppor
tunities which it affords for more precise explanation.
We must see then what points progress, whose influence
we are by no means disposed to deny, can affect ; what points
on the other hand its action cannot touch, or may even — for
we must go so far — injure by aggravation or compulsion in
relation to the aim of religion and the means thereto.

CHAPTER II
THE NECESSITY AND PERMANENCE OF
RELIGIOUS FEELING
THOSE who say of religion that it is a passing
phenomenon, a stage ; that some day man will
have passed beyond it, if he has not done so
already, in order to arrive at a " scientific" con
ception and a sufficient organisation of life, have
not closely considered what constitutes the foundation either
of religion or even of life.
Their illusion can be understood up to a certain point, and
we are going to speak of its sources : but that is no reason
for being duped by it. It is connected on the one hand with
over-systematic views of the religious history of mankind :
on the other, and in consequence, with a youthful trust in
science which was a disease of the nineteenth century.
In this epoch of infatuation and hallucinatory pride, it was
/believed that man actually held the key of everything, the key
\)i history and of observable reality. The stages of humanity
¦were well known. The law of the three stages marked their
/'precise succession, and assumed the invincible might of this
^universally self-advertised lever, progress.
There had been firstly the religious phase : then came the
metaphysical phase : and lastly there must be the scientific
or positive phase. And the positive stage would replace with
advantage the religious as well as the metaphysical ; man
would be satisfied with it, and would have done with dogmas,
with mysteries, rites and churches.
There is only one unfortunate thing about this, which is
that this seductive theory is arbitrary and superficial : that
it attributes to the three dispositions, whose rank it pretends
to fix, an order of succession in place of an order of con
comitant influence and aims, and that it is thus brought, in
a manner which may justifiably be called childish, to impute
transience to two of the terms of this eternal trilogy.
Certainly, what is called the positive mind has been able
to shine more or less at certain epochs : but that it has ever
been wanting in man can hardly be seriously suggested. And
as the positive mind has not been lacking in the past, so
neither will the metaphysical mind, the religious mind, be
lacking in the future. It is a question of measure. Setting
aside the idea of measure, these are things which complete
one another and are far from excluding each other, and
when we sacrifice one of them to another, we show our
selves hypnotised by one aspect of reality, and careless of
reality in its entirety, which passes sentence on us.
7

8 ubc Cburcb
The metaphysical mind has for its object first causes : it
must indeed be the case that these exist, and that they are
studied. Those who refuse to do this, pretending that they
are unknowable, make an act of humility far too deep for
it to be really sincere, and, a fortiori, justifiable.
If first causes were quite inaccessible to us, we could no
more deny them than we can affirm them, but in fact every
one affirms them or denies them; no one holds really and
finally to the "positive" attitude.
After all, that is the best way. Brutal negation is better
than this humility full of pride, which employs itself in
forging chains for our intelligence.
It is not true that man's forehead is so low, and that
we are so entirely imprisoned in the cage of phenomena.
Through the bars we can at the very least look furtively and
catch a few gleams. Now so, and with greater reason,
religion could not let itself be dismissed to the realm of
chimeras. Without speaking of a revelation, and of a divine help to
guarantee the existence and assure the eternity of religion,
it must always be true, considering only the necessity of
things, that religious feeling cannot disappear.
The need to which it corresponds has in truth nothing
decadent or transitory about it : it is founded on the rela
tion of three eternal things : fundamental human nature, the
universe in its radical insufficiency, and their common, alone
satisfying source, which is the Divinity.
What would be necessary tO' suppress religion? This has
already been said, to all intents and purposes, in showing
its sources. It would be necessary to suppress the mysterious,
to suppress suffering, death, the insufficiency of life, the com
petition of good and evil within us ; or on the other hand to
resign oneself, and to sign an abdication which must in
many contingencies take the form of despair.
Now, this alternative appears to-day, as it did yesterday,
and cannot but do to-morrow, repugnant to our nature. In
all this resistance of facts to our deepest wills, we must
always see an eternal originating cause of religious impulses
and of religious effects ; consequently an anticipated justifi
cation, and as it were a favourable prejudice on behalf of a
revelation, and an institution which exploits it.
In what then does possible progress consist? To make
this clear will give satisfaction to the objector while break
ing the force of his objection.
It can be expressed in a word. In developing our resources,
we change on the surface our relations with nature and with
ourselves. Thereby we also change the form of our relations
with the divine Reality which must come as a supplement

IRecessitg an& permanence of IReligious jFeeling 9
to nature and to ourselves. But the fundamental relation
remains identical, and consequently religion keeps its assured
foundations. To understand this, it only remains to survey once more
the various domains in which religious thought finds its
source. First of all, knowledge. What is it which, in its progress,
scientific knowledge must cause to disappear? All the super
natural, say the positivists. Let us say rather : the capricious
providence of the Sun-god, of the Cloud-god, of Jupiter who
hurls the thunderbolt, of the dragon who causes eclipses, and
of all that resembles these religious baubles.
But the fundamental supernatural, the feeling that there
is a source of phenomena, a source which is conscious,
intelligent, almighty and ineffable ; what progress of science
or of philosophy can impair it, and forbid us to seek legiti
mately to live thereby rather than by science itself, which
knows nothing of it?
The more we know of the world, the more intimately we
enter into its mysteries and powers, the more we understand
how fundamentally inaccessible it is to us ; how our thought,
poor will-o'-the-wisp, does nothing but wander on the surface
of things, knowing " the whole of nothing," fated to stumble,
as soon as investigation pushes its point a little further,
against the wall of the inaccessible and the unknowable.
The multiplication of discoveries has done nothing but
throw us into dismay before depths which the savage never
suspected. Our universe is immeasurably enlarged : the
apparent inertia of what we call matter is revealed as rich
with an activity which inspires amazement. The forces of
life become evident with a richness and a plasticity which are
disconcerting. What do we know of all this ? So little ! Creation grows
hollow to the extent that our regard pierces it, and the
geniuses of this age have well felt that nothing will ever be
able to bear us, us and our vacillating thought, over this
ocean of mystery for which, as Littr^ says, we have neither
barque nor sail.
How should we not be readier than ever to-day to accept
any help extended to us across the spaces, or from the depths
of consciousness, any light arising to illumine what the
reason with its reasoning cannot reach?
With regard to our exterior action and the powerlessness
our will experiences when we desire to conquer the hostility
of our environment, to reduce suffering and avert death so
as to instal in their place the tranquillity, sufficiency and
permanence we dream of, what can progress do as yet?

10 XTbe (Tbutcb
Progress enables us in a measure to protect ourselves, to
heal ourselves, to enlarge our life on our own account, and
therefore those appeals to super-nature, which of old were
responsible for sorcerers, oracles, healers by exorcism and
incantation-makers, tend to disappear.
Moreover, progress works towards the refining of the
religious feeling by combating materialism and the impro
priety of certain ill-judged forms of devotion. But to refine
is to strengthen, not to suppress. There should be only one
way of suppressing, and that is to replace : and certainly the
attempts to replace the supernatural by science do not go
very far.
It is all very well, in speeches at Renan's statue, to chant
in pompous style of the conquests of science over human
superstition. If by superstition the orators mean what we
have just mentioned and condemned, we may easily agree
with them ; but when we are compelled to understand thereby
the having recourse to God and religion in its deepest
essence, we may be permitted to find this attitude more
foolish than the superstitions they denounce.
These, whether pagan or pseudo-Christian, are wrong in
one respect alone : they neglect too much immediate causes
and personal effort, by the means of which we can to some
slight extent master and bend to our own ends certain
realities of life. But those who wish to make us believe that
henceforth life can be satisfied without having any recourse
to the transcendent, and who thus practically suppress the
First Cause, fall into a much deeper error.
Apart from oratorical parades and table-talk, it is obvious
that by the most advanced science as by the blackest ignor
ance the limit of man's power is reached incomparably more
quickly than that of his desire : that the source of our
wretchedness is not one which can run dry, and that suffer
ing and death are invincible.
Those who do not understand this — those high livers who
believe in the preparation by science of universal panaceas
and elixirs of life — we must pity with all our heart.
The fact that the sea has been crossed in an aeroplane is
enough to make some people believe that the great problems
of humanity are on the point of being solved ; as if former
inventions had done anything more than complicate life, and
render it more devouring and more anxious as well as more
eager. Fundamentally it remains the same, and it is not
by discovery that we can modify its principles, or conse
quently avert what wounds us.
Every creature groans, says St. Paul, in the expectation
of Its redemption: that is a saying with a much deeper mean
ing in it than the astounding phrases of the scientists.
Any child can see that science and all human progress offer

IKlecessits an5 permanence of IReligious jf eeling "
only palliatives against the things that bruise us, torture us,
terrify us, and urge on the maddened soul towards the religion
that redeems it.
We are cast on to the bosom of a terrifying universe,
and we shall feel it so all the more keenly as its prodigious
machinery becomes more apparent.
This universe of ours supports us and nourishes us ; but
at the least movement of its mass it overturns us, throws
us to the ground and speedily overwhelms us.
But we wish to live, and we wish to enjoy : we wish to
dominate our life : we would like to dominate the world, and
we feel, as we stand on our quivering atom, that we have
a divine soul, made for fulness and immortality.
This it is which creates religion, and this it is also which
makes it immortal. The more men progress, the more
evident will be the disproportion between what we wish to
do and what we can do, what we fight against with all our
strength and what we are able to avoid. The more the
masked phantoms of sorrow and death, and the maddening
laugh of our incurable mediocrity seem to us equally insuffer
able and invincible, the more, in spite of its passing crises,
will religion have reason to console, to sustain, to promise,
which, from our present point of view, is the whole of its
function. Lastly, if we consider the moral Ufe, if we recall that
interior contradiction which creates in us an obstacle to what
we love and would wish to see conquer, we feel that progress,
there more than elsewhere, is powerless to dethrone religion,
because it is powerless to do its work.
Not that there is no moral progress. We can certainly
bridle our animal passions, make greater resistance to our
brutal instincts, conquer a little more interior liberty, domina
tion over ourselves, effective prudence. But even there the
limit is very close at hand.
The law of the members cannot perish, and to bridle the
animal in us a little cannot prevent man from being always
and everywhere animal.
But it is the animal man which is the obstacle.
Our natural environment being given up to the conflict of
forces, our interior environment must also be a battlefield :
a battlefield of concurrent influences, of which some favour
our good desires, while others create in us centres of resist
ance or currents which end by sweeping us away.
For the like reason, we cannot subjugate the universe and
bend it to our own ends, and we cannot any the more quite
subjugate that little universe, ourselves. The one is a rebel
like the other, for they" correspond, being formed of the
same clay and submitting at bottom to the same laws.

12 Ubc Cburcb
But this question, which seems new, is no other than the
preceding. Progress exists in moral as in natural history :
only it is much slower, because of the infinite complexity of
the conditions that have to be realised in order that it may
increase. But in any case, since it is relative on the one
side, it cannot be absolute on the other : it is always
restrained, partial, and consequently iUusory, when we desire
to relate it to the infinity of our aspirations towards the good,
even as material progress shows itself illusory in respect of
our aspirations to happiness, as our scientific or philosophic
progress shows itself illusory in relation to a complete taking
possession of the truth.
A humble recourse to God as moral cause, and a religious
rite which can unite to Him, and all the spiritual disciplines,
which are intended by Churches for perfecting and driving
the machinery of the heart, will therefore always be required.
There will be need to perfect, not to slay : and in this regard
as in all others human progress goes normally towards the
development and purification, not the ruin, of religion.
Now that we have defined and justified religious feeling
in general, let us see after what fashion Catholic Christianity
regards this feeling : how it gives satisfaction, and a greater
satisfaction, to what the universal soul seeks clearly or
obscurely : how it sets out thence for a new effort and causes
us to attain transcendence, content only when it has obtained
for us, in addition to what we desire, all that our nature
permits, appealing to all the divine resources for fecundation
and perfection.

CHAPTER III
RELIGIOUS FEELING AND CHRISTIANITY
WE must always return to our starting-point.
The source of religious feeling is our vital
insufficiency, and the need of seeking a substi
tute for powers which disappear, and for
objects which do not satisfy us.
Our life is transient, our life is straitened, our life is
mediocre, blind, morally difficult. And we thirst for liberty,
truth, rectitude, fulness ; we thirst for eternity.
That is why we welcome the offers of religious systems
which promise to remedy our wretchedness.
Naturally, in accordance with the differences and degrees
of civilisation, human desire, though identical at bottom, will
take different forms, and the response to this desire will
also be different. But that religion which claims to be the
|rue and definitive Religion must prove at the very least
ihat it has gone deep enough to reach fundamental human
mature, independently of what distinguishes its various
[groups, here or there, to-day or to-morrow ; and deep enough
also to reach the Divinity, not indeed in its fundamentals,
which are inaccessible, but at least in its authentic notion
and in its true relation to us.
r^ Christianity claims to satisfy this condition, and recog-
-.nising God for what He is, since it proceeds from Him, and
unan too for what he is, because the Creator and the Revealer
Bare but one, it can furnish all that our life requires, and
fprocure for it thereby its total and definitive result.
Let us see, in brief detail, how, in Christianity, the human
soul which calls is joined to God who furnishes the reply.
In Christianity, a perfect notion of God is at the base of
alLdoclrine^aiijd^aU^oraLor^ritual^^ It may rightly
'%& said^uiafno thougFt, instinctive or abstract, has the
means of approaching such an ideal, or consequently of
responding to what humanity, in its full knowledge of itself,
demands and hopes when it invokes the religious object.
Everywhere and always the idea of God has broken down
on this fatal alternative : either excessive humanisation, the
Divine debasing itself on the pretext of serving us ; or else
abstraction which refines away the Divine and cuts it off
from all useful communication with us.
When the systems and religions outside Christian philo
sophy are studied, they are seen to be constantly wrecked on
one or other of these reefs. God a fetish or overgrown
man, God the formula of the world or vague universal sub
stance; the one serving for nothing, the other serving only
13

14 tCbe Cburcb
to mislead ; these were the two poles of error between which
every soul oscillated.
What was necessary in order to free oneself from them
was to push the idea of transcendence so deep as to attain,
in closing the circle of thought, to the immanence of the
Divine in being, and, reciprocally, to understand its inward
ness in so complete a fashion as to realise it to be the Infinite,
present everywhere in its grandeur. This effort no one
made. The majority of fundamental errors still show tokens
of this. The Christian soul alone avoids the fatality of
incomplete views. It has known the Heavenly Father, the
God of the Heart, the God of the Conscience, the God of
Nature, the God of life, the God of history through A braham,
Isaac and Jacob, that is to say through the successive genera
tions, and it has known the God of Augustine in whom Plato
is set right, and the God of Thomas Aquinas in whom
Aristotle is recognised even while he is surpassed.
When we consider that no doctrine attained to the pure
idea of creation — that is to say of existence and the Source
of existence, of the Absolute in which all is rooted, and the
subsisting deficiency which issues out of it, we admit that
all was wrong from its very foundation, and that it would
never be possible, at this price, to satisfy the human spirit
in all its states, to respond to thought and life in all their
demands, seeing that it is by this contact of the real nothing
and of the vivifying all that religious construction, in thought
as in reality, commences.
The Christian conception of the Divine prepares, by the
depth of its penetration, the universality of its extension
and its full theoretical or practical sufficiency. It satisfies
both Socrates and those who call him a blasphemer. Its
God is at the same time popular and learned, ideal and
living, interior and universal : He exhausts intelligibility
and closes its circle : He embraces reality and contains it
from its innermost to its summit, from its beginnings to
its ends.
Such a God, the Alpha and Omega of all dimensions, can
be made the object of religious life, if this life be a supple
ment to the ordinary life in every direction in which we
have felt our limitations.
For this very reason, this God, being the Master of dura
tion as He is of existence, wiU have the power to lay the
foundations of His work in us in a fashion which will satisfy
us, because in moulding the future to its shape He will cor
rect what seems unalterable and be able to conquer what
seems most unconquerable in it, the power of death.
It is true that in order to succeed in this. He must Himself
assume that there is in us what He has implanted. A seed

IReligious jf eeling an^ Cbristianit^ 15
of immortality and a possibility of full redress, thanks to a
fundamental rectitude which nothing can injure : that is the
twofold and necessary condition. But also, in order to safe
guard it, the authentic religion will add to its pure concep
tion of God a correct notion of man.
The " chimera " of Pascal and of all the profound analysts
has been more accurately detailed by Christianity than any
thinkers have done or can do without its help. Greatness
and wretchedness in every order, with greatness for end,
this it is which in its eyes is the result of the original wretched
ness and greatness, that of our very being in its inner con
stitution. Matter and Spirit, Heaven and earth mingled,
animality with an overflow of sublime life, sin grafted on an
irrepressible love of good, death enclosed in his lower vitality
and immortality inscribed high up on the pediment of his
temple : such is man.
This is the explanation of his strange destiny, which sits
astride of two worlds and two states which are almost dis
parate. Down here, the starting-points and outlines, in each
order and each field of our researches ; up yonder the realisa
tions. Here the inequalities, the risks, which depend upon
material conditions ; elsewhere the reign of justice and per
fect harmony.
Nothing that comes through matter will have decisive con
sequences. By the spirit, we, united by religion to the First
Spirit, can be redeemed from everything; suffering, death,
cruel and tempting insufficiency, ignorance, slavery, spiritual
infirmity, the strain and rupture of our attachments.
By its means what is inexplicable in life can be justified ;
the mystery of our aspirations, which reality condemns, can
be explained ; our effort will find its end within reach,
although far off. And it will be through himself that each
man will attain his end, as human honour and the natural
instinct of liberty demand ; but it will be also thanks to the
association of the Divine, which is a normal prolongation of
nature, as the streamlet of the glacier remains normally in
continuity with its mass.
Do we not recognise the teaching that makes the Christian
view of our destinies something so high and yet so simple?
According to the Faith, our life is indeed in two stages,
and it is passed on a twofold theatre; here and on the other
side, now and in the eternal future. Death is the frontier.
Only, it must be understood that these two stages of life
do not make two lives ; that between these two domains there
is no water-tight partition. Human destiny is one, and the
two domains we have mentioned are not really two : the
Gospel unites them under a common denomination. It is
" the Kingdom of God. ' ' Heavenly or earthly, what does

1 6 XTbe Cburcb
it matter? All is heavenly which God has created, which He
penetrates with His action and fills with His love. God
makes the bond between Heaven where He awaits men and
earth which He appoints for their starting-place. Death is
only a passage on a plane passing from one life to another,
from Ufe in rough outline to life transformed, and for the
Christian it bears the character of an event like any other,
not more tragic and anguishing because it is definitive.
No more is it the leap into the dark, the annihilation of all
hope, the end of everything, and therefore the flat contradic
tion given to our thirst for life ; it is a sleep into which
perhaps it is hard to plunge, but which repairs our strength
and communicates to us the might of immortality. It is also
redemption, considered in the light of this terrifying tran
sience which seems to us in this mortal life the law of
everything. All things move on towards their end : ir/jo's
TeAos onjT&!v TravTa Kivetrai, said the old poets. All moves on
towards life, says Christianity ; for all moves towards God.
When a great train plunges into the Gothard tunnel, it
might be thought that it is engulfed in the darkness, and that
the mountain devours it ; but the Swiss peasant well knows
that on the other side are the plains of Italy, and the light
of the lakes, and the beauty of the enchanted islands. So
death, for the Christian, is a march towards the light.
Our vital wretchedness, then, is conquered on the side
where it was most universally sad ; since death was above all
things the disturber of happiness, and so it seemed that one
avoided all the rest merely in order to stumble the more
violently against this supreme and inexorable obstacle.
In the second place, religion promises to us, for this im
mortal continuation of our destiny, a development in value
which corresponds term by term to our humanity considered
in its perfection, in its highest and humblest attributes as
well as in their harmonious synthesis.
For our intelligence we are promised a further flowering in
the truth ; for our wiU the putting aside of its obstacles, and
forour organism itself, reconstituted one day in conditions
which, truth to tell, quite escape us, an equilibrium and
integrity without suffering.
With a view to permitting this renewal which supposes very
numerous parallels in the surroundings in which Ufe is
developed, ¦we are promised their complete transformation
and reorganisation. The new heavens and new earth of
which the Bible teUs us form parf of the reUgious plan of
the universe.
May we be permitted to remark that several even of the
most recent philosophies have dreamed — dreamed, I say, as
far as they are concerned— of a vital environment in some

IReligious Reeling an5 Cbristianitg 17
future age less hostile, better adapted to our desires of expan
sion.^ They have constructed hypotheses; Christianity puts
forward words of God.
However this may be, the only appreciable Umit which
Christianity imposes on this future is that which we our
selves would like to impose on it, and if, here and now, our
life is partly what we make it, in the complete plan, which
involves no further chances, it will be entirely so.
We shall be happy in the exact measure in which we shall
have accepted happiness.
For, as Kant has observed, in a wise organisation of
things, for the being which fulfils its law there can be no
limit to the right to happiness except its own lack of sub
mission to that law. If, then, our human value were com
plete, in the sense that we entirely fulfilled our law, God,
who always fulfils His, would cause us to attain, according
to the Christian plan, to the highest end to which our nature
can aspire.
But then, by reason of the unity of plan which presides
over our complete destiny, if our life be truly one, as we
affirmed just now, we ought to be concerned here and now
with this supreme attainment which religion describes ; it
ought to count here and now as a living thing, to colour our
existence, even as earthly perspectives are tinted with the
colours of heaven.
Since this world and the other make up only one ; since
our wretchedness, our sufferings, our transience are only pro
visional and relative to a progressive plan of development,
we can from a very lofty point of view say that they are only
apparent. Does one call a child impotent because it does
not walk yet? or an apprentice wretched because he has as
yet no salary? or a rising officer unhappy because he is not
yet a general?
Napoleon used to say that every soldier carries a marshal's
baton in his knapsack ; and by this he meant to declare the
right of a soldier, if he becomes worthy, to reach the highest
grades under a regime which takes no account of rank or
birth. Likewise, in a very real sense, a child in its cradle is
already a man, for he has in himself all the resources which
by simple expansion will cause him to become a man.
And in the same way the Christian, who carries sure hopes
in his heart ; who has in himself, once he is united to God,
once he has become a citizen of the Kingdom, the principle
of progress which ought to lead him so high ; the Christian
must feel himself already in possession of his sublime good.
He is already an immortal, though he die ; he is blessed,
1 Of. Renouvier, Histoire et Solution des ProbUmes Miiafhysipies, last
chapter. Paris : F. Alcan.

i8 ^be Cburcb
though he suffer; he feels himself delivered from the evil,
although he be in submission to the likeness of sinful flesh.
United to the heart of Him who is chief of the Kingdom and
always obedient to His providence, how should he not have
full vital security? What can he lack of those helps that are
truly required for self-realisation? Of what satisfaction, of
what consolation can he claim that he was deprived, except
to obtain better and greater, and hence without regret, or in
any case without disquietude? / super abound with joy in
the midst of my tribulations, says Paul; the sufferings of this
present time are not worthy to be compared to the glory that
shall be revealed in us.
All the present organisation of things, including therein
nature, though indifferent, though brutal; society, though
unjust and though oppressive ; and ourselves, though we con
tradict ourselves, though we are tempted — this organisation,
provided that it be bound to religious thought, and borne
along in its movement, is seen, from this point of view, to
be fully and universally sufficient. Sufficient, I say, through
the mediation of filial confidence and of hope ; satisfying, as
far as the provisional can be so ; happy, as the road to happi
ness is happy.
Such is the conception of life which Christianity, proposes.
And this conception is widened still more by the fact that
we are invited to enter into the universal life in order to be
collaborators therein with God.
The destiny of a being endowed with reason is not entirely
confined within itself. Its own case is not the whole of its
care. When it plays its part, since its reason is a faculty of
the whole of being, it proposes to its will all the good as its
object. In the total reality it feels itself a subordinate, cap
tive portion, having neither the power nor the right to realise
itself otherwise than in the realisation of the creative plan,
and seeing in this, firstly the plan itself in its entirety, still
more the divine good which is its supreme end, and only in
the last event its particular case and its own ends.
To love God and the work of God beyond everything, trust
ing that one will find oneself in Him the more one is lost in
Him, but ready if necessary to be lost in Him without
recovery ; this is the supreme ilan which Christian thought
calls forth.
This supposes that in its eyes God is God and not the
Deus ex machina of pagan vision, and even less a meta
physical expression, without action and without demands : a
servitor or a dream. The infinite positivity of God who is
Creator and End, of God who is Love, and of God who is
ineffable Thought; such is, for Christianity, the centre of
everything.

IReligious jf eeling anO Cbristianits 19
And I say that for this reason alone we attain in Him to
the highest point religious thought could ever reach. All
progress, henceforth, can only consist in developing this ; by
developing it, I mean making it fully comprehended, by lay
ing bare its consequences and multiplying its action.
As for pushing further, in the way that a new religion pre
tends to respond better to the religious appeal starting from
the human heart : this is entirely impossible, because the
aspiration which is in us has been utterly fathomed in it, and
because to suppose such a religion true, as it is in fact, this
aspiration must be satisfied.
However, we have not yet laid hold of the main point.
Christianity is not only the last stage and the supreme attain
ment of all religious movement ; it enters upon a new world,
which thought, left to its own initiatives, had hardly sus
pected, which desire does not attain, and which places us,
when we go to dwell there, in the Ineffable pure and simple.
We must now study this new aspect of Christianity. It
is often the only one which is not discussed, and yet, if it be
ignored, there can be known of Christianity neither what it is
nor what it wants ; and its organisation, which finds in this,
as we shall show, the whole of its raison d'itre, can only be
judged from outside ; and that is not judging, but appre
ciating at haphazard, without justice and without thorough
ness.

CHAPTER IV
THE CHRISTIAN SUPERNATURAL
TO show the bond which logically unites the super
natural — for it is with that that we are now deal
ing — to the spontaneous motions and to the
ordinary law of our nature, St. Thomas Aquinas
proposes a very seductive theory.
When, says he, we see natures co-ordinated in such a -way
as to form an entirety, each of them, beside its own motion,
obeys a motion which is impressed on it by the higher nature.
It is thus that the sea, left to itself, spreads like a sheet and
espouses the shape of the globe : but the heavenly bodies
attract it, and by sweUing its mass, produce the phenomenon
of the tides, which are natural to it only if it be considered
as in relation with the stars.
So, he adds, man is bound to God by his intelligent activity ;
then his intelligence permits him to attain to the Universal
with regard to the objects of experience, placing him by that
alone on the road of the Universal, which is the First
Principle. It will be normal, then, and in conformity with an unques
tioned induction, that human nature should develop on a
double plan : that which determines its nature, as analysis
reveals it to us,, and that, in addition, to which this supreme
Mover, supremely good and great, which we call God, would
elevate it.
This attractive theory had been outlined already by several
philosophies of antiquity. Aristotle furnishes its lineaments
in his celebrated interpretation of genius, genius of intelli
gence or genius of virtue, which is nothing else, according
to him, than the sudden irruption of the Divine substituting
itself for our reasonings and discretions in order to bear us
higher and further.
The morals of Eudemus, the immediate issue of his spirit,
present us with an admirable page on this subject, and
Plutarch, in whom one finds reflected whatever is best in the
ancient philosophy, has written in the Banquet of the Seven
Sages this astonishing passage which moves Pfere Gratry to
enthusiasm :
" The body is the instrument of the soul, and the soul is
the instrument of God.
" And as the body has motions which are proper to it, but
has also others more beautiful which come from the soul, so
the soul, in its turn, has its own order of actions and motions,
but it can also, as the most perfect of instruments, allow
itself to be directed and moved by God, who works within it.
" If fire, wind, water and clouds are instruments of God

Zbc Cbristian Supernatural 21
for life or death, who will believe that living beings cannot
be adapted to the strength of God and work with that
strength, and be inspired by the motions of God, as the arrow
obeys the Scythians and the lyre the Greeks?"
It is clearly, as may be seen, the theory of St. Thomas
Aquinas, only the latter makes another and even bolder use
of it ; and the difference results from the revelations of the
Gospel, from which come to us higher certitudes and inspira
tions. What antiquity suspects is that God works in us to carry
us further than we can go by ourselves, and for example to
see through us, in hours of inspiration, what remains obscure
to our reasoning intelligence ; to do by us, under the form of
what we call heroism, what is beyond the infirmity of our
will. But the domains of life to which this supplementary
action urges us are still domains on our own level ; what
comes to us from them will be of the same nature as the
results we can acquire by ourselves. Our life remains con
stant in its essence, in its natural operations, in its valuation
of objects ; nothing is changed but the fulness of the action,
and we do not become divine for being thus moved by the
Divinity. Now Christian thought goes further ; it understands us to
be united to God not only as the moved to its mover, each of
the two remaining in its own order ; but in an intimate fashion
which allows the communication of lives, in such a way that
thoughts and loves are common, destinies mingled, objects
identical. It is not a notion, a thing always exterior, it is a com
munication of the Divinity which is proposed to us.
And to understand what is meant by this in Christianity,
we must recall what a gamut of relations can be imagined
between God and His creature.
One of the extremes is well enough represented by the
thought of Deist Rationalism, which sees God as purely
exterior and not condescending to intervene in our life other
wise than by the mediation of general laws. The other
extreme is furnished by Pantheism, which confounds God
and man in the unity of one same substance. Between
the two there is room for innumerable intermediaries ; but
the nearest to pure Rationalism is that which has just been
described in the teaching of the ancient philosophers, and the
nearest to Pantheism, whose value and depth of teaching it
appropriates while rejecting its excesses, is the Christian
system of the supernatural.
According to this latter, man certainly ought not to be
brought to confound himself with his Principle ; for we can
neither abase God to our measure, nor on the contrary dis
solve man on the breast of the Godhead. Their two natures

22 XEbe Cburcb
ought to remain distinct, and of this distinction, putting the
divine transcendence at its highest, we could never have a
sufficiently strong feeling. But distinction, however, is
nothing more than a vague word, which admits of many
different qualities and degrees of precision.
Even in the material world, there can be distinction between
two things of which one is here and the other there ; distinc
tion between two things in contact; distinction between two
things welded together ; distinction between two liquids inti
mately mixed with each other; distinction, though relative
in this case, between two substances chemically combined
into one sole substance, etc. In the spiritual order the kinds
of combination can be even richer, and we must not be aston
ished at seeing Christianity adopt a Biblical formula, which
looks like a kind of blasphemy at first sight, to express the
union which it dreams of establishing between the God which
it preaches and humanity; I have said you are gods, all ye
sons of the Most High. It is to a certain extent literally that
Christianity understands these expressions of the Psalmist.
Our life emanating from God is even already in a sense a
divine thing. From what have we received what we are and
what we have? There is only one source, and it is indeed
necessary to drink from it. It is needful to drink therefrom
also in order to preserve and develop the activity and the
existence we have received at the start. All being is an
irradiation of the Divine Being, all movement one of Its
actions, every ideal a reflection of Its thought, every good
which attracts us a snare set by Its Heart.
Only all this leaves us very far from being able to call it,
in the ordinary sense of the words, a participation in the
divine Hfe. God is with us fundamentally in each of these
things ; but as for us, we are not with Him, because, turned
outward by all our powers of knowledge, whose food on this
plane is the sensible, we find ourselves incapable of pene
trating into this God, who is in us, in a way which truly gives
Him to us. He sustains us as a mother who carries her
sleeping child, or if a rather more exact comparison be pre
ferred, as the ether wherein the worlds are bathed, which
insinuates itself into the innermost heart of everything, and
which we have taken thousands of years to discover.
Before God we are thus imprisoned in a manner of know-
mg, loving, acting, in a word of living, which does not attain
Him, though He penetrates us and supports us.
By our flesh we vegetate; by our senses we feel; by our
inteUigenCe we raise ourselves to the idea; but the idea is a
conception, an abstraction, a reflection ; it does not give us
being, and with regard to immaterial things, and with regard
especially to God, the Transcendent, the Separate, the Infi
nite, the Abstract Idea, it falters ; it permits us to stammer

Ube Cbristian Supernatural 23
of Him, but the intimate nature of God, His essence in Him
self, remains a mystery to us. We are not on His plane.
The will-o'-the-wisp knows not the solid depths beneath it ;
thus the droll life which we lead here knows not the depths
of God, whence it emerges as a Ught flame.
Now our Christian tradition assures us that God has willed
for us more than this, and that if we wish to let ourselves be
borne away by this increase of divine action in us whereof
St. Thomas Aquinas spoke just now, we must go and plunge
into the full life of God, make of our own life as it were an
episode of His, be conscious of Him, as He is conscious of
Himself ; love what He loves and will what He wills as hence
forth our own objects, connatural to our transplanted soul,
as the sensible and its objects are connatural to us here.
The intuition of God by the mind and the taste of God by
the heart, as now we have the intuition and taste of material
things by the senses — it is this that Christianity proclaims
to us.
It is foolishness ; we recognise that. It may well be that
the Greeks of the Areopagus would have laughed at it. But
they laughed also at the foolishness of the Cross, which has
made its way across the world. And it is precisely the
foolishness of the Cross that involves this counterpoise. It
was needful that Christ should die to rise into His glory and
for us to rise thither with Him : but it is reciprocally neces
sary that we should rise into that glory whereinto Christ
rose, to justify such a death.
When the blood-red sun goes down at evening into the
night, it is to prepare dawn and noonday. This fall of a
star is a pledge. A sunset is only the promise of a dawn.
So the fall of a God into human life and death is a pledge of
our attaining the highest success.
When that which is perfect is come, says St. Paul, that
which is in part in us shall be done away. We see now
through a glass in a dark manner; but then we shall see the
Divine face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall
know even as I am known (i Cor. xiii. lo).
This teaching is common in the New Testament. You
will be made partakers of the very nature of God, said Peter
to the faithful. It is because he too remembers that Christ
said : This is eternal life, that they may know Thee, O Father
(John xvii. 3).
Well, considerable theological work has been done since
on these data of revelation, and these data, authenticated by
religious authority, have become for us the law, the funda
mental theme which all Christian functioning is destined to
explicate or to serve.
It does not belong to our present enquiry to demonstrate
historically the fact of this revelation. We take it as it is so

24 Ube Cburcb
as to draw out its consequences from the point of view of the
existence, the constitution and prerogatives of the Church.
For this it is enough to judge its contents. Others have
supplied the proof.
Pursuing then the analysis of the fact, w.e may remark that
it is after this Ufe that the benefit of the divine intentions in
so far as we are concerned is offered to us. The question is
one of future, not of immediate enjoyment. But by reason
of this unity of our destiny to which we referred just now,
if for us the future must be such, such also, due proportion
being observed — in capital, if I may say so, though not in
usufruct — the present itself must be.
Every successful issue necessarily qualifies the stages
which prepare for it. No evolution can be conceived except
by successive transformations of an element already differen
tiated and in specific relation to its term. Although the oak
is an oak, the acorn must needs be an acorn, that is to say
not an oak in little, as the old naturaUsts believed, but an
oak in potentiality.
Likewise, if man is to be God one day, in the participatory
sense that we have just defined, he must be God even now, in
the same sense, with the sole difference that his Godhead is
displayed in germ.
Which means, without strained metaphor, that, supported
by the Divinity as every creature is, he must be more soaked
in it, united to it more deeply, invaded in his being and his
powers by this same influence whereby we believe that God
lives and which we call the Holy Spirit. This must be so in
order that our religious acts may have the transcendent
import which is required in order that we may arrive by a
normal evolution where we are willed to attain.
It is this compenetration of the divine and human in the
regenerate man which is called grace. And its greatest
doctor, St. Augustine, said of it that it is the ' ' soul of our
soul," to express that the relation of the soul to the body, as
its principle of life, is found in the highest degree between
our soul and the divine influence which actuates it. If any
man love Me, the Saviour said, My Father will love him, and
We will come to him, and will make Our abode with him
(John xiv. 23). Sublime and mysterious indwelling, which
is for us the whole of religion, since it is the bond, solid and
almost substantial, in place of being purely ideal, which
unites us to the religious object, the Deity in person.
And we see that religion takes thereby, in Christianity, a
sense and an import which infinitely surpass all that we have
been able to say of it when reasoning concerning it only
from man's point of view. The quite abstract definition
which we have given of it is going to take on a concrete sense

"Cbe Cbristian Supernatural 25
by new precisions and by imposing a transposition on each
of its terms.
Religion, we said, is the bond which attaches the human
creature to the mysterious reality on which he feels himself
to depend, himself and his immediate environment ; and on
which in consequence depends his destiny. But the bond of
which we were treating was not defined ; we did not know
where we were going nor to what we could attain.
All these notions now become precise to integrate the
Christian notion.
The religious bond is no longer any bond whatever, it is a
union, a community of life, by communication of the prin
ciple of that life, the Holy Spirit ; by consecutive communica
tion of thoughts, of loves, of divine wills, obsCure here, but
clear on high.
The Divinity to which we are thus united is no longer just
something. It remains ineffable, and It is even more so
since we began by leaving the old paganism and the dry
rationalism of philosophers — childish anthropomorphism and
the subtle anthropomorphism of metaphysics. But we know
of God, through Christianity, that He is living and loving
under the form of a Trinity ; Three in One and One in Three.
Not that one wishes to divide or to multiply His substance ;
but there are thus introduced into it relations which, as
men of stammering speech, we express by the image of
persons. The Trinity is the affirmation in God of a vital richness
which is not satisfied by unity without any distinction ; which
is however sovereign unity, tending towards self-expansion,
as it were from three centres of upspringing, in three terms
of interior relation which exclude solitude without introduc
ing any division or correlative multiplication.
Now this enrichment of God, being at our service, enriches
also religion, which draws therefrom some of its most funda
mental points of view, both in dogma and in mysticism.
We know henceforward the meaning of our universe ; it is
an organisation of welfare, a factory where matter, worked
by life, has for its function to make souls open out, to fur
nish them with a theatre of action, some of their means,
some of their ends, and thereby to collaborate in the defini
tive work which is itself spiritual and transcendent.
In place of the dead universe of which Diderot spoke, with
its pulleys, wheels and cords, we have under our eyes the
living world seen by St. Francis of Assisi, the collaborator of
God and the divine man, the attentive and always docile
workman of the great work of love which is the final
apotheosis, the re-entry into God of all the beings that started
out from Him. In such sort that all action of the universe
may be an action divine and divinising ; that all the progress

26 Ube Cburcb
of the universe may be a march towards God, as well as
every action of man, even the most ordinary.
Whether you eat, or whether you drink, or whatsoever
thing you do, do all, said St. Paul, for the glory of God, that
glory which is also ours, since it is in us that it will shine
forth. Likewise, that the universe is atoused and bestirs
itself, that plants spring up, that life murmurs everywhere,
that the giant evolutions of suns and the exhausted vibra
tions of atoms realise infinities of greatness and littleness
— all this is for the advancement of the divine ends, and is
therefore Christian work. Christian progress, a march broken
by halts and recoils, but tenacious and always efficacious,
towards the eternal kingdom of God whereof the present also
is the painful baited hook.
Lastly, destiny is just this ; the achievement of the work
begun in the moving universe and the tormented life around '
us ; it is our entry and that of all thinking creatures into the
divine rest which will be the supreme activity, since it will
be life in God.
The life of God murmuring in us, the partition of uncon
sciousness which prevents us now from perceiving it, from
tasting it, although it is in everything, everywhere, and in
ourselves more than in all else; this partition broken, dis
solved like the thick cloud under the scorching sun, and
through this new gap the inrush of the Divine into us and
the divine beatitude become the lot of the frailty that we are ;
that is the final goal.
All the life of the soul that is going to be created to
correspond to it, all the effort to be furnished, all the appro
priate means that must needs be set to work, all this serves
for justification to the Church ; this is her raison d'etre.
Before coming to it, we must retrace our steps a little, and
show how the religious Ufe in general, and then the Christian
life in particular, demand the creation of a society.
Of that society we have next to treat. But the first thing
to be dealt with is the principle. The reasons which we shaU
give for it, so far as they are mastered, will bear us along by
degrees to the ultimate conclusions which are what we desire
to investigate, and the end of this work.

CHAPTERjV
THE SOCIAL CHARACTER OF RELIGIOUS
FEELING
I WILL only remark in passing the capital importance
which this question assumes in French politics to-day.
We hear our legislators proclaim unceasingly their
respect for the individual conscience, though it be a
religious conscience, and themselves anticlericals.
AU the same, all their efforts tend to. dissociate us, and to
reduce us to the state of amorphous dust. They can bear
no organised society other than what they call a lay society,
no government other than their government and no social
finality other than their temporal aspirations.
It must be allowed that from the political point of view
there is some excuse for such a state of mind. It is certain
that the cohabitation and compenetration of the two societies,
the one temporal, the other spiritual, having the same sub
jects and a crowd of concurrent interests, is an extremely
delicate matter, and one which may create difficulties even
on the most favourable hypothesis — namely, when the
governors are religious as well as the religious folk patriotic.
When the social power falls into the hands of aggressive
atheism, and the reUgious folk find themselves thrown back
into an opposition which in its turn may be excessive, it is
not easy to say what may happen.
But it would be very unphilosophic, to say the least, to
abandon a truth by reason of the complications which arise
from it.
Life is made up of these complications. Our pruaence is
given us to enable us to make the best of them. Would the
problem of the spiritual and the temporal be resolved by
using authority to get rid of one of its fundamental data?
Be this as it may, it is hence that divergences arise.
Many people are of the opinion that religion is an exclu
sively private affair, and that the greatest concession that
can be allowed to it is that it may form sympathetic groups,
associations like those which are formed around the memory
of a great man, a banquet and a speech representing their
whole function. A society properly so called, and a form of
government ; these our doctrinaires show themselves incap
able of tolerating.
Now the starting-point of such opinions is a Utopia of
comparatively recent origin : a Utopia which has come to
light many times in the brains of isolated thinkers, but whose
collective influence and systematic arrangement seem to date
only from the eighteenth century. In any case it is in that
27

28 Ube Cburcb
period, and in particular in the Contrat Social of Rousseau,
that its real sources exist for us.
It consists in thinking that society is a creation more or
less artificial and arbitrary, founded on a contract to which
one could agree or refuse to agree, as if men had racked
their brains to ask themselves : Shall we live in society or
not? If we accept such a starting-point for human society, it
would be natural to say : Let us examine what we ought
to admit and what to reject as articles of the social contract.
Let us make a selection among the ends of life. A first
portion, comprising what has to do with civil life, shall be
socialised : a second, in which, ex hypothesi, are religious
ends, shall remain an individual question. We will not speak
of it at all in our associations, at least officially ; no authority
properly so called shall intervene in it, and thus no con
stituted Church wiU be legal or have any raison d'etre.
These deductions would be quite natural. Only, it is
individuaUsm, and that alone, which can speak thus. Now
individualism, dogmatic individualism conceived as the
starting-point of society, is to-day ranked among those
false alloys which are being slowly broken up by the fire of
psychological and social science.
It is not true that man is an individual who joins his
fellow to form a society. Man, real man, concrete man, is
a social element first of all, an ingredient in the mass, then
rising gradually and with effort to the consciousness and
dignity of individuality. That is the real order of things,
and it is the reverse of individualism. Individuality is a
thing man conquers ; it is not a starting-point.
Besides, when once conquered, conscious and free indi
viduality ought not to be employed in turning on nature and
defying its law, but in understanding and realising better
what nature demands.
Man, the child of society, freed from the joint-stock life
which he led at first so that he might raise himself to the
dignity of autonomous consciousness, should tell himself that
he is a social animal, as Aristotle defined him ; and that there
fore he must preserve whatever permits his nature to reveal
itself fully in harmonious and rich activity.
And then, freely and deliberately, no longer confusedly and
instinctively as formerly, he ought to sanction society, to
accept his social existence as he accepts his individual exist
ence, and to consecrate himself henceforth not to the destruc
tion, but to the perfection of the hive, knowing that the honey
can only be well guarded by the subtle and strong scaffold
ing of the cells, by the protective waU that envelops it, by
all the conditions which make of it a single whole : a new
thing, and one infinitely more precious than the sum of tiny

tlbe Social Cbaracter of IReligious ifeeling 29
stores, gathered by each separate bee, and the living dust
of a scattered swarm.
If these conclusions could be doubted, I would say : Look
at what takes place with the child : see whether he is con
scious of himself otherwise than as a member of a group :
whether he can, apart from this group, perfect himself and
become a man. A child that isi left alone, apart from initia
tion into society, becomes a stammering animal. He does
not know whether he exists ; and truth to tell, he does not
exist, at least as a reasonable creature.
The child knows his mother and lives by her : he comes
into informative and useful contact with those who represent
the social reality for him, long before he takes possession of
himself and knows that he is an individual.
Man drinks in society with his mother's milk ; he is
spiritually nourished on it, even as it is society that has
created him corporally by means of physiological heredity.
If we wish to pursue further and to ask ourselves how the
race itself is formed and is started on its march, no more in
this case should we have before us isolated individuals, with
out attachments, who ask each other, in a sort of primitive
congress, if it be well to live in groups or no. We should
find, according as we preferred to adopt the creationist or the
evolutionist hypothesis, in the first case a couple, that is to
say something that is a society already, the one partner
finding in the other, materially as well as morally, bone of his
bone and flesh of his flesh; then a third being, unconscious at
first, and arriving by means of them, that is by means of the
embryonic social body which the first couple would form, to
the consciousness and development of manhood.
On the evolutionist hypothesis, as, duly corrected or inter
preted, it becomes acceptable to the philosopher, we should
see man awake to himself, by a new effort of creative power,
at the breath of the Spirit immanent in all things, in the
bosom of a living society which has supplied him with all his
life, preparing for him by an agelong elaboration this subtle
and rich instrument, this lute of a thousand strings, which
the Muse Intelligence will in due time cause to vibrate.
Let the question of his individual or collective origin, how
ever, be as it may, see if man does not show, by his actual
and adult constitution, that the socialisation of all his
resources is a primordial necessity for him. A necessity, I
would say, that is more than psychological, since in the eyes
of science it is physiological first, psychological only after
wards : or rather both at once, but the one because of the
other. There is in us, considered as individuals, a lack of stability.

30 Ubc Cburcb
of coherence, of unity, so to say, of mental existence, which,
the most profound analysts have noted, and which consti
tutes in their eyes the starting-point of the social need.
We suffer, individually, from a tendency to diffusion; a
diffusion of ideas, of feelings, of strength ; and consequently
a tendency to powerlessness, a tendency to inexistence, since
we only exist through unitive concentration.
By reason of this lack of solidity of the whole man, each
of us, feeling iU-assured of himself, feeling himself but part
of himself, being vaguely conscious of his trouble and his
incompleteness, experiences the need of leaning on others.
And he feels this, be his particular character what it may;
for it is not a question of the special need which some people
have of the help of others ; we are speaking of men, and
consequently of every man ; it is a question of the foundations
of our nature.
No man is complete except by means of other men. The
two sexes are normally perfected by each other ; both enter
spontaneously into graduated groupings where the person
ality is more clearly conscious of itself, completes itself, and
at the same time receives support.
How often it happens that we do not know what we think
except after having heard it said, or we will with clearness
only under the urge of associated sympathetic wills ! Even
those who affect singularity like to do so in concert. We
only feel strongly even those things which our deepest ten
dencies suggest, when we take our place in the chain of vital
electricity which society makes.
These things have been said in our time with a scientific
precision which cannot be attempted here. It suffices to
refer to contemporary psychologists, all of whom furnish
documents and proofs for the thesis.
The individual who is isolated loses his value more and
more, in the eyes of science. As physically we are in con
nection and solidarity with all, so are we psychologically.
Society supports us as the universe supports us, and in the
same manner as an appropriated exterior environment is
necessary to our organism in order that the latter may be
preserved, may develop and flourish, so an appropriated
social environment is necessary for our feelings and thoughts
in order that they may be firm, may progress and flourish.
It is just for that reason that each of us takes so personal
an interest in all that ensures the unity and permanence of
his group. Does a man think himself respected if his wife,
his son, his brother are ill spoken of? Does a Frenchman
think he is respected if his country is maligned, humiliated or
outraged? There are people who so far forget themselves
as_ to speak in that way ; but to take them seriously, and to
think them in consequence capable of acting accordingly^

Tlbe Social Cbaracter of IReligious jf eeling 31
would be to avow that they are monsters. All our instincts
would be arrayed against them ; they would have to flee from
the reprobation of men.
Normally, and when a man truly lives a human life, he
discovers himself in the society to which he belongs. It is
a prolongation of personality, an enrichment of existence,
that he meets there. He feels himself to have benefited if
any good happens to it ; he feels himself injured if it suffers.
Every event which concerns it is for him a personal event,
and if any enemy comes along to attack it, he feels himself
attacked, and indeed he is so. Would not a building be
attacked if the buttresses or outbuildings were threatened?
Now let us see if these reflections are applicable to the
religious order. But first of all, why should they not be?
Their character is general and simply human. Consequently,
to say that the religious fact is really a human fact enables
us to add : It will be social in form.
There would be only one way of excluding it from the
social, in order to throw it back entirely into the individual
order ; namely, to say that religious feeling, admitted to be
a human feeling, has yet nothing about it whereby it may be
recognised as possessing an autonomy, as responding to a
special end, distinct from others.
This is indeed the position taken up in our days by some
philosophers, the offspring of liberal Protestantism for the
most part, unless they be disaffected Catholics, who desire
none the less td preserve from their past what Renan called,
in a celebrated phrase, the perfume of the broken vase.
According to these philosophers, reUgion is only a super
erogatory feeling, a spiritual luxury, not responding to a
separate end, but to a special aspect of other ends, to a point
of view from which we should envisage realities, by reason
of a certain inborn disposition.
We have the real, to which correspond science, art, indus
try, commerce, and all human disciplines, including morality,
and we have what they call the divine, which corresponds to
an excess of interior activity in us, yet has not the right to
pose as a separate reality, nor to formulate demands of its
own. Ask a man what he needs in order to live ; he will tell you,
for example. Clothing, food, lodging; or perhaps. Truth,
beauty, justice. But once he is lodged, nourished, instructed
or interested, there is no need of lodging, nourishing, instruct
ing his image in a mirror. So, when once life is socialised
in its positive aspect, in material conditions, moral condi
tions, intellectual conditions, there is no room to ask for the
socialisation of reUgion, since to this school of thought
religion adds nothing to our ends ; but only makes us regard

32 Ube Cburcb
in a certain way, by reason of our faculty of the ideal, the
same realities that the foregoing socialisation obtains for us.
"God," cried Vacherot, "is the ideal of the world: the
world is the reality of God." When a man has spoken thus,
I can well understand that he does not feel the need of a
religious society destined to make us pray to God, honour
God and serve God in common, seeing that this society exists
already as far as it is possible for it to do so.
If God is the world envisaged from the point of view of
the ideal, our relations with God are relations with the world
envisaged from the point of view of the ideal : our religion
is only that, and our religious society is Society and no more,
regarded in the same aspect and profiting by this faculty of
my.stic dreaming which each of us has in himself.
The religion of truth, the religion of beauty, the religion
of happiness : or the religion of silver, the religion of good
cheer, the religion of physical force, the religion of pleasure,
the religion of all that one would like among existing and
possible things : these will be the only religions. Now, the
societies which correspond to these things already exist :
they are societies scientific, literary, artistic, financial, sport
ing, gastronomic — and deeper down, the family, the father
land, leagues of peoples : then, for a later stage, organised
humanity. It will be noticed that Socialism projects in that direction
all its dreams. It wishes to organise humanity in the name
of an ideal of solidarity and justice which, for the best of its
adherents, takes exactly the religious form. But the society
which it wishes to found is not one special society, like the
Catholic grouping, it is just Society, of which the actually
existing Socialist groups are only the germ, and as it were
the organising leaven.
Therefore, of what use is a society superposed on the
others, and called a Church? A Church can only be con
ceived if it answers to a separate function : a function can
only be conceived if it answers to a separate end. If God is
not an end, but a point of view, " a category of the ideal,"
there is no need of a Church.
A man who talks in this fashion can only be referred to a
treatise on God. As the author has attempted a humble
essay, he points it out without recommending it rather than
others. 1 In any case it wiU be seen there that God is not the
divine, to follow the mystical and ambiguous language of
certain men — a reflection, that is to say, an image projected
on the sky, Uke a mirage in the Alps, which means nothing.
Already, our brief reflections at the start have attained
something quite other than this vague subjective idol. We
* Of. Sertillanges, Les sources de la croyance en Diett,, Perrin.

XEbe Social Cbaracter of IReligious jfeeling 33
have met our religious end in digging down through our life
to its foundations, to its primary support, and not in climb
ing the roofs to find I know not what useless pinnacle.
The religious end, or God, is not a dream ; it is what creates
us : it is not something made by our inward power of idealisa
tion ; it is what sustains us, just as we are in actual reality.
It is then not an image after which we run, like a living
mirror after the luminous speck it projects ; it is the supreme
Reality beside which we are only a transitory shadow, living
and dying ere a second has sped on the great clock of time.
God is what is beneath our substance, at the root of our
thoughts, beyond the sources of our heart, and at the same
time behind the objects of our thought, behind the goods that
we will, beneath the substance of the world that supports us.
The common substratum of our being, and of our surround
ings ; the ultimate basis of all, and the summit also, since it
is to Him that we mount as it js from Him that we come ; the
Alpha and Omega of all things ; the real Alpha, since we are
real ; the real Omega, in order that our action and the action
of the world may not be vain : such is God.
Therefore, the end is laid down, religion has a special func
tion, and the organ of religion, its society, the Church, cannot
be confounded with associations formed for the exploitation
of ordinary life.
Moreover, this general reason becomes more precise for us
if we look more closely at what presupposes such an end, and
over against it, at a nature such as ours.
Religious feeling ought to be socialised for the sole reason
that it is a human feeling corresponding to an object of its
own ; such is our first conclusion. The second will be that
religious feeling ought a fortiori to be socialised by reason of
its special nature and of its conditions, in itself and in us.
*****
One of the best works relating to the history of religions"^
mentions as inseparable from religious feeling a sort of " dis
solution of the individual consciousness in the social con
sciousness." And the reason which the author puts forWard
is exactly that which we have furnished — namely, that the.
primitive feeling of man is not an individualist feeUng, it is
a feeling already — and one might say everywhere — collective.
"The individual," he says, "became conscious of himself
only in relation to his fellows. He does not project his ego
into the society, but gets his ego from the society."
This is excellently said, and a multitude of facts belonging
to religious history might be used to iUustrate this affirmation.
It could be shown, for example, that " among primitive
peoples, the gods are not considered as the recognised pro-
1 Chantepie de la Saussaye, Manuel de I histoire des religions, Introductio n
to edition of 1906. 3

34 Ube Cburcb
tectors or enemies of the individual, but of a society ; of the
tribe, clan, family, city, etc. The individual has no right to
their assistance nor reason to fear their enmity otherwise
than in consequence of this. If he has relations with them,
it is not in his personal capacity, but as a member of the
society."^ The proof of this is that in changing his society he changes
his gods ; the woman who marries adopts those of her spouse
and the naturaUsed citizen those of his town.
Another proof is that religion everywhere shows itself the
true social bond. At its origin religion is one with law ;
authority is exercised in the name of heaven and by imme
diate delegation ; the gods are the first magistrates of the
country ; the law is the expression of their wiU, collective
prosperity or mischance the result of their protection or of
their anger. Wars are regarded as the conflicts between local
gods who are jealous of each other. For the Greeks, history
is as it were a divine drama where the happenings are only
a reflection or an echo of what passes high up on Olympus.
"The sceptre of Agamemnon is also the sceptre of Zeus,"
says Homer.
Among the Romans, the religious instinct is coloured in
the same fashion. It is the gods of the Empire who will the
Empire. Conquest is the religious means of the Roman as
it is of Islam.
Later on, under Christianity, in which the spiritual Is
clearly distinguished from the temporal, the socialising power
of the religious feeling is not for that reason reduced, but on
the contrary is augmented ; which proves clearly that it is
religion itself, and by itself, that takes the collective form.
See the Catacombs, and that all-powerful attraction which
causes the first Christia,ns, vibrating with the same newborn
enthusiasm, to prefer to meet under the earth and to risk
seeing themselves buried rather than to lead a solitary reli
gious life by, themselves.
During the great turmoil of '93, the same scenes were
reproduced in France : the catacombs are barns, the caves
outbuildings where men risked the scaffold by hiding a priest,
well knowing that the conscience is not bound to rite in
occurrences so perilous.
I indicate these facts, which might be indefinitely multi
plied, simply to show that history is friendly to us, and that
from consulting her only it must be said that religious feel
ing, of itself, tends to form associations, to create authorities
which are the bond of these associations ; in short, it is feel
ing that takes a social form, in place of the alone to the alone
which individualism would like to maintain or impose.
1 L. Durckheim, Revue philosofhique, April, 1906.

Zhc Social Cbaracter of IReligious jfeeling 35
In justice, now, if we ask religious feeling for the where
fore of this almost violent tendency, we shall not be em
barrassed to find a reply.
Why, in general, are we social beings? Because, as we
have said, we are only complete by means of others, and we
can only attain our end by means of others. Nature urges
us to be and to do more than we can be or do by ourselves,
and this instinct causes us to form societies. Now this
reason is fundamentally the same as that which we invoke
when we ask why we are religious beings.
All that we have said of the sources of actual religion can
be summed up in this : we wish to be and we are not, we
wish to live and we do not live, we wish to know and we do
not know, we wish to have power and we have none, we wish
to be happy and we are not so without a divine expansion,
and this expansion we try to find through the religious life.
The reasoning, then, is the same in this case as in that.
Our social life permits us to be and to attain enormously
more than we could be or attain by ourselves : the religious
life permits us to attain infinitely more. It is a question of
degree, carried to infinity, a mathematician would say ; but
the movement of soul is the same, the impulse of nature pro
ceeds from the same need and the same desire, and it is for
that reason that there is correlation between these two things,
society and the religious life. Our nature makes their bond,
and we could neither live the social life without its being
completed in the religious life— and therefore the " lay
society " is an anthropological error (unless one denies the
religious end) — nor could we any the more live the religious
life without it becoming a social life.
The case is made clearer, besides, when we distinguish the
two fundamental aspects of the social life as we recalled them
just now.
To be by means of others more than we can be by our
selves ; such is the first. Now, if other men complete us
from temporal points of view, all the more do they complete
us so far as we are in relation with our common source.
The more fundamental a relation is, the less is it possible
for it to divide us, the more it must unite us. Two deputies
of the same party disagree on a question of its regulation ;
but they are united in politics. Two political systems dis
pute the direction to be given to the country's policy ; but
they are united when there is question of saving the country.
A German and a Frenchman who combat so fiercely for
hegemony or liberty, will find themselves comrades amid a
savage tribe, where they are no longer a Frenchman and a
German, enemies, but the united representatives of civiUsa-
tion in face of what astonishes or offends it.

36 Ube Cburcb
Does not the savage in his turn unite with the European
against a wild animal ? The wild animal itself, it might be
said, feels itself our neighbour in face of the great convul
sions of nature, because then it is no longer the man or the
brute who are threatened ; it is the living being which resists
dead violence.
The deeper we go down within ourselves, the more do we
feel fraternity with everything, and is it not one of our poet-
philosophers who, to express this unity which we feel in cer
tain moments envelop both our fundamental soul and inani
mate nature itself, has said :
A shaft of shining gold joins my heart with the sun.
And slender silken threads unite it to the stars.
Therefore it is that all religious men have needed more or
less, in order to raise themselves up to God, the coUaboration
of nature.
Therefore it is that the prophets, in lifting up their hearts,
invite aU creatures to join them, using their confused and
solemn murmur as the orchestral bass of their hymns.
St. Francis asked the birds, the fishes, " his brother the
sun " and " his sister the moon," the forest cascades and the
groaning breezes, to lament with him the Passion of Christ,
or with him to pray and to praise the Eternal.
It can all the more easily be understood how he and all the
saints, all religious men in the measure in which they were
religious, have been apostles. Apostles — that is to say, some
thing like spiritual conquerors, men who cannot keep still
except in so far as they have convinced and conquered their
fellows, with the help of what there is in these latter of
dormant good.
Analyse their feelings, and you will see that it is indeed
the social instinct that urges them. They are reUgious, and
to the extent that their brethren are not so, or are not so with
them, they are unquiet ; the religion of the others is lacking to
them. Alone with God, they are not themselves complete ; they
feel themselves divided, deprived of their natural attachments.
And are they not truly so, since under the actual and individual
differences which separate us, in the depths of our nature,
where it touches God, one ought to find, or one is not really
man, the fraternal unity which the word humanity expresses?
" I am a man, and nothing human is strange to me :" this
sentence of the Latin poet finds its highest value on the
plane of the religious life, because it is there, near the common
source, that one is most exclusively man, stripped of all
egoism and dissolving competition.
When to live religiously a man takes refuge in the ultimate
depths of his soul, far from the combat of life and all our

Ube Social Cbaracter of IReligious jfeeling 37
trite distinctions, he cannot remain there alone. He may
lose himself there for an instant ; but as soon as he opens
his eyes and sees one of his fellows, he recognises himself in
him, he recognises his God in him, and he wishes to live the
divine life with him.
It has been said : " Man is a wolf for man." It is never
quite true, since we have just seen separatist or barbarous
egoism tempered by the social instinct ; but the religious man
cannot be a wolf for man at all, even through interior soli
tude. , Before God, he is no more a competitor, or isolated;
he is a brother needing his brother, and needing him with a
threefold need; need for himself, by sympathy and com
plementary unity; need for him, by natural friendship; need
for God, by a higher devotion.
He wishes to be whoUy himself, through his brother. He
wishes that his brother also may become wholly himself, by
means of him, and he wishes that God may be aU in aU,
nothing being kept back from Him who has all rights, having
all being.
In the second place, since attainment is the declared desire
of all life, the religious life is going to feel compelled, if it
wishes to realise what it seeks, to arm itself with all that
can favour its work, to gather all its resources. Now if we
have said that there is in us, considered as individuals, a
weakness, a psychological inconsistency which requires
society for all its ends ; what will it be in face of the tran
scendent enterprise, the sublime adventure which religion
attempts ?
Here we have to connect man's thought with the Unknow
able, to attain the Inaccessible, to enjoy the Ineffable.
Assuredly we cannot do it unless the Ineffable bow down,
unless the Inaccessible give itself over to us and the Unknow
able reveal itself; but shall we not be able to invite It to
condescend thus with all the more power if our desires be
united? And could the reply of Him who is the common
Father be, in place of an universal expansion, a private aside,
a celestial invitation to egoism?
The act of God, in religion, must be collective, as much as
and more than individual ; but the act of man can never be
collective enough, since it will never be rich enough, founded
enough on his nature to utilise all its forces.
Let us think of what we must conquer in order to be at the
height of such an end !
We must overcome the fascination of the sensible, which
tends always to draw us away from that true depth where we
say that the reUgious life dwells. It will be necessary to
bridle passion, which drags us as it were by the feet, like
that voluptuary of the Campo Santo at Pisa whom a devil

38 Ube Cburcb
draws down while an angel strives to drag him back to the
higher regions. It will be necessary to provide against the
weakness of the mind, which the truth scatters, lets fall or
throws into disputes. It will be necessary to stimulate our
inertia in face of the Invisible and our dispersion of wiU in
face of a task which demands a continuous effort.
We could go on enlarg-ing this list indefinitely ; we could
develop at leisure the consequences of these multiplied im-
pedimentai and we should see how necessary it is, here more
than anywhere, to appeal, in addition to individual resources,
to the incomparably superior resources of social life.
If the tendency of to-day is to socialise scientific life, literary
life, artistic life, industrial, economic, political life, more and
more ; more and more, I say, in the degree that all these
things progress ; if churches, in the etymological sense of the
word, are constituted everywhere and for all purposes,
because men come to the conclusion that that is the price of
development, that isolation and the particularist spirit are
the ruin of effort, compulsory stagnation, misery ; with much
greater right must religious movement, religious progress,
religious attainment, which involve the gravest difficulties, as
well as the highest pretensions, take this resource into
account. To neglect it would be to refuse to be the tide
which resists the earth and the air by its vast volume ; it
would be to reduce the religious Ufe to nothing more than the
drop which is absorbed or evaporates.
Man is a social being. On all his paths he must march in
societies : but on that of the Eternal and Transcendent, on
which religion sets him, he must do more than march in
many associations ; he must form a close, indissoluble unity.
Catholicity : that is the end.
For the moment I only utter this great word. We shaU
see its content become clear and indispensable when we have
shown that from religion in general to the supernatural
accepted in Christianity the demands of social feeling go on
growing and must attain their maximum.

CHAPTER VI
THE SOCIAL CHARACTER OF
CHRISTIANITY
C CHRISTIANITY credits God with the design of
uniting to Himself His reasonable creature by
other bonds than those called for by the observable
principles of his nature. He calls him to the
supernatural, and this notion implies the idea of a
supplement of divine action in us, a more intimate compene
tration of our participated being with His, which is its source.
That is what is meant by the theological formula the
indwelling of God within us. And as this supernatural work
is above all a work of love, it is to the Spirit of love that it is
attributed, and the theological formula becomes transmuted
into this : the indwelling of the Holy Spirit within us.
Our task here is to ascertain why, and why specially, this
supernatural work takes a social form in the Christian Church.
It might be supposed that as this higher life, in virtue of
its very superiority, transcends current life, and also religious
life so far as its conditions are no more than human, it could
not be drawn into an order of collective facts which have
nothing to do with its essence.
But this reasoning is useless. Whatever comes to us, were
it even God Himself, must be adapted to us, espouse our
nature, and become man, and hence become both visible and
social. For in the long run what can we receive, even of God, and
especially of God, if it is not under the species of man? We
cannot receive God in nature. What we call His indwelling
in us has been defined ; it is an activity, a more complete
exercise of His r61e of origin, a supplement to our creation.
But this supplement is indeed compelled, if it would fit in with
its environment, to take count of what there was already in
us by nature.
We can only be divinised by humanising God. And God
humanised is God Uving the human life, and human life is
exterior as well as interior, social as well as individual.
Nothing but the teaching of an exaggerated intellectualism
and individualism could resist such evidence.
Man is neither a pure spirit, nor a discarnate soul ; he is a
soul incarnate, an animated body, and because of that, born
of flesh, we hold to each other by the bonds of flesh which
the community of the race creates. Because of this also, we
do not, considered separately, possess what our nature calls
for ; we see it broken in pieces, and in order to enjoy it, need
to enter into collaboration.
The Scholastics define man as a reasonable animal, and they
39

40 Xlbe Cburcb
therefore conclude that he is social by nature. Novv if man is
social, he wiU necessarily be so in aU respects. To isolate the
supernatural from the animal and social life would be to
isolate it from man, and consequently to reduce it to nothing.
Hence we may now conclude that an exterior organisation
for the service of the supernatural is a natural necessity ; that
even God, our nature being what it is, could not do without
I it, and that Catholicism, seen in this light, is not merely an
I institution; it is that greater and better thing, an organism;
and if Jesus had not organised it, yet, since the Holy Spirit
filled it, it would have organised itself of itself alone.
What partially happened turned out quite otherwise, as we
shall have to own.
But we must grapple with this question more closely, for it
leads to the most grave divergences between those who differ
from us and ourselves.
f On the pretext of holding to the spirit, Protestants have
I refused to recognise the necessity of a visible, hierarchical
[chtirch, supposing that the religious spirit which emanated
( from Christ was deprived of support and of coUective means ;
Sand thus they have deserved this judgement of Auguste
'Comte, the rather hard form of which irritates them, but the
/foundation whereof is true : Protestants do not know what a
/religion is.
j They do not know what a religion is ; for they imagine
ithat it is a union of God with the spirit of man, when it is
really a union of God with man, of man with God, and man
is not only spirit.
After, the example of St. Augustine, we have compared the
effect of the divine supernatural action in us to an animation.
Grace, says that Father, is to our soul what our soul is to our
body — that is to say, it is the principle of life, but in this case
of a higher life. And if our soul is incarnate, this principle
of higher life in us wiU also be incarnated, indirectly, that is
to say that it will influence all our being and will depend on
all our being, in the same manner as the soul depends on the
body and the body on the soul.
Accordingly, if the Spirit of God is given to us in common,
for a common life, this collective gift made to the sons of God
win be a sort of common soul for them, the soul of their soul,
as St. Augustine says again. And for the same reason as in
the case above, we must add : Since the human soul is incar
nate, the common soul of human beings is concerned with
their bodies — that is to say, it implies visibility and sociability,
it demands an organisation, and not only common ideas.
Let us observe 4:hat this implies that the human soul is
intended for a body : we shaU see, if St. Augustine's image
is just, what the supernatural finds involved in its union with
humanity.

Ube Social Cbaracter of Cbristianits 41
A human soul without a body would be a simile of the
supernatural without the Church. Now a human soul with
out a body — in our present conditions, that is — what would it
be? Assuredly nothing. Nothingness for itself and for
others ; such would be its condition. For not only would it
not produce its natural effect, human life; but it would not
produce any effect.
It would be able to exist; but as if in a state of death,
incapable of merely making known that it existe'd, incapable
of knowing it itself.
It can only be known that we exist by the fact that we act,
and we only know it ourselves on that condition. " I think,
therefore I am, ' ' said Descartes ; and that is not an argument,
it is an intuition of ourselves in the act which issues from us.
When an act issues from us, it grazes, if we may so say, the
waUs of the soul, and thus causes it to vibrate and awake to
itself. In inaction, in sleep for example, though that is only
a relative inaction, we "lose consciousness," that is to say
we are ignorant both of ourselves and of all things else, and
others are able to ignore us also, inasmuch as we are inert.
Now in order to act, the soul must have a body, as our
example of sleep well proves, since when the body is bound,
our soul is equally enchained, and is manifest neither to
others nor to itself.
Truth to tell, is it not to this necessity for an organic
manifestation of our soul that we owe our temporal existence?
It has been truly said that the soul creates its body, in the
sense that the principle of life which is within us seeks to
unfold itself, and to that end, organising its environment,
gathering up its forces and subordinating them to the evolu
tive idea that defines it as its principle of action, it provides
itself with organs, thanks to which it can reveal its resources,
become conscious of itself, expand outwardly, become con
quering and fruitful, so as to continue to prolong itself even
after we have succumbed.
Now, applied to the supernatural, this law will operate
Ukewise in due proportion. If the supernatural which is
diffused in humanity wishes to manifest itself in a human
manner, visibly, organically and socially, if it wishes to act
according to that collective unity which Protestants, like
others, impute to it ; if it wishes to become conquering, fruit
ful, or merely to be conscious of itself so far as it is com
municated to man as a common soul, it must give itself a
body, and therefore it must work upon its environment,
organise the human mass, must attract to itself whatever
assists its functions, must create and gradually differentiate
definite organs which will form a living thing as a nation is
a living thing; must, in a word, provide itself with all the
elements of an action which is truly human as well as divine.

42 Zhc Cburcb
Human life is essentially action, visible and communicative
action. Physically, growth and fruitfulness ; intellectually,
initiation and instruction ; morally, personal progress and the
apostolate ; such are the roles it has to fulfil.
All collective life, even supernatural Ufe, if it is to be human,
will be the growth of a society, and the fruitfulness of this
society by the generation or quasi-generation of new mem
bers ; common initiation by a supernatural authority, then
instruction for the use of its new adherents ; supernatural
progress in the same society, in the measure in which pro
gress is possible, and an apostolate proceeding from its unity.
There are not two laws of Ufe. If God makes Himself
man by expressing Himself collectively in us, as He is made
man individually in Christ, He must submit in either case
to what He has Himself estabUshed, thus only obeying Him
self. Without that He too would be deprived of His human-
divine effects ; He also, as we saw just now of the body with
out a soul, would be condemned to ignore Himself so far as
He is given to humanity, in the unity of a collective life.
The Divine thus given to us only becomes conscious of itself
in the measure in which it is organised and acts in accord
ance with the unity which is imputed to it. ' Therefore a
visible order, or a hierarchy, a gradation of functions is a
primordial necessity.
Apart from that, if the scattered Spirit of God only
existed in disconnected individuals, it would cease humanly
to perceive its autonomy, and a fortiori to be able to use it
after having caused it to be recognised.
In this sense, it is quite true to say that the Church, which
provides a body for God in so far as He lives in the world by
His Spirit, is His support, as the organised body is the sup
port of the soul.
It was precisely this oneness of the faithful which St.
Cyprian caUed the body of God. There is reciprocity and
solidarity of life between these two principles, which pene
trate each other and are associated in order to renew the face
of the earth.
And then, lastly, this supposition that the supernatural
would come to us, would exist in us without existing first in
a society, is no more admissible, as we have already seen,
than its ulterior consequences.
We have said, regarding society in general, that man is
not only created for society, but that he is also, and in a more
real sense, created by it.
We emerge from our environment, all the influences of
which condition us. Far from it being we who are at liberty
to form this environment, it is interior to us. Our liberties
have to do with it; but they come to it too late to constitute

XEbe Social Cbaracter of Cbristianits 43
it, and too subordinately to judge its fundamental conditions,
which on the contrary judge us.
This we say in opposition to Rousseau. We say it in the
name of the most assured anthropology. Now we have just
seen that anthropology has its value for the supernatural as
much as for the natural, for this reason, that grace does not
destroy nature, but perfects it, and consequently presupposes
it; that God, when He enters into man, submits to human
conditions. If it be true, then, that the Divine in us recognises itself,
manifests itself, and becomes fruitful under a social form,
because such is the law of man; it will also be true that the
divine must be born in us by a social action.
The purely interior inspiration of Protestants is an anomaly
which could only have come into existence as a reaction
against authority which had become odious. Thus hatred
of the police creates theories of anarchy. But from the doc
trinal point of view that does not hold. Religious initiation,
though it be supernatural, must come to us, like all initiation,
from outside; by instruction, by influence, which must leave
it open for liberty to react and to sanction when it thinks
fit what it has received.
" Man is an instructed being," wrote Lacordaire. Let us
make this proposition general, and say, he is an initiated
being, and all initiation, for him, proceeds normally from his
social environment.
It is necessary then that a human-divine environment should
exist ; an organisation of grace capable of infusing grace by
a kind of spiritual generation, under all the forms in which
for us it has to clothe itself.
It cannot be repeated too often that even the supernatural,
in its functioning, must be natural ; or rather connatural, that
is, adapted, ordained, worthy of Him who made all things
with number, weight and measure, who disposes all things
with order and sweetness.
Besides, the very people who object to this principle are
obUged to come back to it more or less in fact, for nature
will not permit any flagrant and final violation. Only, as
they do it with regret, they do it by halves, which is the worst
way of doing things.
Protestants have rejected the Church, the Church visible
and hierarchic. Now they make churches. And that is a
contradiction in terms, since religious society must be one, as
must be admitted. And it is also a fallacy, in that the spiritual,
being deprived of its proper organ, provides itself with organs
more or less dependent on politics, on the interests of races,
of nationalities, which have no concern with it.
But they form churches nevertheless, because, without
doing so, they could do nothing; because religious life as it

44 "^lic Cburcb
pleases them to conceive it, and as they do conceive it, cannot
be manifested or communicated or even acknowledged other
wise than through a society.
When Luther had proved to his satisfaction that there is
no need of a religious hierarchy; that the Holy Spirit enters
into each man, and thereby into all ; that a source of expan
sion, a spiritual womb {spiritualis uterus) as St. Thomas said,
for the birth of souls is not required ; that there is no need of
this intermediary ; that each man is a priest, his own priest —
Luther, pressed by reaUties, came to declare that however,
"for the sake of good order" it was proper to confer on
some the rights of all, and that the elect of the people must
exercise the ministry !
As if good order, thus considered, were anything else than
necessity, the condition imposed on every work by the primor
dial constitution of humanity !
It was necessary then to arrive at this point at first, or
better stiU never to depart from it. Ought Divine order to
be founded only on chance? and in the eyes of Luther's God,
would not necessary human order, good order, be part of right?
The incoherence of such an attitude is plain.
Protestants did not want churches ; but the nature of things
imposed churches on them. Only, since they did not want
them, they have made churches which are not churches. We
know what they are worth for the preservation of true doc
trine and for the maintenance of spiritual unity.
The history of their variations is not finished; but its curve
indicates well enough that it will one day, under penalty of
complete ruin, have to repair its beginnings by an honest
admission. Either religious annihilation, to which liberal
Protestantism is fast making its way, or else unity, by absorp
tion into the true church of Christ; such is the choice set
before Protestantism.
In the meanwhile, its sects, being half-churches, and
obUged, like every half-measure, to suffer thereby the' double
inconvenience of being and not-being, furnish a startling con
firmation of our conclusions. They pay the penalty of their
refusal; they set up the partial affirmation of facts, and so we
get a double counter-proof. Thinking of them as well as
reasoning for ourselves we are compelled to say : Even the
spiritual must give itself a body ; even the supernatural must
clothe itself in the social form.
Let us now see how the Catholic Church arises from this
necessity. In comparing fact with right, perhaps we shall have a better
knowledge of right itself, while the fact, if it be proved, will
henceforth present itself to us with greater authority, freed
from the obscurities which all sorts of objectors would Uke to
uphold.

CHAPTER VII
THE CATHOLIC RELIGIOUS SOCIETY
WE have described our call to the supernatural
as a supplement of creation ; as a re-creation, or
as is most often said regeneration. These
traditional words express one same notion of
the divine action in us.
Now for a re-creation to be harmonious, it must, as we
have said, take place on the plan of the former creation, and
must respect that creation, so as to tally with it. As, then,
God did not choose to create and rule each man immediately;
as He placed the family at the base of society and a first man
at the base of the family; so he has placed the Church at
the base of human religious relations, and Jesus Christ at
the base of the Church.
The idea of the Man-God, the Head of reUgious humanity
constituted as a society, thus becomes quite natural.
Let us understand what we mean by natural ; for we are
dealing with the supernatural pure and simple.
But I say that these notions fit in well together; that our
sanctified humanity will proceed normally, and in that sense
naturally, from an ancestor in whom resides the plenitude of
what it is called to receive, and that God, who does things
divinely, can, without astonishing us overmuch, dream of
uniting Himself to this Head of the sanctified race sufficiently
to penetrate to the centre of what constitutes our personality,
so that it may be said : Religious humanity is divine in its
Head, in order that it may be made the more divine in its
members; the chain which binds it to God has for its first
link an intermediary who is at the same time both man and
God, in order that the attachment may be firm; in order that
reUgion, which consists in this bond between man and God,
may attain its maximum, and that by unity in Christ we may
deserve that the words of the Psalm should be applied to us :
Ye are Gods. Ego dixi, dii estis.
The Incarnation is nothing else than the adoption of
humanity, represented by one of its members, into the unity
of God, in such a way that the religious bond becomes, in this
unique case, a substantial bond, and that accordingly, by
fraternal solidarity with the chosen of God, the whole race,
except such of its members as refuse that union, becomes
united to Him from Whom all that makes its fate flows down
upon it.
Moreover, let us not understand this Incarnation in a
fashion which would render it unacceptable to inteUigence;
45

46 tibe Cburcb
as a kind of descent of God to earth from the ethereal regions.
This idea, wherewith simple souls are satisfied, and which our
fathers, even such as were learned, did not doubt at all, even
though they were not committed to it, would to-day disturb
those minds which are aware what a little thing the earth is,
who have realised the immensity of the heavens and the un
folding of the starry realms for which science has been respon
sible. But it is no question of that.
The Incarnation implies nothing more than a new relation
between humanity in one of its members and the Creator.
And this " new alliance " is singular in that, in Christ, it is
substantial. But it manifests no new thing in God, least of
all a spatial displacement, nor does it claim our reverent
respect for geocentric fallacies.
Let us look from within. God does not specially dwell
anywhere in space. He has nothing to do with magnitudes
great or small. He produces them and they are relative to
Him without His being able to be affected by them.
God is everywhere, in everything, intimately and cease
lessly creating. Wherever His action is needed. He is, and
already was. He was there to give being; He will be there
to give better being. And if it be well that one of us should
be, as it were, torn out of himself and assumed into Him, in
order that at this point of humanity the whole race might
touch its God, as a circle touches at one point of its circum
ference the infinite tangent; there is no need of motion in
space for that. Divine omnipresence will simply be mani
fested just there at its maximum. What the pantheists say
of everything, we shall say of one sole Being, and could
scandal arise from our confessing that Christ is God when so
many great men, from Anaximenes to Spinoza and Vacherot,
have said that All is God ?
" When human nature," says St. Thomas Aquinas, " was
conjoined to God by the Mystery of the Incarnation, all the
streams of natural goodness, as if reversing their flow, came
back to their principle. This God, who had poured out the
goods of nature, seeing them return through the assumption
of human nature into Himself, caused henceforth all the tor
rents of His graces to rain on men, not only as God, but as
God and Man. For of His fulness have we all received, grace
for grace. "^
This passage introduces a new idea, namely, that man,
when assumed into God, draws with him all the rest of the
things that make up his natural environment, which are an
extension of man, man in his lower nature, something like
the nutritive bath into which the infant is plunged at birth
and in which it finds its nourishment. So that it is the human
universe as weU as humanity that the Incarnation divinises,
' Prologue to the third book of ihi Sentences.

XTbe Catbolic IReligious Society 47
and reUgion extends through us to it as it extends through
Christ to us.
Whatever may be the case as to this idea, to which we must
several times return, the Man-God is, in the Christian system,
the starting-point of true religion.
Placed on the confines of two domains which have to be
bound together, like the magnetic needle which points to
heaven though it is fastened to earth. He gives us God and
He gives us to God. Come in the fulness of the times, as
St. Paul says, after agelong preparations. He gathers
together in His heart all the religious effort of the world, and
inasmuch as He is God, He is the substantial reply to this
immense aspiration.
Humanity was seeking God everywhere; she found Him one
day in herself. This God, who had always enveloped her
with an influence which though active was as yet too partial
and never recognised, had pierced the partition at one point ;
He had broken through into the human mass, and by the
personal deification of one of us was preparing to effect our
collective divinisation.
" God was made man in order that man might be made
God," wrote a Father of the Church. Our elevation to the
supernatural flows from the supernatural work par excellence
called the grace of union.
If the Spirit of God, shed by grace in each of us, is a kind
of soul of our soul, and the same Spirit scattered in humanity
plays as it were the part of a collective soul, it was fitting that
this soul should be manifested first, in its fulness, in the Head
of the great body, that is, the Saviour. " Christ is the Head
of the Church and the Holy Spirit is its Soul," wrote
Leo XIII., after St. Augustine.
The basic thought beneath these similes remains quite
clear. The head is the part of the body where the principle
of life in us is revealed in the most immediate and powerful
fashion ; vital action seems to start from there. So spiritual
life which has for its principle the Holy Spirit is revealed in
its fulness in the Saviour, and then, by derivation, in the
organised society of His " members."
The baptism of Christ is reckoned by Christian tradition to
be the outward starting-point of this investiture. In the
symbolic dove, the figure of the Spirit; in the opening of the
heavens and the voice that was heard proclaiming the divine
pleasure, the apostles saw as it were the solemn signs of a
consecration. He was consecrated, says St. Peter, by the
Holy Spirit and the power of God. This is the official begin
ning of the evangelic ministry and the cradle of the Church.
After that, Jesus preaches the doctrine; He constitutes an
embryo hierarchy by choosing the Twelve and setting Simon

48 XTbe Cburcb
Peter at their head; He decrees social powers by solemn
declarations : Whoso heareth you heareth Me: whoso
despiseth you despiseth Me. Whatsoever you shall bind on
earth shall be bound in heaven; whatsoever you shall loose on
earth shall be loosed in heaven. To the chief, whom in
advance He has called Rock (Kepha), thus comparing His
work to a building. He gives the keys of the impregnable
citadel; Thou art Peter (UteraUy Rock) and on this rock I
will build My Church, and the gates of hell (that is to say of
death and of evil) shall not prevail against it (Matt. xvi. 13).
He dies : He reveals Himself alive again and repeats the
expression of His will (Matt, xxviii. 19-20; Mark xvi. 15-18;
John XX. 19-23). He ascends to heaven, that is to say He
obtains His personal glory, the first-fruits of ours, and He
is seated at tfie right hand of God, participating in His world
wide power, while the Twelve, sent to teach and baptise all
nations, receive for this purpose a new infusion of the Spirit,
Whose symbolic forms once more emphasise the social char
acter of His work.
When the humble primitive group is at work, successively,
under the pressure of circumstances and by the germinating
action of the Spirit, the embryo is seen to develop, the
lineaments of the hierarchy to differentiate, authority to define
its claims by degrees, rites to become fixed and organised,
conformably to the needs of the new life.
And there are people who endeavour to make an, objection
from the fact that, as we have already remarked, this comes
about in part of itself, as if the Church were a work of chance.
But this fact proves, on the contrary, that it is a work of life.
The living thing, also, grpws of itself. Does anyone
arrange its limbs in its mother's womb ? There a principle of
life desires to manifest itself, and can only do so in and by
an organism having given characteristics.
In Uke manner the Holy Spirit brought into the world by
Jesus can only manifest Himself in and through the Church, and
He proves it by giving Himself to it, by building it up piece
meal and continuously, with no plan prearranged by any of
the human beings who participate in it, and yet in such fashion
that at last all men, friends or adversaries, can see that the
organisation it manifests is the most powerful, the most
supple, the most rich in resources, the most precise in its
functions, the most adaptable to every sort of situation, the
most capable both of conquest and of government, the most
like to that net with fine impervious meshes to which Jesus
meant to compare it when He said to Peter on the lake : I
will make you a fisher of men.
And thus, since the divine principle introduced into the
world was social, because man is social, it can attempt to

xrbe Catbolic IReligious Societi? 49
sanctify men as they are, just as the Saviour will be con
tinued in the world as He is : God and man.
So far as the Church is visible, and composed of men, and
operates in a human manner, the Church will be human; so
far as it is animated by the Spirit of Christ diffused through
it, the Church will be divine.
f In Christ, God is made man and a man is God : in the
Church, in a participated and coUective form, God is humanity
and humanity God. As My Father has sent Me, so also I
send you: this formula of mission indicates the close bond
which unites these two terms; a man made divine in Christ;
our humanity made divine in the Church.
As Jesus the individual represents the Divinity and makes it
act in the form of an individual life ; so religious humanity,
\ which through Him and through His Spirit also bears God in
itself, makes it act under the form of a collective life.
Therefore individualist conceptions will be condemned, even
under the attenuated form which they would have to take to
have the right to call themselves Christian.
I allude to the Protestant system, according to which it
would indeed have been possible to accept Christ as Head of
the race, in the supernatural order; but only in so far as each
man personally clings to Him by the Gospel inwardly and
spiritually. Only after that, when they recognised that they were of one
mind about Him and that this implied active adhesion, would
they make a Church.
The Church would thus be the assemblage of those who
adhered in the first place as individuals to the teachings and
influence of Christ. As if one were to say : In order to be
Frenchmen, we must first of aU beUeve in Clovis, adhere to the
traditions, even the most distant, which unite him to us, and
thus become Frenchmen. Or again : to become human
beings, we must first of all beUeve in Adam, accept the
common traditions of the race, and by this means become
incorporated in humanity.
" Catholicism," writes Schleiermacher, " makes the rela
tion of the individual with Christ depend on his relation with
the Church. Protestantism makes the relation of the indi
vidual with the Church depend on his relation with Christ."
This is indeed quite true, and it may justifiably be enquired
which of the two systems is natural to man, and if the
natural is the rule even of the supernatural, as we have just
agreed, which of the two is the truth.
A man wakes up in his environment. How does he become
conscious of himself and of his human nature? By going
back to far-off ancestors, fathers of the race, with whom he
gets into touch by study? No; by an initiation of which his
4

50 XTbe Cburcb
immediate and contemporary environment is the source.
With the men of other times, we are only connected through
those who have carried on the race, and who represent them
for us, namely, the human beings of to-day.
If we take national descent in place of human descent, the
case is the same.
A man is born in a country. He belongs to it before he
chooses it. When he has grown up, he freely gives himself
to it or refuses it, accepting or rejecting the consequences of
the gift. Starting from that moment, he is a citizen, or the
contrary; but this act of free will is concerned with his
country as he sees it around him, in him, and only afterwards,
and through it, with the founders of that country, whose
work pursued across the ages has, among other contemporary
facts, issued in himself.
The road by which my far-off ancestors transmitted their
heritage to me is the same as that by which I can send back
to them by conscious gratitude for what I owe to them.
The first man did not beget me without an intermediary ; so
I am not connected with him without an intermediary. The
chain of tradition links us together; tradition of life coming
down to me, tradition of memory going back. But the first
reality for me is not Adam, it is my immediate surroundings;
it is the nest in which I, fragile and solicitous bird that I am,
awake on the down of family tendernesses, at the crossing of
the branches of a double line, amid foliage which whispers
of maternal and initiatory traditions, on the old French stock.
If we transfer this into the religious order, we shall say ;
The Christian is born in the womb of a religious society,
which is the Church. He lives by it first of all, before he
judges it and seeks its sources. It creates him spiritually, by
baptism and by initiation, as the family creates him, as the
fatherland creates him, before he recognises them. It com
municates to him the life which is in it, life on which he reacts,
for we are not passive; but whose source is there, in the vital
environment emanating down the ages from Jesus Christ.
One day, when he has become capable of acting and think
ing for himself, life demands that he accept or reject what
he has received. If he rejects it, the Church will no longer
exist for him ; at least so he thinks. If he accepts it, he
will keep his ties with the Church, and thereby, but only
thereby, he wiU feel himself connected with that which the
Church represents, that which it carries on through the ages,
and that of which it pours out the ever-fresh influence; the
Saviour, and the divine treasure which is in Him for us all.
But can we suppose that the Christian born to-day leaps
over his environment to go, by means of history, to find Christ,
the Apostles His contemporaries, the doctors of the primitive
Church, and thus, from age to age and from link to link,

trbe Catbolic IReligious Society 5^
return to his environment to form a judgement of it at work
in its historic antecedents?
Think how artificial and unnatural such a proceeding would
be ! Protestants, in reality, hold by it no more than others,
because it is not possible. They do as we do, initiating their
faithful and inviting them to recognise in them the continuers
of Christ.
Thus it is that every recruit understands it.
Now, as that is false according to Protestant doctrine, they
find themselves quite incoherent, letting life go one way, and
doctrine the other. And all this because, at the start, wishing
to separate, with Luther, from the Catholic centre, they had to
forge a separatist thesis; a thesis which logically invites others
in their turn to separate from them.
The principle which causes Protestantism to fall to pieces
is there in its entirety. One may try; one may hold fast; but
one holds fast in vain, one slides, and that is the revenge of
the conditions of life upon those who fight against them while
they submit to them.
Catholicism is much more logical and practical in its affirma
tions. Since it wishes to bind us to Christ in order that Christ
may bind us to God, it considers that if Christ binds us to God
by means of a visible humanity, and in society, because we
are sensible and social beings, we must be bound to Him,
Christ, Who is henceforth invisible and far off, under similar
conditions and for the same motives.
Now thafwe have admitted the principle, we must observe
all its consequences.
Our Catholic doctors have understood this quite well, and
that is why many of them call the Church a permanent Incar
nation of the Son of God, to express that it prolongs the
Saviour under a sensible form and that it extends Him in the
social way, in order that through the sensible and the social,
which respond to our nature, we may participate in His.
God was made Man so that we might be made God. But
God would not really make Himself man if He did not make
Himself a society, and man would not be made God, if it
were not with His attachments and by their means, and con
sequently under a social form. Here all holds together, and
one cannot move a stone without ruining everything.
It will be well, since we wish to keep everything, to see how
far everything rests on this first supposition : in the first place,
the marks of the Church, and then her claims and her life.

BOOK II
THE GENERAL CHARACTERS OF
THE CHURCH
CHAPTER I
THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH
THE essence of a being is always the source of all
its characters,- be they permanent or in course of
development. The oak's shape, its density, its
longevity, and the various functions of its life, are
only the unfolding of the germ hidden in the
mysterious acorn buried beneath the earth.
So the divine and human essence of the Church — its char
acter of being the social embodiment of Christ, of giving God
to man by the Holy Spirit in the form of man as being a
member of Society, and of uniting man to God by the same
Spirit in the same form and with an eye to the same destinies —
this essence of the Church explains everything.
In the first place, it explains its Unity.
By this is meant that property of the Church in virtue of
which it remains undivided in dogma, in hierarchy, in ritual,
in all its essentials. A single rule of faith, a single govern
ment, a single worship, which shall be the same for all ages
and in all countries as it is in each age and in each country, is
the first necessity of this great body.
It will be agreed, on consideration, that the necessity of
this is self-evident.
If the Church be nothing but the union of God with man
and of man with God organised as a society, how could there
be several Churches, or how could there be division in its
bosom with respect to the very thing that brings us together ?
The existence of several Churches, on this supposition,
would imply either a plurality in God, or plurality in man as
far as concerns his relations with God. If God is one, and
man is also one in Christ so that he may be united to God,
there can be only one Church. In the Church is born a new
unity between God and man : that of the human-divine
organism of which the Holy Spirit is the soul and of which
the body is made up of all those human beings who find their
agreement in it.
When Jesus departed from this world, besides leaving to
His followers, as a kind of,testament, an exhortation to love —
that is to say, to complete unity — He also addressed to His
Father, as St. John relates, this last prayer : Father, that they
S3

54 ^be Cburcb
may be one: as Thou art in Me, and I in Thee, that they also
may be one in Us.
In these words is included the whole of religion. And the
union of which they speak is plainly a moral union ; but the
moral union is continued naturaUy in the social union. The
necessity of this consequence, this natural expansion, has
already been pointed out : and the Saviour made provision for
it by organising what He called in a remarkable phrase the
Kingdom of Heaven on earth, that is the Church, and by
giving it a head.
His prayer expresses the fundamental motive of this re
ligious unity. To be one among ourselves, so that we may
be one with Christ in God — this is religion bound up with
the Incarnation ; it is religious unity linked to the unity of our
bond, Christ, and by this means to unity with our end, God.
Christ's union with God is personal, by means of the Incar
nation ; our own union between ourselves and with Christ
must be social, in so far as it is a continuation of the Incar
nation. Moreover, this sense of unity is keenly felt from the first
moments of the Christian life.
Where three are, there is the Church, said Tertullian; ubi
tres, ibi Ecclesia.
Each of those confined and local groups, isolated by the
difficulty of communication, attempted to become an image of
the greater unity by drawing close together around its bishop.
The existence of a single bishop in each Church, and com
munion with him, is indeed the most visible and immediate
form of religious unity. The first centuries also insisted
strongly on this. Wherever the shepherd is, said Ignatius of
Antioch, follow him like sheep (Ad Philad. II. , i). Where
the bishop is there must the community be, for where Christ
is, there is the Catholic Church (Ad Smyrn. VIII., 2).
But these scattered communities felt that they were united
at bottom. They were the body of Christ, to use St. Paul's
forcible expression ; they formed but one heart and one soul.
At the outset it was the Church of Jerusalem, the first home
of the faith, that formed the Unk between Christians, as the
mother, during the months of gestation, guards the vital unity
of her offspring. After St. Peter's arrival at Rome, that city
becomes the mother of the Churches.
The travels of the apostles, their relations with each other,
their letters, contributed no little to foster the feeling of unity.
Some of their epistles are in fact nothing but encyclicals.
Their contents even more than their form indicate the primary
importance of unity. Is the body of Christ divided? said
St. Paul. There is one Lord, one Faith, one baptism, one
God and Father of all, who works through all, who is in all.
Notice the remarkable exactness of this formula. One

Ubc mnits of t!3e Cburcb 55
only Lord — that is, one only Christ, who unites in Himself by
spiritual solidarity aU who are ranked under His leadership ;
one only faith, which confirms this solidarity; one baptism,
which is its sign ; one God, who receives from Christ, in whom
He dwells. His whole family of elect, and when thus estab
lished in unity of life with it, works through them all to fulfil
His purpose, works in them all to save them; this is the
whole of the Christian idea.
If such a unity were broken, truly " Christ would be
divided," since He makes of Himself and His whole family
of creatures one single body in God.
Moreover, heresy, which is a separation from the Church
as regards doctrine, and schism, which is a separation from
it as regards government, and of which each is a seed of the
other, have from the commencement been regarded as great
evils, and as far as those who provoked them were concerned,
as great crimes.
In the course of time Catholic unity can only become more
and more concentrated. An organism, such as the Church
evidently is, becomes more unified as its differentiation
increases and its functions multiply, provided that this
differentiation comes not from without, but from its internal
principle seeking to manifest itself in a richer fashion.
Man is more one than is the oyster or the protozoon. This
is proved by the fact that the protozoon remains alive even if
it be cut into pieces ; but let anyone try to dissect a man !
So also the Church of to-day, although much more com
plicated, is yet more one than that of the first centuries,
because its very complexity is the result of an internal force —
that of the divine principle, which wills to manifest itself ever
more and more, and for that purpose makes organs for. itself,
but without ceasing to dominate them, and to direct them
towards its own ends, all the more so the greater they grow
in number and in resources.
When we glance over the whole field of Christian history
we realise that in the course of time its schismatical upheavals
have diminished in importance. Remember the terrible
phrase in which St. Jerome described Arianism : " The world
woke one day to find itself Arian." Remember the great
Schism of the West, lasting thirty-nine years, during which
three popes, each of whom pretended to represent unity,
divided between them the allegiance of the greatest souls of
the world.
In this case, it is true, the question involved was one of
persons only, not of principle. None of the three wanted
to make a Church by himself, but each group was inclined to
say, after the example of Louis XIV., " The Church? I am
the Church." This attempt was frustrated. But to-day the
very attempt is impossible.

56 Ubc Cburcb
To-day the Reformation, with its schismatic character,
would not be possible : the Greek schism even less so. The
progress of Catholic unity is verified every time a cause of
religious division manifests itself, whether from within or
from without. The reaction in favour of unity shows its
power among us more and more, in spite of inevitable, and
sometimes even useful, divergences from it on the part of
individuals. The trial of the Separation, in France, was an excellent
example of this. Some counted on a schism. But the event
has shown that the time for schisms is past. The few
scribblers and schemers who aimed too soon at forming
" associations for public worship " — they have been for
gotten. The Church maintains her unity; she has vindicated
it and will be able to vindicate it in the face of quite other
trials. Then the Modernist crisis from within was even more con
vincing on this head. It arose from a wandering on the part
of certain minds in directions which seemed legitimate : some
of them indeed were so, but distinction was difficult, and pru
dence was necessary. Prudence was lacking, and perhaps
other things too. In some cases heresy followed; in others,
adventurous theories, forgetfulness of the need of maintaining
the lines of communication between the men in the van and'
the bulk of the army on the march ; of the necessary con
tinuity between the future and the past. What followed?
A crisis of fresh concentration towards unity which some
people think excessive ; but which in any case demonstrates
that will for oneness of life whose progress in the Church we
are remarking.
Our unity, then, remains intact. Apart from a few sad
sacrifices, a few individual defections, our Church has suf
fered no defeat. Of those whom Thou gavest Me have I lost
none, save the son of perdition, the Saviour said.
So will it be ever more and more. The present crisis is no
new thing. It began at the Council of Trent, as the Protes
tants know well. The Vatican Council and the Syllabus mark
its second stage. The Modernist affair is the third. We
shall not see the fourth. But we know that at the end the
Church will find herself with an experience the more, with
more solid pledges of unity.
Humanity goes forward by stages. Social life, religious
life, civil life, no less than individual life, is a succession of
crises which in due course find their solution. It is by means
of these that a well-constituted being, and a fortiori a divinely-
constituted being, makes its progress and does its work.
Moreover, this unity of the Church, which asserted itself
from the beginning and stiU continues to increase, is com-

Zbc "Clnits of tbe Cburcb 57
patible with the richest variety in all that is not essential to
the common life.
Like the plant, which makes different uses of different
environments, and reveals itself in different forms while main
taining its fundamental unity and the general characters which
express that unity, so the Church of the East or the West, of
to-day or to-morrow, shows a capacity of adaptation which
has ever been the admiration of the historian and the careful
observer. Disraeli in 1874 said in the EngUsh Parliament : " I cannot
deny that the Catholic Religion is a powerful organism, and,
if I may say so, the most powerful in existence to-day." The
man who spoke thus was the representative of a great Empire,
and a Protestant; perhaps he deserves some recognition for
setting above his own reUgious body, above the British Em
pire, the greater Empire of souls.
And yet within this mighty unity no particular life is con
strained, no provincial or national autonomy slighted, no
liberty of theological speculation denied, no ritual pecu
liarity thought iU of, provided that it keeps within its proper
limits. One is much less strict about details when one is assured of
maintaining the whole. Leo XIII. could allow freedom to
the Eastern rites because the Vatican Council ensured unity
notwithstanding; and if to-morrow some God-sent genius
should incorporate the whole of contemporary knowledge with
Christian theology, as did St. Thomas for his day, he wiU be
able to do so just because the frontiers have been exactly
defined between what is finally gained and unalterable on the
one part, and what remains unfixed and a matter for the future
on the other.
It is unnecessary to insist on the fact that our religious
unity, which is founded on Jesus Christ, has for its visible
medium, springing from Him, or rather present with Him,
though by a mysterious presence, the Pope, in whom Jesus
acts by delegation of His authority. Since he is the legitimate
successor of Peter, in whom Christ willed that- the unity of
which He is the bond should be expressed after Him, the
Pope expresses this unity on our behalf; he maintains it by
gathering together all the reins into his hands, so that the
sacred car may not wander into ways where it would meet
with disaster.
But it will be necessary to return to this point.
I remark only that our unity, which is visible in this world,
extends until it includes the other, embracing what we call by
those beautiful names, the Church militant, the Church suffer
ing, the Church triumphant; for clearly there is continuity
between the different parts of an army or a conquering nation.

58 Ube Cburcb
though some have already reached their goal, some lie
wounded in the trenches awaiting rescue, and some are fight
ing far from the ramparts.
This unity across the worlds is one of the most beautiful of
Christian thoughts. The name that it bears, the communion
of saints, is a sublime phrase.
To this must be added the unity through history. For, in
the first place, if those who pass from among us remain one
with us even as they are now, yet we do not lose the remem
brance of what they used to be ; we live among them by
means of commemorations which bring the past to life again :
we travel once more in spirit over the paths of old, as by our
prophecies we trace the paths of the future.
" Humanity is made up of the dead as much as and more
than of the living " : this positivist saying is a Christian idea
too, with this difference, that for us the dead are something
more than mental images. The "subjective" existence
which Comte allowed them has for its basis an extra-terrestrial
existence a thousand times more objective than our own, freed
from the claims and limitations of matter.
But this existence in us is a reality all the same. It is
through us that history has its existence; what has been is pre
served in the treasure-houses of what is; what has vanished is
born again, flourishes again; our homage and our imitation
make it, from generation to generation, ever active and ever
young. Defunctus adhuc loquitur can be translated in general
terms : That which is dead yet lives. And the unity of the
Church embraces it.
A man who read the Canon of the Mass without knowing
anything about Peter and Paul, James and John, Bartholo
mew and Matthew, Linus and Clement, Cornelius and
Cyprian, Cosmas and Damian, Felicitas and Perpetua,
Agatha and Lucy, Agnes and Cecily, might well believe that
all of them, apostles, martyrs, virgins or confessors, were
living even now. And in truth they are alive, even with a
temporal life, even as the world's youth is alive in actual
nature ; as eponymous heroes are alive as long as the society
which they linked together continues to exist.
Then, too, the Christian unity with the past does not stop
at those who lived our own religious life ; it embraces those
things which prepared for the faith and led up to it, its very
obstacles, inasmuch as they have been made use of by Him
who made His apostle say: "All is for the elect"; "All
things belong to you " ; " No man can do aught against the
truth, aU things labour for it." Now this means the whole
of history, from the very beginnings of history.
If it has been ordained from all eternity that humanity
should touch God in one point, then even from eternity this
central point must see all things, ages as well as races,

xrbe xaniti? of tbe Cburcb 59
directed towards it. It is as if an immense rock had fallen
into " the ocean of the ages." The movement of the waves
goes on in all directions; the whole sea vibrates, under the
light of heaven reflected by those thousands of living mirrors,
the consciences of men.
He who is to come : He who is coming : He who is come :
these are Christ's three titles in relation to time, as the Son
of Man is His name in relation to race. And these titles are
connected; for His temporal names are bestowed on Him for
the very reason that He is the Son of Man, since the life of
man is as permanent as his multiplicity.
Lastly, the Christian unity includes the future also. For
to the creative thought which is outside time, and to the
redemptive thought which adapts itself to time, humanity
loses to some extent its successive character. It is wholly
present; the treasures of the future are joined with those of
the past to make up the riches of the Saviour.
" Humanity is like a single man who endures for ever,"
wrote Pascal. Humanity united to Christ, then, is this single
man whose life has only begun, and who after youth awaits
his maturity and old age. His states are none the less his
though they be as yet unrealised ; his members are his mem
bers, though they are yet to come. You are already in God,
brothers of the future ! united to Christ with me and with
those who have been before us.
This consideration overthrows certain suppositions which
are thought progressive, but which are reaUy denials of the
Divine benefits, denials of the Gift which has been given us
by means of the Incarnation.
Given the Incarnation, it would be ridiculous to suppose a
new starting-point for religious life. Who would the prophet
be who would take charge of it? Any new preacher who
spoke in his own name would be nothing but an antichrist; if
he spoke in the name of Christ, he could do nothing but
explain or develop, and the Church is sufficient for that. The
Spirit of God, in His permanent mission in the midst of us,
has no other task than this.
Those who dream of successive revelations, and expect new
Messiahs in the future, are behind the times; for as far as one
can foresee, the choice of the future, like that of the present,
will be Christianity or nothing. But in any case they make of
Jesus something other than He is in reality ; they see in Him
the Galilean rabbi which Renan saw; they do not see the
Son of Man.
Moreover, in the unity of the Church must be included also,
after a fashion, this material world, which humanity pos
sesses not only as the stage whereon its destiny is to be
worked out, but also as its associate and partner.

6o XTbe Cburcb
To distinguish ourselves from the world is not an illusion,
as some think; but for us to think ourselves in complete dis
continuity with it would be one. We say that our soul is
incarnate; what is our flesh, then, but a fragment of the
universe which we assimilate and bring into substantial unity
with our being ; without its ceasing, as concerns its functions,
to form part of that great whole from which we borrow it
without severing its connection therewith?
Nature lives in us as we in her. What we do not assimilate
we attempt to master, by casting around us on all sides, like
the retiarius of old, the net of thought in which we catch more
or less of reality to be overcome.
By our intelligent effort we incorporate the world with our
selves; that is to say, what is in vital synthesis with us. And
what our own power cannot attain for ourselves, God's power
attains and subordinates to us. Thou hast put all things in
subjection under His feet, says the Psalm, speaking to
Jehovah of His rational creation. All is for the elect, we
must say concerning this also.
The evolutions of the earth also make part of human his
tory, whether we suppose life to have been elaborated little by
little and to have been evolved by invisible degrees up to man,
or whether we imagine him to have arisen, soul and body,
from the creative hands, but after a long elaboration of the
natural environment which is his habitation, which fosters his
existence and works with him.
So, forming by the Church's means one unity among our
selves, we introduce into this unity what is embodied with
ourselves and is directed to the same ends. Matter becomes
a Kingdom of God in the Christian sense as it is a Kingdom
oj God from the spiritual point of view. And in the same
way as we have said that the one Church is religious humanity
in so far as it adheres to God through Christ, so also must
we say that the One Church is the world in as far as it sub
serves the designs of love which God has conceived, and
whereof Christ is the universal medium.
By putting together, in conclusion, these two points of
view, the unity of history and the unity of the world in their
relation to the sanctified life, we come to understand that our
unity has for its limit in space and time the reaUsation of
St. Paul's dream. All submitted to the elect, and the elect
to Christ, and Christ to God. SubUme unity, which ensures
to the use of the sons of God scattered through the world and
through history, all that is sought for by the universal effort,
aU which the philosopher Kant calls in an abstract but typical
phrase the kingdom of ends !

CHAPTER II
THE HOLINESS OF THE CHURCH
IN the second place we say that the Church is holy.
We must rhake no mistake as to the meaning of this
statement. That the Church is holy does not mean that
all of us who compose her are holy ! Neither does it
mean that her heads, those who in a human sense rule
over her destinies, are holy. Those of them who are so would
be more distressed than anyone at seeing this mark of the
Church thus understood.
Moreover, we must not forget — and if we were tempted to
do so, our enemies would be there to remind us — that at some
unhappy moments even our religious heads, even the supreme
Head, have been far from being all that their office demanded.
This has been so in the past and will be so again in the
future : although some abuses have become in our days quite
impossible. We can no longer imagine an Alexander VI. on
the Pontifical throne !
All the same, as regards individuals we can never be too
modest. But this is no question of persons. We are con
sidering our Church in herself, and since our Church, thanks
to the Spirit of Christ who works in her, is a synthesis of the
divine and human in a society, what can this compound be but
holy and sanctifying, seeing that it contains God in itself, and
dispenses His influences in all the forms required by this inter
related life which it sets before humanity?
The continuity of the Church with Christ and with God :
the one surpassingly holy, the other Holiness itself, imparts
to the Church a sacred character in spite of the failings of
her members.
And thus there is already a twofold sense in which we may
understand this phrase, the Holy Church; the Church is holy
in her essence; she is holy moreover in her end.
In St. Paul we find this sentence, addressed to the Church
of the Thessalonians : This is the will of God, your sanctifi
cation. Let us use this term in a broader sense to denote others
than heroes; but all the same the Church's ideal of holiness
is no common one. Our sanctifying Spirit is not the God of
good fellows. We have to aim at perfection, at what the
judgement of the Apostolic See consecrates in those whom we
call saints, using the word as an official title. We may be
quite sure that everyone wiU not attain to this. But it is to
this that the effort of the society tends, as it is the ideal of
an army to raise up military heroes; as it is the ideal of art
to create a masterpiece. 6i

62 XCbe Cburcb
In the case of the mass of people this ideal must be con
tent with a partial realisation. In the organism, the soul
which carries the ideal within it does not penetrate all the
parts of the vehicle to an equal degree. Such is the activity
of our brains that it has been stated, no doubt with some
exaggeration, that the cerebral substance of the thinker in
the act of creation becomes entirely renewed in less than an
hour. But the rest of the body, the muscular tissue for
example, and even more the bony structure, does not share
in this vertiginous movement. As the river flows at the
centre and sleeps in shady hollows along its banks, so is the
tide of life, the current of holiness in the Church.
The effort of the religious society is always directed to this.
Those who say that its ends are different either deceive them
selves, or have an interest in being mistaken, or in any case
cannot distinguish between the individual end followed by
such and such a man, and the end of the institution. The
latter has no other object but the sanctification of men, the
task whereof life eternal must be the achievement, of which
virtue is the outUne.
In our Church, which is a moral building, all the stones,
all the living matter which form part of her, ought to strive
to realise the idea of the plan. Every organ in this living
thing should aUow itself to be penetrated by the directive
idea. Every constituent of this work of art, Christianity —
and we ourselves are the constituents — ought to be subor
dinated to the ideal. And this ideal, this plan, this directive
idea is that we may be, as St. Paul says of Christ Himself,
in the form of God.
Be ye perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect — that is
the ideal of the Gospel. Not that there is any question of
escaping from our own nature in order to assume another;
but we must do our part as men even as God does His as God,
and since, through grace, we participate in a measure in His
life, we, even we, must attain to be divine creatures, espous
ing God's points of view, God's intentions, in order that we,
after our plan and according to our degree, may do the works
of God.
The Church, then, is holy in her end as weU as in her being.
She is moreover holy in her methods, for which reason we
may call her sanctifying. Seeing that she contains the
Spirit in herself, and distributes the Spirit by means of her
teaching, her worship, her government, her counsels, the
mere fact that she exists must urge her adepts into the ways
of the Spirit, where they may find assistance to realise their
purpose. We say assistance, not assured or necessary results. For
this action of the Church is addressed to a subject which

tlbe Iboliness of tbe Cburcb 63
has the power of refusal. It does not, then, lie within the
power of the Church's essential sanctity, nor even of her
active sanctity, to communicate itself to all her members.
That it may be able to do this depends on each of us.
Each of us can hold in check, so far as he himself is con
cerned, the holiness of the Church in as much as it consists
in an extension of his own value. She will be fundamentally
neither less holy nor less sanctifying, since her God does not
forsake her : since her Christ is always living and united to
her : Behold, I am with you all days, even to the consumma
tion of the world.
We may agree, however, that humanity being what it is,
composed of evil and negligent men on the one hand, but on
the other of great souls and souls of good will ; if there were
not, in the Church of the Saviour, visible fruits of her internal
sanctity and of her sanctifying action, such an abnormal situa
tion would give us good reason to doubt her. The tree is
known by its fruits, says our Gospel.
But we need not fear lest this maxim should recoil against
her who uses it. However far she may be from sanctifying
herself in her relative success, and ambitious of the absolute,
she can yet show, to whoever asks for saints, a glorious com
pany. Her apostles, her martyrs, her virgins, her bold con
fessors of the faith, her heroic missionaries, her faithful
among the faithful form a crown which every other religious
body might envy, and of which none has the most distant
equivalent. Find the equal of St. Bernard, of St. Thomas Aquinas, of a
St. Vincent de Paul, of a St. Teresa, of a St. Catherine of
Siena ! Compare the Protestant minister, whom we respect,
and who is not withou^t communication with the Church
through what he holds in common with her; compare him,
as he passes with his wife and children, sincerely desirous of
preaching Christ, but also, doubtless rightly, of considering
his person, his establishment, his future; compare him with
those missionaries whose enthusiasm has about it some tinge
of the superhuman : whose stories have enchanted so many
souls; compare him to that good father, the counterpart of
many others, who wrote calmly to a colleague : "I have
found the best way of developing my mission and doing my
work; I have found none better than my death."
If the society which the Church has formed — and here I
no longer distinguish between the various Christian confes
sions, because socially considered they proceed from identical
traditions — be collectively considered, it wiU be remarked that
this society, as a whole, has other virtues than the society
which it succeeded, or than that which exists around it.
If, compared to the ideal, and to those we caU saints who
live by it, we are only pagans, yet compared to the pagans,

64 Hbe Cburcb
or to non-Christian religious bodies, whatever they be, we are
saints. The Gospel has moulded us ; even when we give our
selves up to evil, we keep within us that interior stratum of
good which is called remorse. Our countries, our families,
our friendly associations are established — with numerous ex
ceptions, I agree — on principles which bear the mark of the
Spirit which dwells in the Church.
We must not exaggerate our evils. Immense though they
be, they leave far behind the description which St. Paul has
left us, in the Epistle to the Romans, of the world in which
he lived.
Now we cannot believe that there is any other cause for
this than the leaven of the Gospel; that is to say that
immanent sanctity which works in us, and in spite of our
resistance urges the world in its paths, drawing from our
malice some little goodness, from our wretchedness some
little of the ideal.
That is what is called progress ; it is the living Gospel ; it
is Christ working even in those who withstand Him ; it is the
Spirit striving, though it be by using what is in opposition
to it, to renew — with how much pain ! — the face of the earth.
Morally, our Christ, and His Church with Him, will always
have good reason to say what He boldly said to His own.
Without Me you can do nothing. When an attempt is made
to laicise this or that in the domain of morals, either it gets
killed, or we borrow for life's sake the very things we reject,
namely, traditions that continue to watch over man, bents
given to the soul by the Church, environmental influences still
impregnated through and through with what Renan, in a
famous phrase, called "the perfume of the broken vase."
Broken ! He spoke for himself and for his set.
" We live by the shadow of a shadow," he added; " By
what will man live after our days?" To this discouraged
question of the sceptic, we reply boldly : We shall always
live by Christ : we shall live by His Church, better known,
better adapted to new tasks, better penetrated by the divine
Spirit which slowly but perseveringly pierces the veil of our
unconsciousness, and though always present, can yet only
manifest itself /rom day to day, from brightness to brightness,
as the Apostle says.
The truth is that the Church, Holy Church, which we see
best in the past, which seems to be suffering in the present,
and which for that reason has, we think, little assurance of
the future, is hardly beginning her work. She has hardly
disentangled her material, or displayed her means of action.
What are twenty centuries of work, to found a civilisation
from elements barbarous on one side, rotten on the other?
We are not at the end of the world. To the Church, as to
God, a thousand years are as one day and one day as a

Ube Iboliness of tbe Cburcb 65
thousand years. The Spirit of God incarnate and socialised
in the Church has all the life of our planet before it. It
will know how to do its work there, and although we have
said that it depends on man, in whom the Spirit works, that
the task of the Spirit should be fulfilled, yet let us not fear a
check which would suppose either a supernatural malice on
the part of men or a refusal of mercy on the part of Him who
said My mercy is greater than thy sin, O Israel.
" I believe," wrote Ozanam, " in the progress of the
Christian ages : I am not afraid of the disasters and errors
which interrupt it. The cool nights which succeed the hot
days do not prevent summer from following its course and
ripening its fruits."^
^ La civilisation chritienne au V^ sihle, t. I, I"' le9on.

CHAPTER III
THE CATHOLICITY OF THE CHURCH
WE add another gem to the Church's crown. Be
sides being One and Holy, it is also, we say.
Catholic, that is. Universal, adapted to the
whole of humanity, and therefore free in every
domain from everything that limits or restrains
its action, from all that implies particularism.
The root of the word Catholic is the Greek adverb KaOokov,
which signifies in general, so as to include all instances beside
the one under consideration, after removing all limiting pecu
liarities. Now we must understand that in this sense our Church is
and must be ever more and more Catholic.
CaUed as it is to live by God and the influences of God;
united to Christ, the universal Man; occupied in urging our
life towards its ultimate end, which is common to all of us;
employing means which ignore what distinguishes us from
each other, and go straight to what is fundamentally shared
by all men to make it follow a common rule : it is not easy to
see how the Church, if it live according to its law, can tend
to particularism.
It is by right universal. Its framework is all ready to
receive humanity in its entirety, to envelop all the manifesta
tions of its life. It is the vocation of all human beings to
enter there, in such sort that if they do not enter, and that
through their own fault, but by reason of exterior or interior
circumstances which do not include good will, then they belong
to it, their hearts belong to it, though they have denials on
their lips and blasphemies in their mouths.
Humanity organised in God through Christ — and that is
what we believe our Church to be — is, then. Catholic by defi
nition; catholic in extent, all races forming part of it either
as adherents or candidates; catholic in duration, the ages
having no other mission, to our human eyes and for us,
than to permit our humanity to realise itself to the full :
catholic in depth, in so far as the human elements which
arouse in us particularisms, be they national, racial, sexual,
intellectual, political, economic or social, without forgetting
the particularism of the ego, the source of individualism —
these elements, I say, will be set aside for religion to become
exclusively concerned about its end, which is to unite to God,
the Father of all, and to Christ, the Son of Man, humanity
and its members considered in their unity, that is to say in
their depth, where there is no reason and no excuse for any
tendencies to particularism.
Let us dwell a little on this notion of catholicity, because it
66

Ubc Catbolicitg of tbe Cburcb 67
gives opportunity for much prevarication, and if misunder
stood may become a very dangerous inteUectual stumbling-
block. *****
When we cast a glance at the map of the world, our
Church's pretension to universality seems singularly contra
dicted by the facts. Two hundred and seventy millions of
Catholics — a respectable number — are found overwhelmed,
one against eight, in the human sea which rolls over the sur
face of the globe, from East to West, made up of sixteen
hundred millions of souls.
Let not our adversaries be in too great a hurry to triumph
over us on that account, and do not let us be downhearted.
The world is not ended, it is beginning ; and besides, the
thing that matters in a mass destined to ferment into life is
not the number of apparently strange elements; it is the
germ. A germ is nothing as far as its quantity goes ; but in quality
it is everything. It has a universal potentiality in relation to
the material which is subject to it. It may fail of its result ;
an accident may happen ; its material may show abnormal re
sistance ; but none the less, considered in itself and in relation
to a well-disposed material, it is absolute in potentiality. A
spermatozoon organises the whole animal. An atom of yeast
is enough for any vatful. From a grain of wheat one can in
time sow the whole world. Thus, firstly Christ, then the
little band of apostles, and lastly the Church have the power
to conquer the moral world, to give it a religious organisa
tion and to lead it to its superhuman destinies.
By these comparisons we only recall the beautiful com
parisons of the Gospel : The Kingdom of heaven on earth is
like leaven, which a woman took and hid in three measures of
meal, till the whole was leavened. The kingdom is like a grain
of mustard-seed, which becomes a tree spreading throughout
the world.
The seed which Christ planted in the world is not one of
those ferments which is contented with reducing its material,
or that has for its purpose only to provoke a fermentation
partial and strictly limited ; it addresses itself to the whole
human lump and aspires to leaven it wholly. But it does this
on condition that it is willing to become leavened, for its
material is endowed with free wiU; and on condition that it
passes through its proper stages, and submits to the infinitely
diverse conditions which every universal work must undergo.
Hence it is clear that the character of universality attributed
to the Church can never be judged merely by the actual area
which it has succeeded in conquering. If it be considered at
its commencement, it has no area; the germ is alone, in the
midst of its as yet unaffected material. But is its power

68 ^be Cburcb
therefore the less? Is this a reason for refusing to it, if its
internal quality postulates it, a universal importance which
belongs to it as a potentiality, not as an accomplished fact?
If we look forward to the last state of religion in the world,
even then it is not its accomplishment alone that will evaluate
it, since the inadequacy which may be attributed to it by
reason of the checks it has experienced may be nothing more
than the inadequacy of the individuals or groups who ought
freely to lend themselves to its action. When the Son of Man
Cometh, said the Saviour, think ye that He will find faith on
the earth?
If religion be considered at one of its historical epochs
between these two extremes, to-day for example, an extension
might rightly be demanded from it in proportion to the
power that it ascribes to itself, to its value for the satisfac
tion of the religious aspirations of mankind ; but proportioned
also to the length of time during which it has existed, to the
historical circumstances through which it has passed, to the
good will of those who ought to collaborate in its action,
in a word to all the human conditions affecting the divine
germ which we say is endowed in itself with a universal
fulness. Catholic universality at any epoch does not consist, then, in
the number of the Church's adherents, individuals or peoples.
The question of number, said the ancient philosophers, belongs
to the material side : it tells us nothing, proves nothing. The
smallest midge is worth more than a mountain of sand. What
does matter is the organisation, the Idea. What matters in
this case is the active idea brought into the world by the
Gospel, incarnated in Christ, the living ferment of the human
mass : incarnate after Christ in what represents Him, pro
longs Him, permits Him to act; to wit, the catholic organisa
tion. Catholicity is properly, at its start, a question of organisa
tion, using this word in its scientific sense. Our religious
organism has wherewith to satisfy the religious needs of all
peoples, all races, all degrees of civilisation ; it can respond to
all states of life, all the legitimate dispositions of minds,
hearts, individuals, groups. Not that each of its states is
entirely adapted to each of these things; but it is always
adaptable, without ceasing to be itself, without compromise,
which is as much as to say that it is a universal key for souls,
a universal means for peoples, of which they may make use
in order to turn to advantage genuine religious feeling and to
attain its ends.
All this is not shown at all on the map !
However, the map has its part to play in the matter. For
if it was not its part to help us to emphasise the Church's
power of universal adaptation, yet by it we are brought back.

xrbe Catbolicit^ of tbe Cburcb 69
so that we may judge of it, to the analysis of that seed which
the Saviour Himself declared to be wrapped in mystery.
The kingdom of God cometh not with observation, He
said. If anyone wishe(J, by analysing a seed, to acquaint himself
with the nature of the plant which could arise from it, he
would not attain very reliable results. In the same way the
man who would have wished to prejudge at the Cenacle what
the Twelve were to accomplish in the world, would certainly
have been deceived. We need experience in order to judge of
the value of a seed, whether in the moral or physical world.
When one does not recognise a seed, what does one do? One
sows it : the plant which arises from it will be its witness.
Moreover, it will not be necessary to wait for a complete
development ; that may be prevented by accidental circum
stances ; but the mere fact that the grain has budded, that it
has budded in this place or that, that it has taken on such
an appearance, is adapted to such circumstances, suffices to
prove its value.
Now, supplied with this rule, let us look at our Catholic
Church. We have called it universal in this sense, that in the first
place it excludes all particularisms of race and people. That
this has been proved no one can reasonably dispute. Its
beginning, which seemed tainted with Judaism, because it
was born of the Synagogue like the tree which raises itself
to heaven in continuity with the rock; its very beginning
marks the enlarged direction which it will take. Under the
energetic impulsion of Paul, with the confession and under
the somewhat timid direction of Peter, it shoots out branches
in every direction ; it distinguishes neither Greek nor Jew,
circumcision nor uncircumcision. Barbarian nor Scythian,
declaring that Christ is all and in all (Col. iii. ii). That was
a revolution of incalculable moment, in a religious world
which^had so far envisaged the temporal and the spiritual,
the religion and the nation as bound by an indissoluble
bond. It was at the meeting at Jerusalem, the first of the Councils,
that this point of the future was decided upon. Because it
seemed good to the Holy Ghost and to us, as our apostles
boldly saio, it was here that the body of the Church was set
in motion, and leaving the Jewish path, which led only to the
national citadel called the Temple, it takes the road of the
human race, destined to encamp under heaven everywhere
where there should be souls to unite to Christ, groups to
bring into the indefinitely enlarged framework of a family of
immortals. Has not our Church since then realised this mission of

70 XCbe Cburcb
evangelising the world without troubling its temporal rela
tions, and with due respect for its national classifications ?
Our missionaries sometimes regret that they are regarded,
in the mission field or at home, as mere national emissaries,
draped in a flag, dear or glorious it may be, when the standard
that wraps them round is simply the sign of the Cross.
It is but natural that a French missionary should do good
to France in the place where he sojourns; his heart cannot
but display its content of love for and pride in that far-away
mother whom he can never leave without a groan. But he is
not for all that a missionary of France; he is a missionary of
the Gospel, and the Gospel is addressed to every creature.
He asks no one to affiliate himself to a race or a people, and,
in fact, those who live his life do not cease to live lives which
are politically most diverse. Men of all colours and coun
tries are represented there. This is the first mark of
universality, of effective catholicity.
In the second place, our Church's action knows nothing of
particularisms of sect. Sects philosophic, political, economic
have often tried to engross its action. When they do not
seek this, it happens that circumstances appear to invite it,
as if there were no safety for religious thought except on
condition of its accommodating its steps now to Plato, now
to Aristotle, now to Descartes, now to Auguste Comte; now
to the partisans of kingship by divine right, now to the demo
cratic republic complacently identified with the Gospel; now
to the conservative spirit, now to a mystical Socialism which
thinks itself the outcome of the Sermon on the Mount. All
this our Church combats. It uses all doctrines, all tendencies,
all values assimilable to its life ; but like the food which when
once assimilated finds itself truly made similar, that is to say,
loses its autonomy and re-enters into the vital law; so, at the
start of the Church, Israelite feeling, Greek thought, Roman
organisation; later, a crowd of additions of the intellectual
order or practice have been incorporated with Catholic life
without the initial germ suffering any loss, satisfied with
being nourished, with being ever more enriched, in the same
essence. In the case of the heretic, or the feeble Christian who suc
cumbs to science, sentiment or politics, it is the food which
has the upper hand, as if a hunter were to attack an animal
too powerful for him, and to be devoured by what he ought
to have made his own food. But the authentic faith remains
stable, all serves her, nothing absorbs her; she respects all
things on condition that she is herself respected in her turn.
If she has any preference, it is because doctrines and prac
tices, though they may be legitimate, are not of equal value.
Those which offer her more guarantees are wisely counselled

Ube Catbolicits of tbe Cburcb 71
by her, and even imposed on those who depend directly on
her action. But that is relative. Speaking absolutely, the
Church only rejects what is evidently incompatible with her
religious deposit, and she imposes nothing but religion itself.
By reason of these oscillations which make the march of a
great body a sinuous line, it is possible, at certain epochs, to
incline in this direction or that, and to seem to commit one
self. _ What living thing follows out its destiny like a bomb?
Life is hardly like that. But this I say, that an avowed and
continuing committal to any form of systematic thought, to
any form of government, whatever it may be, to an exclusive
economic system, is not to be met with in the Church.
St. Augustine was a convinced Platonist ; St. Thomas a mili
tant Aristotelian; F^nelon a Cartesian; Malebranche had a
philosophy of his own, and all of them, inteUectually as well
as practically, professed the same Christianity.
_At the same time, our Church has lived at peace with
kingdoms, empires and republics; she has striven with king
doms, empires and republics; and this is a proof that her
struggles and her agreements proceed not from any exclusive
ness, but relate to what passes beyond the transitory forms of
national groupings in order to concern itself with what is
properly the law of mankind.
In the same way also, Catholicism has lived respectfully
and patiently under very diverse economic regimes. It was
born in an age of slavery ; it did not invoke curses on it, it did
better, causing it to melt away before the fire of its reform
ing influence. It followed with tranquil step an agelong
evolution which emanated from itself, as a motor-car follows
the light which its own lamps cast before it. It is ready to
push its march further, and even Socialism, in certain
respects, would not terrify it, if Socialism, ceasing to be a
false doctrine of life, a rebellion against the natural relations
of men, and above all a refusal of God, that is to say an
inverted religion, consented to confine itself to its object,
social economy.
What is to be said then about particularisms of caste? Is
the Church for the great as it is for the small? for the small
as for the great? Both reproaches are addressed to her at
the same time; a proof of the vanity of such criticisms, as far
at least as concerns her doctrine itself and the general flow
of her life. Individual deviations may be disregarded.
It has been said of Christianity that it is a reUgion of
beggars, and it has been said that it dines at the manor-
house. Now whether one likes it or not, both these things
are true; as it is true of our Saviour that though He was
born in a stable and thronged by shepherds. He yet received
the visit of the kings, dined with the Pharisee, presided at
the wedding-feast at Cana ; and moreover ate the half of the

72 XTbe Cburcb
fish on the bank of the lake, crouching near the fire, under the
pale morning sky of Galilee which covered none others near
Him but the earnest group of fishers of men.
Is it wished that the Church should belong to one social
category only? that it should preach in an abusive sense :
Woe to the rich ! or in a sense both abusive and odious. Woe
to the losers in the battle of life ? The Nietzschean doctrines
are not far removed from this last sentiment; a false
democracy tends towards the other. But the Gospel escapes
this fallacious dilemma.
Woe to the rich, whatever one may think of it, is a curse
for no one; there, in the mouth of the Saviour, it is a cry of
pity, for it signifies : Poor rich men ! unhappy rich men ! who
escape with so much difficulty the fascinations of life, the
abuses of power !
As for the humble, they too are the beloved of the Gospel,
and our Church, in every age, has done enough for them, and
still does enough for no one to be able to say that she despises
them. The truth is that she says with St. Paul : I am a debtor to
all. Rich, poor, great, small have a place in her care. Her
saints are Benedict Labre and St. Louis or Henry of Germany,
the shepherdess Genevifeve and the queen St. Elisabeth. She
says that great and little, possessors and proletarians, are
not from the religious point of view to consider themselves
placed at opposite poles of life; in Christ they lead a common
life, since they are preparing for the same future by means
which are at bottom identical; since their feelings can and
should be raised above objective differences; since they, the
poor, may say : Fear not, little flock, for it hath pleased your
Father to give you a kingdom; the rich. Possess as those who
possess not; for the figure of this world passes away.
We need not insist on this ; no one can deny it. Those who
are irritated are so only as regards the real or supposed
abuses which they observe. Let us grant the abuses, and
demand in return to be allowed to say : The Church, in its
authorised teaching, in its action as a whole, favours neither
great nor small ; it makes itself all things to all men.
Shall we add that the Church, considered as a whole again,
ignores the particularism of the sexes? People have spoken
in every sense of its way of treating woman. We are not
going to enter into the multitude of questions that arise upon
this subject. It suffices to recall the saying which sets forth
the foundation of the whole matter : In the reUgious sense
there is neither Greek nor Jew, neither bond nor free, neither
MALE NOR FEMALE : for you are all one in Jesus Christ.
Antiquity did not express itself thus. It accorded to woman
only a secondary destiny, grafted on that of her partner. All
its institutions, religious or other, its customs, its feelings.

XCbe Catbolicits of tbe Cburcb 73
unless they were corrected by love, which oversteps all bar
riers, all these declared : Man exists ; woman coexists ; man is
man; woman is only man through him, as the objects of which
he makes use, as the animal which he tames, as the slaves
which he makes to submit to him.
It is Christianity which has driven this feeling from the
world. It is the Catholic Church which has checked its
return everywhere where heresy or renascent paganism
threatened in woman the dignity of human personality. The
Virgin Mother, Spouse of the Holy Ghost, is only the mystic
expression, realised in a person, of Catholic thought about
woman. Associated with man in all his r61es, even the redemptive
r61e, woman is religiously on a footing of perfect equality with
him. The differences are of the practical order and concern
the division of human labour. No intentional exclusivism
makes a breach, in regard of woman and to her detriment, in
the enveloping universality of the Church.
Let us finish the list by again denouncing the most par
ticularist of all particularisms, that of the ego, the father of
individualist religions. This egoism is antithetic to the
Church in such wise that if it followed its logic to the end by
reducing human beings as regards religion to the state of
amorphous dust, it would be her exact contrary. Church
means Assembly. Universal or CathoUc Church, then, means
universal assembly; it is the exact contrary of individualism.
We have made it plain enough that Protestantism has con
secrated this separation, and that it is therefore, of all re
ligions, the most anticathoUc. To make its Church, it
includes only this group of three persons; God, or the Holy
Spirit : " Christ " : and each one of us. The rest, the so-
called Churches which the sects have formed in spite of every
thing, are, when compared with the real one, only side-
gatherings, which do not result from the original nature of
the religious bond itself.
That amounts to saying that there are as many Churches
as men. It amounts to saying that there is no Church, if by
Church one means a society of men united to Christ in order
to lead a really common life in God.
With this we connect the state of mind of those of our con
temporaries who, in their character as partisans of ill-under
stood rights of man, seek to immure religion in the individual
conscience. " Think what you like," they tell us : "do what
you like, but in private : social life must be conducted on lay
principles. ' '
On a close scrutiny there would be seen in this conception
and in our Church's diametrically opposed conception a most
fecund source of conflicts, between those who mean to rule

74 Ube Cburcb
their social life as citizens for themselves, and a religious
group which claims to be a perfect society, that is to say one
that is autonomous. Nothing is more hostile to true religion,
especially when it is catholic, than this religious abandon
ment, which throws back the individual into exclusively tem
poral groups, tearing limb from limb what we have called the
Body of Christ.
Catholicity such as we have defined it, as a property which
is revealed in what it actually does, thus affording what
theologians call a note (a notable thing, from notum facere),
Catholicity, I say, seems thus indispensable in its negative
form. It remains to show positively the aptitude of the Church to
assimilate the world to itself, that is to say first of all to con
quer it, if it consents, and then to govern it. Except that, on
this last point, it is no longer a question of writing a special
chapter, but it will be necessary to requisition the whole of
our further studies.

CHAPTER IV
THE CONQUERING CHARACTER OF THE
CHURCH
THE comparison which has served us all along
from the start in our enquiry into Catholicism
will again be useful to throw light on the present
matter. The Church is a living thing. Now the living
thing is endowed with a power of assimilation which enables
it to overcome its environment, in order to incorporate it
with the unity of its own substance. This power, indeed, is
implicated in Ufe itself. What does not assimilate does not
live. What ceases to assimilate perishes as a living thing,
and by the dispersal of its elements and mortification becomes
dead matter once more.
Our Church, which is living, assimilates, conquers,
increases by the absorption of individuals and peoples who
permit themselves to be enveloped by the law of life which is
in her.
As is always the case with living things, it is at the start
that this power of assimilation meets with its greatest
triumphs. The conquests of the Apostles, those of the first
Christian centuries, are like the eager life of the child, which
grows more in one year than it will grow later on in ten.
In its first days, the small newborn organism is composed
of a minimum of elements; the Twelve, having around them
the disciples properly so called and a few more or less staunch
adherents. It shows a minimum of organisation ; a chief and
eleven equals are at first the whole of its hierarchy. It is
destitute of what is apparently needed for working upon the
environment to be assimilated, which is impervious to all
plans of propaganda, to all the blandishments of men.
But it contains a Spirit in itself; it is peopled with visions
and incentives as wide as man's universe, as high as the
Divinity which has broken its way into the earth. Visions
which seek souls restless and eager, minds to occupy, hearts
to be caught in. They will be able to find them. The inspira
tion which stirs within this superhuman living thing has the
power to stir the world.
Our Apostles go their way, with no noisy display, without
advertisement, living the divine life on their own account,
showing its fruits, preaching it with all their soul or rather
with all their being, counting to attract others only on the
attraction which has conquered themselves, and whose haunt
ing presence is always within them.
Christ, who Uves within them, fills them with this heavenly
75

76 tibe Cburcb
power which made Him to say : Fear not, you who will have
tribulation in the world : fear not, I have overcome the world.
The Blood of the Cross, which in their chalices they distribute ;
the living Bread in which the grain, though ground, remains
immortal, will be the food and drink of the earth. Fruitful
food, multiplied seed which will spring up in harvests of
peoples; drink which will make the living sheaves, in their
moral ascension, grow as high as the arborescent plants of the
beginnings of our globe,
¦When nought was small, though everything was young.
Wherever these men penetrated, representing the Spirit
which had become immanent in the world, the world around
them yielded; it abandoned a part of what was joyously cut
off from it, to let the new organism assimilate it.
And this grew without destroying anything. To develop,
it did not require the destruction of any temporal institutions
and organisations. It aspired to change their soul, which
would react afterwards on the body; but for the moment it
was content to be formed of adherents allowed their own law
in things temporal, yet subject to the higher laws of the new
life. As in the first instance, when it appeared unreported in the
cave of Bethlehem, the Kingdom of God came into this world
without being noticed. It did not interrupt the course of
things; it was the seed which falls from the hands of the
early sower : it rolled, obscure seed that it was, under the
feet of the heedless passers-by, under the feet of the Caesars.
When these saw it putting forth its green shoots, they
spurned it with their heels, furiously or carelessly. But it
would have been a mistake to think that at first they attached
much importance to it. In the well-ordered paths of their
empire, this greenness was startUng; they raked it up, they
killed it; but if anyone had told them that here was the nur
sery for a universal forest, they would undoubtedly have
replied with a look of scorn.
The Church let them smile. She progressed day by day;
she passed from the narrow synagogue, where the Apostles
usually went down on their rounds of preaching, to the
enclosure, already morally enlarged, of the free catacombs.
Thence she passed to the throne, and beside it, and above it,
and also below it, to where the princes of thought sit in their
solitude. Everywhere, among slaves and philosophers, she made
adepts. From a group without visible cohesion she became a
society, a governing and doubly conquering power : conquer
ing inwardly, to enclose her matter more firmly and to com
municate to it a richer essence of life ; conquering outwardly,
to enlarge her circle of influence and realise progressively the

Ube Conquering Cbaracter of tbe Cburcb 77
tragic and sublime prophecy of the Master : When I shall be
lifted up from the earth, I will draw all things unto Myself.
Will this original power of expansion be afterwards extin
guished? must it be extinguished one day? and shall we see
our illuminating comparison recoil on us, so that the living
thing which is born, grows, slackens its progress little by
little, and finally wastes away and dies, will lead us to sup
pose that it will be thus with the Church?
Let us not think so. All comparisons are halting; there is
none among the things of experience that can express funda
mentally the things of the spirit. The Church is a living
thing, but it is a living thing sui generis. For the Spirit
which animates it is not one of those powers of life — like the
human soul — which relate only to a limited matter, for a
time, satisfied with starting it off, a living and defective
thing, like the bullet with a predetermined trajectory, on the
rapid adventure of life.
The vital idea called soul does not dominate its material
vehicle enough to contend for it indefinitely with its environ
ment, that is, against all natural activities, against nature as
a whole, which means to make something else of it. We
die because nature needs the matter of which we keep hold,
and cannot allow us to have it always. But the matter which
the Spirit of God animates, in the Church, has no other use
than that which He makes of it. All is for the elect. There
is no reason then why the Church should die. She is not
obliged to die. She evolves without ceasing, like an immortal
living thing. Her curve of development is not the parabola
of the projectile which at a given moment touches the ground ;
it is the hyperbola which flies off to infinity.
If then the Church be assimilated to a living thing, it is
needful to correct the formula. The Church is a living thing
which grows and never decays. Or rather, having its crises,
it decays in part here or there. But it has no old age, because
eternity is within it.
Now if the Church does not die, neither does its power of
assimilation. The soul of the Church, which is the Holy Spirit, is a
reservoir of inexhaustible force. It is equal in value to an
infinity of conquest, for it is an infinity of power.
Higher than the soul of the world whereof the old philo
sophers dreamed, which enveloped all the Visible within its
action, the Holy Spirit which animates the Church envelops
at once both the Visible and the Invisible, what is and what
is not, stretching out the possible to its widest extent, being
bounded, so far as it is Himself, only by the indefinite beyond
of aU bounds; finding in His terrestrial effort no effective
bounds except those we choose to oppose to Him, we who are

78 Ube Cburcb
called to unite our weakness to His strength, our dulness to
His inspiration.
His end, so far as He( works through Christ, the universal
Man, and through the Church, the organ of His continued
Incarnation, is to make sons of God, in Christ, and conse
quently in the Church, of all men; that is, according to the
phrase so often quoted in Scripture, to renew the face of the
earth. He can do this, so far as He is concerned, without
effort; He can do this, with us, if we wiU it, contributing the
conditions of duration and of submission to the inevitable
complexities of such a work.
If then a check ever occurred in the development of the
Church, it would be necessary to blame men for it, who would
have shown themselves either slack in the conquering work
which the Spirit always suggests, or refractory against the
effects of this action. Or else we should have to infer con
tingencies such as may always temporarily check the widest
flight. But in fact we have no need to recur to these explanations
in extremis.
At no epoch has the vitality of the Church ceased to mani
fest itself by new acquisitions. She has suffered losses, like
the living being whom sickness or a painful operation deprives
of a limb : but she has amply repaired them.
The number of her adherents has never ceased to grow.
The power of truth that is in her; her marvellous adapta
tion to the laws of life that makes her the most human and
practical of institutions just because she is divine ; the attrac
tion of the unlimited hopes of which she permits ; the amount
of desires which she satisfies, of natural aspirations for which
she provides an adequate and even a superabundant goal ; all
this is enougli to bring to her continually such beings of desire
as we are.
Not that every desire implies in itself the truth of what is
offered for its satisfaction; but the desire which brings men
to the Church, and through her to Christ, and through Christ
to God, is of the very being of man's heart, and nothing but
being satisfies being : nothing nourishes a living creature and
nothing quenches its desire except the food adapted to its
nature; grass for the herbivorous, flesh for the carnivorous;
for man. Divinity partaken of as truth and happiness.
So that, here, desire and truth meet. We only aspire to
God because He is our food. If this God lives in the Church,
through Christ, it is only normal, if we bring with us a soul
that is healthy, upright, disengaged from the complications
which may always accidentally confuse our brains, for us to
recognise Him and adore Him.
This is what the Saviour meant to say to the scornful and
distraught philosopher whom He found in Pilate : / was born.

Ube Conquering Cbaracter of tbe Cburcb 79
He says, and I am come into the world to bear witness to
the truth: whosoever is a son of the truth hears My
voice. We have only to ask why Christianity, starting out on its
career Uke the giant sun of the Bible, does not yet merit the
same praise as the star : Nothing escapes its heat.
But that is no great mystery, at any rate looking at the
matter broadly.
On the morrow of Pentecost, under the impress of the
great events which had just taken place, of the words which
had been heard, urged on by the outcries of the Cross, the
Twelve and their disciples of the first generations threw them
selves into the work with a conquering ardour which can be
recovered only rarely, and never in such a combination of
circumstances. Ordinarily a siege begins with a slow investiture and ends
with an assault. Here it is the contrary. First comes the
assault, because, in the moral and especially in the super
natural order, an initial manifestation is indispensable. The
Epiphany preceded the hidden life.
And then, the citadel is there, at the outset of the task;
Christianity is born under its walls ; the formidable power of
Rome, which can wipe out everything, must be overcome.
Afterwards the armies will scatter and act less feverishly.
The period of conquest is always followed by the period of
organisation. Administrative cares, even for things spiritual,
increase with the extension of accumulated riches.
Lastly, to these extremely general reasons, are added others
of the psychological and historical order, which explain why
everything does not continue to happen as it did at the start
of Christianity.
Individual Uberties become involved, just where the main
thing is adhesion, conversion of the heart. And without
doubt there is no reason why individual liberties, taken one by
one, should be better here than there ; but there are currents,
there are crises of good or evil will, in successive generations.
Many causes may concur to bring this about.
Now the cradle of the Gospel seems, from this point of view,
to have been providentially placed in one of the most favour
able of environments. All philosophies having become insol
vent, and the medley of cults assembled from all points of the
universe deeply rousing souls without having the means to
satisfy them, spiritual powerlessness and spiritual ardour
combine to prepare the ways of the Lord, to give an echo to
the word pronounced by Jesus in the court of the temple and
taken up by the Church : // any man thirst, let him come unto
Me, and drink.
Later on, the situations would often be different, and two
cases contrary to each other, but equally remote from the first.

8o Ube Cburcb
would present themselves, and result in a reduction of the
Church's influence.
On the one hand, the good deeds of the Church, the moral
and social results of its action, would filter through into its
still unconquered surroundings, and would be perpetuated in
separate environments, preventing them, however paradoxical
it may appear, from coming or returning to the Church.
This is paradoxical only in appearance. When a spring
gushes up, it makes plants arise, and then, little by little, a
forest. The forest, in its turn, retains the dampness, and
more than one shrub, if it could philosophise, would think the
spring useless.
We know that well ! How many people say to us : I have
no need of the Church; my moral life is established and
sufficient without her. They do not dream that their moral
life emanates from the Church by the mediation of a spiritual
environment, of an atmosphere which Christianity through
out the ages has penetrated with its aroma. So that their
reasoning comes to this : I can afford to despise my father,
for I have come into my heritage.
Only, as such heritages get dissipated, we see our own con
temporaries return to paganism, as a result of believing that
undenominational Christianity will do for them without
Christ. It is thus that our young Turks, our young Japanese,
and perhaps our young Chinese, receiving by infiltration social
qualities that in the first place sprang from the Gospel, may
think they can do without it, considering it merely as a stage
of development. We shall see the result. Young Turkey
shows it plainly enough already.
The other case is opposite to this. It is said in the Gospel :
To him that hath shall be given. Certain environments have
not enough moral basis to be ready for the Gospel. Be
numbed for ages; bent to coarse religious forms which have
blunted their feeling of need, they are vessels without handles
and bases, of which one knows not how to take hold.
There is indeed in each of them the fundamental desire, the
natural need which we have analysed and which the Gospel
ought to satisfy ; but the desire is only raised up to hope and
to search if it sees it to be possible, if it feels itself adapted for
it, experiencing by contrast the feeling of its emptiness. It
is a case of repeating the utterance to which Pascal makes the
Master give voice in the Mystery of Jesus: " You will not
seek Me if you have not already found Me. ' '
Often, in countries approached by missionaries, the preach
ing of the Gospel seems strange and inassimilable because its
value is too great in comparison. The souls of the dlite come
up to it; but the mass is refractory. One must wait. Some
moral shock or some slow awakening will serve to arouse
these peoples seated in the shadow of death and whom death

xrbe Conquering Cbaracter of tbe Cburcb 8i
holds. For the moment they are Uke the frozen Russian who
is not cold and does not want anyone to rub him. The order
of Warsaw, the peace of the moral cemetery is one of the
great enemies of the Church.
But the most powerful obstacle perhaps — and it is one that
is universal, which the Church has had and still has to face in
every age — is that which comes from politics.
Let us take this word in its widest sense, to signify the
national or racial particularisms which are repugnant to a
body which is exclusively spiritual ; but which is instinctively,
and as might be thought insuperably suspected of wishing to
dispossess the state, of wishing to constitute a state within
the state.
Among non-Christians, and also among dissident Christians,
this suspicion is all the easier to form, since all, as we have
seen, confound more or less completely, in teaching or in fact,
the spiritual and the temporal.
The missionaries who arrive in China represent, for the
mass, foreign devils; the Catholics of London are the Italian
Mission. In these conditions, for those who misuse such
phrases, it is not only inborn malice, which resists God; it
is the very good in their souls that checks what is best in
them. Besides the fear that it will demand sacrifices, the repudia
tion of habits of mind, the shaking off of a long heredity,
things painful enough in themselves, there are also in opposi
tion to the faith the more than respectable sentiments of
patriotism and race solidarity. Those among whom the
hierarchy of values is not well established, or who are be
wildered, will then of necessity be refractory. They will be
separated by virtue from the source of the highest virtues.
It is impossible in these few words to exhaust an infinitely
complicated question of fact : we mark certain tendencies, we
suggest what kinds of obstacles arrest for so long the ample
conqest which, given what the Church is, would appear to be
hers by right.
The Saviour often alluded to it when He opposed that
Messianic Judaism which was all imbibed from what, with
the Socialist Bernstein, might be called Catastrophism.
A moral catastrophe, a sudden manifestation of power, an
irresistible inrush of God, if one may so speak; that is what
the best of the Jews expected of their Messias. The others
expected only lucrative politics; not to pay tribute to Caesar
and to continue to prey upon others by usury.
Jesus opposes unceasingly to this conception that which the
ways of providence require; that which is suggested by
nature, also a work of God, and on which supernature is
modelled. 6

82 XTbe Cburcb
Grandiose evolution which starts from nothing; rapid pro
gress at certain moments and marking time or recoils at
others ; slo'sv overcoming of obstacles ; slow wearing away of
resistance; patience, tenacity and acceptance of the limits
imposed by a multitude of conditions enwound with one
another, like a forest of bamboos; such are the processes
of nature, and also of history, whether Christian or not.
All the parables of Jesus which relate to His work point in
this direction, and all His action confirms them. When He
works miracles. He intends indeed to prove His Mission; but
not to exercise it as it were by a moral constraint. To bursts
of splendour He opposes the invisible work of the seed in the
earth; to instantaneousness, slowness; to infallibility, the
relativity imposed by free will; to imminence, a far-off
indefiniteness. We can readily imagine that the Agony, in the Garden of
Olives, consisted in part of this vision, exasperating for a soul
on fire, of the millenary setbacks imposed on what He beheld
as essentially entirely present, and that His acceptation of the
terrifying future through which He had to pass to enter into
the views of a Providence in Whose eyes a thousand years are
as one day was included in that submissive word : Thy will,
O Father, not Mine, be done.
The last word about all this is that the Kingdom of God is
within us, and that us means not each of us singly, but all ;
the whole, with its inextricable insertions and interfacings.
If the world came to the truth all at once ; if it came
thereto only by a regular progress, that would undoubtedly
be a great miracle; but the work, though thus made more
divine on the one side, would be less so on the other, because
it would be less wise.
And more, it would not be the work undertaken; a work
for two, resting on the Incarnation. It would be feod with
out us, instead of God with us. And so it would no longer
be Religion, which is a bond between God and ourselves. It
would not, above all, be true religion, since humanity would
be espoused, not as it is, but garbled, on the pretence of
using it ; absorbed, for a supposed better success which would
really be a moral check to the work.
Never mind, life is there and awaits its living food. The
Spirit holds its light and heat in readiness to break forth
behind the dull and non-conducting asbestos of our hearts.
The Saviour stands at the door of our human soul, and knocks.
We refuse or forget to open here or there; but how many
are the light-dazed doors of the universe, in spite of those
to which the darkness clings !
There are those who say : It is aU up ! You have no more
Ufe in you. Faith is dying out ; our environment is becoming

XTbe Conquering Cbaracter of tbe Cburcb 83
dechristianised; Christ has lost ground among the ruUng
classes of Europe : when He comes, to quote your own text,
shall He find faith on the earth?
Those who speak thus mistake their own petty notions for
the compass of the world, and they do not even see the grow
ing disaffection for their negations and the marked renewal of
Catholic thought around them.
Chanticleer fancied that it was he who made the sun rise;
these people imagine that their denial makes the lights of
heaven set. They make a few timid folk around them think
so, and try to force us to do so also.
But looking further, without speaking of proofs near at
hand, we perceive that the flock of Christ, in this unbelieving
century, has grown with a wonderful fecundity. At least
twenty millions have united their voices to those who were
already chanting the eternal Credo throughout the world.
And it cannot be said that these are Barbarians, for whom
Catholicism is a stage that has to be traversed and a relative
progress destined to lead them to ours 1 Some peoples who
enjoy a large measure of so-called actual progress, such as
England and the United States, are invincibly drawn by this
Catholic life which seems so dead to our doctors of anti-
clericaUsm. There was a time when in the United States
you could hardly count a hundred thousand Catholics ; to-day
there are fourteen millions of them. This figure is explained
in part no doubt by immigration, but in part also by conver
sions. In a single parish of Washington, more than a hun
dred adults are baptised every year.
In England, the number of souls who return to the Church
each year is six thousand ; generally they belong to the higher
classes; they are often pastors, whose religion is one with
their position; who must therefore forsake all, renounce all
to obey their conscience. These are not primitive people who
are passing through their time of transition !
No, assuredly, the situation of the Church in the universe
is not what some small minds imagine. The material universe
and the universe of souls offer the Gospel enormous fields.
It advances there with unequal steps, perhaps ; halting some
times, whether to organise its acquisitions or to dress a
wound — divine wayfarer, always bleeding with the nails and
thorns of the Cross — but never giving up the next stage;
having its eyes always on the goal; counting on promises
which we alone, by our inveterate malice, can render vain;
knowing besides that the heart of man is not so hard, so
blinded to his own interest, so perverse that there is room
to despair of him.
So, knowing herself equal to the immensity of the universe,
to the immensity of time and the immensity of our hearts, the
Church is patient and does her work. Her tranquil ardour

84 XCbe Cburcb
seeks always to distribute the life she contains. But it is in
the deeps especially that she works, being assured that a little
group in whom the universal Spirit of her God thrills with
influence unabated better proves her catholicity than a federa
tion of empires would do, if there reigned in them the par
ticularism of castes, sects, nationalities, colours or egoisms.
And besides, in one respect, the two things go together.
The epochs when the Church seems to see her power of expan
sion lessened are generally those in which the interior life of
Christians is most tepid. The epochs of conquest are those
when the spirit of Christ is active within.
There is a lesson there for those who are genuinely anxious
as to the future of their Church. If they wish her to be effec
tively Catholic, let them be effectively Catholics themselves.

CHAPTER V
THE APOSTOLICITY OF THE CHURCH
WE now come to the fourth character which it is
usual to attribute to the Church.
Apostolicity: this word indicates immediately
to our mind what we mean by it. To justify
its use, we shall have only to appeal once more
to the nature of a religious society, which, if it were not
apostolic, would be nothing at all.
The Church is humanity religiously organised, under the
influence of the Spirit of the Saviour, and proceeding from
the latter as the supernatural Head of the race.
In this definition of the Church apostolicity is included,
since, as it claims to be a life emanating from the Saviour,
who plays the part of Head of the race, the Church has a
value only if it is actually connected with the Saviour in un
interrupted and authentic continuity.
Now the starting-point of this continuity is the choice of
the twelve Apostles, their investiture as representatives of
Jesus, their solemn mission and the regular establishment of
their succession, so far as authority is concerned ; of their
tradition, so far as the society as a whole is concerned.
It is the Twelve who establish the communication between
Christ and us. They weld the chain. They are the first
entirely human link. If there were a break in it, if the whole
chain did not hold to the first link, then neither would it hold
to the half Divine, half human keystone, Christ; neither
would it hold to God.
As it does claim to hold to it, it is not surprising that the
central authority among us should be called the Apostolic See,
and that the Church as a whole should claim a note of apos
tolicity without which it would not be authentically that syn
thesis of the Divine and the human inaugurated in Christ by
means of the Incarnation, and continued in us by that per
manent and social incarnation called the Church.
So we can see in the Gospel what importance the Saviour
manifestly attaches to the constitution of His group of dis
ciples. At first He had seemed to select them by chance. On the
bank of the Jordan, at the moment of His baptism; by the
lakeside in Galilee; at the receipt of custom at Capharnaum
or under the fig-tree at Cana, He said : Follow Me, and they
followed. Nevertheless even then He gave to each of them a
name characteristic of their mission, and by this prophecy
marked their place in His work in anticipation of the future.
But when He wishes definitely to establish the Apostolic
college. He passes a whole night on a hilltop in prayer ; in the
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86 XCbe Cburcb
morning. He makes His choice and determines their respective
offices. All His words mark the solemnity of His intentions.
You have not chosen Me, He says to them, but I have chosen
you. He that heareth you heareth Me, and he that despiseth
you despiseth Me. Whatsoever you shall bind on earth shall
be bound in heaven, and whatsoever you shall loose on earth
shall be loosed in heaven. Go and teach all nations, making
known to them all that I have commanded you. He that
shall believe and be baptised (that is, whoever is incorporated
in the new life) shall be saved, and he that believeth not (that
is, who is not incorporated in one way or another into the life
that I bring) shall be damned.
By these words and these deeds, to which many others were
added, Jesus denotes His will to attach Himself to the world
by means of the Twelve, to pass to the future over this
threshold. This noble commencement of the Christian ages, these
beginnings of our Collective life, filled with the living memory
and the effective influence of the Saviour, are called the
apostolic times. And that is the road through which comes
to us the divine life which one day touched earth at Bethlehem.
We shall get a better understanding of what is called the
apostolic character of the Church by a phrase which we have
already borrowed from the preface to Pascal's Traits du vide:
' ' Mankind is like one man who keeps on living and continually
learning. ' '
One man keeps his continuity through time. Every living
being is a continuous thing which unfolds itself, through a
series of states, in the unity of an organic plan which, taken
by itself, is unbroken. The automatism which carries on its
life is a kind of tradition derived from its begetter, and applied
as far as possible to perpetuating its characters.
There is formed thus, from father to son, then in the life
of the son in its various stages, and then further on still, a
continuous unity which is to the multiplicity of our lives what
the chain is to the beads of a continuous rosary, or, to use a
finer comparison, what an idea is to its successive incarnations.
In the case of things spiritual this continuity is properly
called tradition. When the spiritual thing concerned is the
religious action of the Saviour, tradition takes a unity which
human traditions show in no other case.
Every tradition is limited in extent save that which comes
from the Head of the race. Since in Jesus the race of the
sons of God is entirely contained as in its principle; since,
by merit and by influence. He is the universal Begetter of the
elect, the religious tradition which comes from Him has a
universal character. Nothing can belong to God, in prin
ciple at any rate, which is not included in this tradition. He

XCbe apostolicity of tbe Cburcb 87
is, as the Apostle calls Him, the new Adam, whose blood flows
in our veins; whose Spirit is our breath; whose merit mul-
tipUes our values, bearing up to the infinite the nothingness
that we are in ourselves ; whose mediative power sets Chris
tianity in motion from within, like the inextinguishable germ
which, from the beginnings of our race, enkindles life in
thousands of heads and hearts.
If we remember that Jesus is God, and that the Spirit which
He imparts to us is a living and eternal Spirit, we shall realise
how the continuity of the Church through time puts on a
form of unity which surpasses the unity of time, which fixes
the Christian life in that eternity whereof Plato said that time
is only its passing image.
Through God, the Church is above time, through Christ, it
comes into contact with time ; and it prolongs this contact by
means of the Apostles, and after them by means of the tradi
tion through which they stretch themselves out towards the
future. To call the Church Apostolic, then, is simply to call it
divine. Christian, traditional, in a word, one, in God, in rela
tion to time, as we have already called it one, in God, in
relation to space.
Apostolicity is only unity in the order of time, laying stress
on the point at which the Christian line is attached to Christ,
in the persons of the Twelve.
That is why the Protestants, who like ourselves are aware
of the impossibility of connecting themselves with God other
wise than through Christ, and with Christ otherwise than
through the Apostles, claim that it is they who are apostolic,
that it is they who hold to the true tradition from which the
Roman Church has turned aside.
But how are they going to justify this pretension, seeing
that they are individualists, and being individualists, cannot
be in continuity with anything?
Just now we will not dispute the fact that they profess the
doctrine of the Apostles. If we wanted to be malicious, we
might ask them : Which doctrine? They have so many of
them ! But that is not the question. To profess the doc
trine of anyone, to profess it by oneself, to practise it on
one's own sole responsibility, is not to be in social con
tinuity with him. A society demands something more than
a doctrine or a practice freely chosen in common. A society
requires organisation, authority, government, and the carry
ing on in common under that government of the activities
which represent the end of the society. In short a society is
a life in common, a symbiosis, as a savant might say.
For the Protestant there is no symbiosis, no life in common
for Christians. If such a common life is set going in

88 "Cbe Cburcb
Protestant sects, it is done arbitrarily, by the constitution of
groups which, according to Reformed theology, have no re
ligious function. There is no priesthood properly so called;
every man is his own priest. There are no bishops to con
tinue the line of the Apostles. There is no Pope, the suc
cessor of Peter. Even if all these things are not discarded,
they are only mimicked. How then can they speak of
apostolicity in the profound and full sense which our Catholic
theology implies?
The same disadvantage is always turning up, because in
truth its consequences make themselves felt in every field.
To declare that each of us is attached to Christ directly, as
an individual, really impelled by the Spirit, but with this
Spirit acting in each person separately, with no social organ,
and consequently with no continuity either in space or in
time; to speak thus is clearly to suppress the religious im
portance of the Apostles.
Suppose that there had been a break between Christ and
us ; suppose that His teaching, as contained in the Gospel,
were exhumed in our day from some collection of archives ; a
Protestant, by getting possession of the volume and reading
it in the light of the Spirit, could begin his Christian life.
Not so a Catholic. Why? Because the Protestant is
governed by the individualist principle, and the Catholic by
the social principle. Because the solitary Protestant can
entrust himself to a book, and the Catholic requires a life to
which he is joined, a life which the sacred book assists in
nourishing, but which it cannot cause to come into being,
since it has no value except in and through the Church. " I
should not believe the Gospel," said St. Augustine, "were I
not moved to do so by the authority of the Church."
The Protestant, exposed, as he claims, to the action of
heaven, thinks that he is sufficient to himself. The Catholic
only feels himself under heaven and in close relation with it
if he is in the organised group which God animates, the group
of which Christ is head, of which Christians of all ages are
members, since this group has its unity in time as it has its
unity in space, seeing that it is One in Him who belongs to
all times, Christ; one, through Christ, with Him who rules
over and unifies all times, God.
As My Father has sent Me, so also I send you, said the
Saviour. As His own mission prolongs God to us by an
Incarnation which makes one unity of God and man ; so the
mission of the Apostles prolongs Christ to us, as well as God
who is joined to Him, making one unity, in God and in Jesus,
between all the human beings of all ages.
That is what apostolicity is. Luther and Calvin under
stood nothing of this ; they broke the chain. Their God is an

tIbe Hpostolicit^ of tbe Cburcb 89
individualist God. Their Christ is a far-off person, to whom
they are bound only by a book. And in these conditions their
apostles are nothing to them but Protestants before Protes
tantism, isolated from each other, isolated from us, who are
ourselves isolated. This is their substitute for the great
common life which in the Catholic conception enfolds all
times and places in its wide embrace.
The eternal person of Pascal, transposed into the super
natural, is a thought of deeper import than the thought of the
Reformers. To reform in this fashion, to reform a life by suppressing it,
by reducing its elements to the state of inconsistent scraps, is
a strange reformation !
The Protestants have reformed like the branch which, dis
content with its tree, violently tears itself away and scatters
all its leaves on the ground. A better method would have
been to strengthen the sap in the branch and to work on the
whole tree by exposing the docile bough to the influences of
heaven. All the world would have profited by a deep reform
brought about after this fashion. That of Luther impoverished
the Christian tree and slew the branch which did not fear to
incur the sentence of the Master : The branch cannot bear
fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine.
But here let us leave our unhappily separated brethren.
Let us realise for ourselves the wonderful union which God
establishes between the grapes of the whole bunch, thanks
to the sap which runs through the sacred vine, by the Twelve,
whom He has grafted into it, and communicating to us thy
nourishing essences, O divine soil, loving and ineffable Ceres
who bearest men and their harvests ; who nourishest their life
with the food of truth and love; who givest them all things,
distributing only down the ages, as a higher gift, the growth
of that Gift which is Thyself.
If it is true, as Spencer"^ wrote, that " Ecclesiasticism repre
sents the principle of social continuity," that it consecrates
" the authority of the dead over the living," that it " sanctifies
the authority of the past over the present ' ' ; and that conse
quently one of its functions is to " preserve the organised
product of primitive experiences against the changing effects
of the experiences of the present," we can see what religious
value Apostolicity expresses for us. It is the authority of
the great dead, the symbolic judges of the twelve tribes of
Israel ; and through them it is the authority of the greatest of
the Dead; He who lives again, but remains invisible; and
through those holy dead, it is the authority of the immortal
Living One, communicated to us according to the laws of
1 Principles of Sociology, p. 130.

90 Ube Cburcb
visibility, of sociability, and hence, too, of continuity which we
ought to see in it.
Thanks to these chosen men, who came forth from the high
dwelling-place of Mount Sion to conquer the world and the
ages, God is with us, holding fast through Christ to the
whole of humanity.
All that God possesses is ours; what the past has received
is close to us.
By this continuity, which makes us as it were the con
temporaries of the Apostles, the Apostles, and through them
all the good things of which they were the depositaries, are
the contemporaries of all times.

CHAPTER VI
THE "ROMAN" CHURCH
THE note of ApostoUcity is further defined by
another. We say : The One, Holy, Catholic,
Apostolic and Roman Church.
This Roman character of the Church is that for
which it is most bitterly reproached by some. We
shall have to say why this is so; but before discussing the
mark, let us understand it.
The Roman Church means : The Church united to the
Apostles, of whom the Head was Peter, Bishop of Rome;
and she therefore has as her head through the ages the suc
cessor of Peter, the Bishop of Rome.
There is no mystery about this. It is a question of tracing
back Apostolicity to its centre. Is it not necessary, in order
truly to connect our religious association with the primitive
group which acted as the embryo of the Church, to attach it
to that primitive group's centre of unity, represented by
Simon Peter?
At no moment of its existence has the Church been an
anarchy. It is true that at its beginnings we do not find an
organisation such as we see before our eyes to-day; but it
was there in rough outline. An outline does not mean the
same thing in little, as some people fancy — as if we ought
to find in the primitive Church everything on a smaller scale,
the Cardinalate, the Congregation of the Index, a pontifical
power as defined as ours. To such views as these, quite un
scientific, as must be admitted, and very manifestly contra
dicted by history, we are by no means bound. We do not find
in an acorn tiny branches bedecked with tiny leaves and sup
ported by a tiny trunk. The organic urge of a living being is
not a simple unfolding. Anaxagoras thought that it was, but
science believes it no longer.
What there was in the Primitive Church was a primitive
church, that is, a seed endowed with an active tendency to
become what we see before our eyes to-day. A seed defined
in itself, possessing its own characters and a beginning of
organisation, so that the existing order might arise from it by
a concourse of circumstances which would bear the same
relation to the primitive seed as the earth and the air to the
plant. In the embryo Church what was it then which represented
the central authority that is the bond of our Church to-day?
It was the primacy of Simon Peter : it was his particular
situation in relation to the Twelve and to the disciples who
were joined to them in the Saviour's name. Feed My sheep:
feed My lambs, Jesus had said to him by the lakeside, when,
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92 Ube Cburcb
after His resurrection and about to leave His own. He
assigned to them their places in His scheme. And all tradi
tion has understood this to mean : Be the shepherd of the
shepherds, as well as of the flock.
Moreover, a word of the first importance, clearer even than
this, had been spoken some months before at Cesarea Philippi.
After Peter had solemnly confessed Christ, replying for the
Twelve as their natural and inspired mouthpiece, Jesus had
responded to his declaration thus : And I say unto thee that
Thou art Peter, and on this rock I will build My Church, and
the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.
To speak thus was not to found the Church upon a pun, as
some derisive critics pretend. It was the renewal of a
prophecy already contained in the symbolic name which had
been given to this Apostle at the moment of his calling.
Thou shalt be called Peter, or Rock, meant even then : Thou
shalt be the foundation of My work.
We must insist now on the continuance of this r61e, which
Protestants want to consider as a personal one, and which,
according to the words of Jesus, shows itself to be as durable
as the Church itself, which will endure as long as men dwell
on the earth : Thou art the rock, and on this rock I will
build My Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail
against it.
What is said here as to the eternal continuance of the
Church is said only to emphasise the eternal continuance of
the office attributed to Peter.
As the foundation of the house endures as long as the house
itself, so Peter will continue, in himself or in his successors,
in his function, we may say, the foundation of this Church,
against which the gates of hell will not be able to prevail,
and that for this very reason — namely, the solid jfpundation
which God gives it. As long as Peter is there, the Church
will be there; as long as his part is played, the Church will
remain firmly established, and reciprocally as long as the
Church subsists, it will be supported by the Rock which is
its first common stratum.
On the very morrow of the Saviour's death, Peter
inaugurates his r61e of spiritual founder; he confirms his
brethren's faith in the resurrection of Jesus, the starting-
point of life in him throughout the ages to come.
According to Paul and Luke, he is the first who adheres to
the mysterious life of the Saviour and who communicates to
the others faith in this fundamental dogma. In this symbolic
fact the Fathers of the Church saw the first effect of the
primacy which was to mark its character more and more
clearly until the Vatican Council defined it in a final formula.
Now betwixt this primacy and the Roman character of our
Church there is only the stoutness of a solitary fact, and truly

Ube "IRoman" Cburcb 93
a fact of such importance that the world's future was changed
thereby and that keen disputes have been instituted in our
time for and against its reality and its signification. That
fact is the coming of St. Peter to Rome.
By coming to Rome, either a short time before his death
or twenty-five years earUer, as has long been believed; by
fixing there, in any case, his official seat, Peter gives to this
office its future claimants. The heredity, which cannot be
personal in this case, will be real, in the juridical sense of the
term ; it wiU be attached to the seat. The Bishop of Rome
wiU be the legitimate successor of Peter, as the son of a king
is the legitimate successor of the king. And in this wise the
continuity of the Church's government will be ensured by the
continuity of succession of the Bishops of Rome.
It is not therefore necessary that the Popes should live at
Rome. The fact that Rome is the point of departure of this
successive continuation would suffice, even though Rome were
wrested from our Pontiffs, even though it were destroyed, to
enable our Church to be called Roman, which means, once
more, Petrine, that is. Apostolic by antonomasis, and so
authentically Christian, divine.
It is in this sense that the Fathers of old said : Where
Peter is, there is the Church; Ubi Petrus, ibi Ecclesia. This
means : Where the centre is, there is the circle ; where the
central authority is, there is the society.
It cannot fail to be noticed, even after the passing of long
centuries, how providential was the choice of Rome as the
centre of Catholicity, as the origin of the whole movement of
conquest and of organisation, extension and concentration of
the universal Church.
Jerusalem, that Oriental town of the world's religious past,
was the starting-point of the sacred initiative, it was not its
centre. In the east the sun dawns; but it is in the south at
mid-day that the continuance of the daylight, the regular
distribution of brightness, the power of shining upon all
things, and the ordering of life on the earth become plain.
Rome is the full south of the Christian sun.
What Rome was for the world, a centre, that Peter was
for the Church; and as Urbs, the City par excellence, beamed
over the world and addressed the proclamations of its masters
Urbi et Orbi; so would the Church do in spiritual things.
The opportunity would arise; it did arise, and it is thanks
thereto that Rome is still Rome; but it is equally thanks
thereto that the Church, humanly speaking, is the Church.
Not that Catholicism could not have been established other
wise, or elsewhere; but God is not in the habit of passing
over the instruments that His providence has prepared in
order to make use of others. The work of temporal civilisa-

94 Ube Cburcb
tion and that of religion find their meeting-place in Him; He
aids them by means of each other.
In that sense it is quite true to say that the conquest of
Rome by the Church has been for her the road of the future,
the most powerful means of universality and of concentration
into one.
On the other hand, if Rome still exercises to-day that
miraculous attraction which makes of her not the Italian cittdi,
but a world-city profiting by the universal consensus of attrac
tion and admiration, to what is that due?
The great conquered cities of history, Memphis, Thebes,
Nineveh, Babylon, Athens even, have perished or atropied.
Thanks to the evangelic Rock, Rome rose ever higher. She
mounted to the world of the Spirit and remains there. The
sceptre of the Cross has been of more profit to her than her
eagles. She had by her arms conquered the shores of the
Mediterranean, admirable and fertile, but after all narrow;
by the Spirit she conquered the distant world, she entered
into communication with the Worlds. And what she had lost
in the first coalition of peoples against her, when she has
transposed it into the spiritual, she confides to eternity.
There is in this an application of the axiom that Grace does
not destroy Nature, but completes it. God crowned human
effort anterior to Christ and the civilisation that was its fruit
by making the capital of the civilised world the capital of
Christendom, and hence a former of the future.^
*****
It is certain that at the beginning of its Roman life, the
Apostolic institution showed scarcely any signs of the primacy
so strongly asserted to-day. The bond between the Bishop
of Rome and the first shepherds of the churches was very
loose. We have already stated the general reason of this; the
embryo is not the man. There are also particular reasons
into which we cannot enter here. The apostolic regime gave
to each of those who had been in personal contact with Jesus,
who had heard His words, a sort of universal r61e analogous
to that of Jesus Himself. A church which had one of the
Twelve at its head felt itself secure from any deviation. To
have recourse to Rome, a thing difficult in those times, did not
seem indispensable. And yet we find numerous traces of it,
but they are comparatively slight, as was to be expected.
And this regime lasted some time longer in the case of the
immediate successors, who naturally profited by the habits
that had been acquired, and also incurred the handicap that
we have pointed out.
' If we remember Pascal's three orders of greatness, we may see in ancient
Rome the greatness of the flesh, in Athens the greatness of the mind, and in
Christian Rome 'Cm greatness of charity.

tTbe "iRoman" Cburcb 95
It is hardly until the fourth^ century that the power of
Rome is clearly exercised. The power of the other bishops
then becomes more special to their own churches, more local ;
that of the Bishop of Rome becomes proportionally universal-
ised, in order to satisfy the new needs of a growing unity and
of a complexity of functions which requires a stronger cen
tralisation. It was at the Vatican Council that the situation of the
Papacy was established on its definitive basis. The dissen
tients had protested for a long time. They were right; for
this was the last blow dealt at the particularism whereof they
had constituted themselves champions.
Of course they never understood the matter in that light.
It was Rome that triumphed, and Rome was an Italian town.
They pretended that it meant the triumph of an Italian faction.
As a sample of strict reasoning, this is a capital sorites.
In London Anglicans call the Catholic body the Italian
mission. The people who speak thus are the same that used
to call Edward VII., and who to-day call George V. an
apostolic sovereign. Those who have Anglicanised the
universal Church reproach us with having Italianised it, and
the same-was said by those who acted in like manner, those
who wished to Germanise the Church, to Gallicise it, in short,
to divest it of its own character in order to absorb or to
destroy it.
At the bottom of their hearts, all these folk, assuming they
are sincere, must feel the operation of that particularist
spirit which they reproach the Church with desiring to con
secrate, just when she is casting it aside. Far from the
exaltation of Rome having Italianised religion, it has worked
its greater universalisation, by leading back to the ocean,
where Peter's ship sails, the streams which flow so sluggishly
through their national plains.
It cannot be denied that abuses have existed. Some flat
terers may have sent up to Rome an incense of doubtful
quality. Some Italianising camarillas, buzzing like gadflies
around the Holy See, have tried to compromise it, and have
sometimes managed to succeed in spite of it. Or again, a
more honourable failing, some excellent souls, in the
enthusiasm of a victory for unity that was rightly considered
most valuable, have used its effects to excess ; like the child,
who, after discovering the purpose of some object, makes
use of it continually and abuses it. All this is human. But
would it be equitable, would it be serious to judge a secular
institution from its petty details?
If we raise the level of the argument, as is fitting in a
' In our days this is the date practically decided on, after the critics had
tried to put it back by several centuries.

95 Ube Cburcb
matter of such import, we must agree that Ultramontanism,
as it has been called, when crossing the mountains to bear its
spiritual homage to Rome, frees itself, simply and definitively,
from religious nationalism, a pagan conception, in order to
cleave to that unitive universalism which is the foundation of
Christian thought, by recognising the common father.
And Providence, as if it had desired this comment to be
underlined, permitted that the moment when spiritual Rome
triumphed should be also the moment when political Rome
escaped from the domination of the Popes.
Mark well what we say. We do not make excuses for the
spoilers; and we do not forget that the present situation of
the Holy See, in protest and without accepted juridical status,
is as untenable as that of the Church in France. But we do
say that, providentially, this political spoliation of the Holy
See, coinciding with its exaltation at the Vatican Council,
helps to emphasise the exclusively spiritual character of the
Roman Primacy, and thereby the universal, and not Italian,
sense that must be accorded to it.

CHAPTER VII
THE PROGRESSIVE CHARACTER OF
THE CHURCH
IS the Church's Apostolicity, with its Roman character,
in directing our attention towards the past, going to
prevent us from thinking of her future and from ascrib
ing progress to her ?
That would be a great mistake.
Our Church is progressive precisely because she is Apos
tolic. If it be true that, looking from our standpoint back
to the Apostles, she seems to come to us, then, considered
from theirs and looking towards us, she seems to go forward ;
and to imagine her journeying thus through time like a cart
loaded with unchangeable luggage would be to ignore her
nature and to deny that note of apostolicity which we have
represented as the real growth of a seed.
The kingdom of heaven on earth is like unto leaven meant
to raise all the dough. It is like a grain of mustard-seed
which becomes a tree ; these are the comparisons of our
Saviour Himself. So is the Kingdom of God, He said, as
if a man should cast seed into the earth, and should sleep
and rise, night and day, and the seed should spring and grow
up while he knoweth not. For the earth of itself bringeth
forth fruit, first the blade, then the ear, and afterwards the
full corn in the ear. And when the fruit is brought forth,
then he putteth in the sickle, for the harvest is ripe (Mark iv.
26-29). The image is a clear one. The sower is God, and God does
not change, but the seed changes. It does not change in
nature, the grain of wheat or the fruit-stone does not become
an acorn; but first a green shoot, then a feeble plant, then a
bush, then a tree, in the manner and to the extent that its
essence aUows.
We must then study this evolutionary character, no less
essential to the Church than its Apostolicity, which is its other
side. As to the tradition from the Old Law to the New, from the
preparations of Judaism to the blossoming of Christianity,
St. Thomas Aquinas refers to that disposition of Providence
which conducts aU things little by little {quodam temporali
successionis ordine) from imperfection to perfection, as it
does ourselves from childhood to maturity.^ He means thus
to recall the saying of St. Paul : The (Jewish) law was our
pedagogue in Christ (Gal. iii.).
Truth to tell, the contrary of what we mean might be
' Prima Secundce, Q. CVI., 3.
97 7

98 Zbc Cburcb
inferred from this remark, namely, that Judaism was imp(
feet, but that Christianity is perfect, that it has been so frc
the start, and that consequently thefe is no scope for requ
ing an evolution in the Church in the sense of a greal
unfolding of truth, of the better adaptation of institutions
their ends, of a fuller achievement of Christianity individi
and social, under all the forms that human life animated
the Spirit of God permits.
In fact, the same St. Thomas, continuing the Pauline coi
parison of the child and the man, declares that the youth
religion, like the youth of man, is the time of its richest mai
festations, and that the Apostles, the Fathers of the Churc
those who were nearest to the Saviour, were more profound
Christian than we are or than men will be after us.
In regard to the conquering character of the Church, i
have said something of this sort already. Pascal laid stre
on it when in his preface to the Trait6 du vide he express
himself with so much force on the one hand against those wl
dare not invent anything new in physics : on the other, again
" the insolence of those foolhardy folks who produce nov(
ties in theology."
This was the thought also of Bossuet, in his argume
against the variations of Protestantism, when he said : " T
truth that comes from God has perfection at its commenc
ment. ' ' He might have added, like Pascal : The forms
life that come forth from God have their perfection at the
commencement; religion, in all that it is, has its perfectic
at its commencement, since it comes from God, who is Pe
fection itself.
We have no wish to set up our own opinion against that
such minds as these, nor to slight that notion of fixity whii
has been seen to be so necessary. But in this matter the
are ambiguities to clear up, and to shrink from them is
run a risk which, for all that it is less serious than the firs
in theory, may no less be mortal.
What is Religion? — It is a relation bet'ween man and Go
This sole generic definition ought to show us that religion
fixed on one side and in evolution on the other. It is fix
inasmuch as it comes from God and relates to God. It
also fixed inasmuch as it binds to God that foundation
humanity in us which does not change, which is identical
the savage and the civilised man, the black, the white or t
yellow man, the man of yesterday and the man of to-day, t
instructed and the ignorant, the wife and her husband, and
short in whoever participates in what we call human nature.
And as this is the principle of religion, its fundamental a:
specific character, we may say, in short : Religion does r
change; it is perfect from the start.

Ube progressive Cbaracter of tbe Cburcb 99
As soon as revelation was completed — and we believe that
it was completed in the Cenacle — the cycle of religious pro
gress, properly so caUed, is closed; henceforth there is only
room for the utilisation of religion, and this utilisation will
be progressive or otherwise according as free individuals or
peoples wish it to be so.
But the truth is not exhausted by this point of view. It
is the main point, no doubt ; but the main point, although the
main point, is not everything. Indeed, what is accessory in
itself may in certain circumstances become principal in its
turn. As if we were to say : It is accessory to travel on foot
or in a vehicle, provided that one makes one's journey; but
if I have robbers behind me, I look for a motor-car. So, the
question of religious progress, accessory in itself in relation
to the one thing necessary, has become to-day for many a
question of life or death. Is it not necessary for us to face it?
Let us repeat then that the divine point of view of religion
and its unchangeable humanity do not exhaust every con
sideration relative to it.
If God is unchangeable in all respects, and if man is un
changeable in something, namely, in his fundamental constitu
tion, which is precisely that whereby he touches God; yet man
is changeable also in other respects, and these are not un
related to the former. There is continuity and interdepend
ence between what changes, in us, and what remains. That
is exactly why progress, badly conducted, can bring with it
the ruin of the faith, and the faith, misunderstood, can
become the enemy of progress.
So long as our knowledge, our moral feelings and our
methods of action evolve constantly, under the pressure of
the interior and exterior happenings which make up our col
lective life, can it be supposed that the religious life, whereof
we have already said that it assimilates everything to itself in
order to give all things their direction, will not itself submit
to evolution, as every living thing evolves by reason of the
conditions imposed on its development by a variable environ
ment? Our permanent comparison throws light on this case as it
does on the others. The Church, immense living creature
that it is, makes up its life in human fashion of what it assimi
lates or abandons.
There is something fixed in it, namely, its essential vital
idea, if we may thus express it ; its dogma, its hierarchy, its
worship in their fundamental and independent aspects, and
consequently in regard of aU temporal circumstances. In
this is the part of the Holy Spirit who is given to us ; in this
is the spiritual leaven which, when incorporated in mankind,
wills to renew in us and through us the face of the earth.

100 Ubc Cburcb
But if there is thus something fixed, there is also some
thing- transient and perpetually renewable in the Church's
life, and that is the human element which all through the
centuries puts itself at the service of this life which is incor
porated with it for the moment, but has no more right to fix
it in one of its stages than the food our body assimilates to-day
has to arrest the vital current which flows always, identical
under all its incessant transformations.
We must understand, then, that this word perfection, as
applied to the Church, does not bear the same meaning as the
word perfection applied to God, even though God is in the
Church. God is wholly God, and the word perfection as
applied to Him is therefore taken absolutely, without restric
tion or possible ambiguity. But God with us, in the Church,
is no longer God alone, but also us, so that the perfection of
this human-divine compound is a relative perfection, a per
fection which grows, although it does so around fixed points.
What do we mean, at bottom, when we say that the Catholic
religion, whose organ the Church is, is a perfect religion ? In
speaking thus it is our intention to oppose the Catholic
religion to the non-Christian religions on the one side, to
heretical and schismatical deviations on the other. We claim
that before the Catholic Church or beside her, although there
were religious values, a thing we certainly do not deny, they
were only imperfect, incomplete, as if we called a man an
imperfect man because he lacked a limb.
All religions saving ours lack some essential thing. Either
they are ignorant of God, like the pagan religions, or they
are ignorant of man, like Protestantism, which makes an
individual of him when in reality he is a society; or they
are ignorant of the real relation between God and man, like
Buddhism, which desires to unite us to God by suppressing
ourselves. And so of the others.
CathoUcism is a perfect religion in this sense, that it has
seen all that has to be seen, taken into account all that has
to be taken into account in the fundamental constitution of
man and the general direction of his life.
The synthesis of God and man, which is the goal of religion,
Catholicism realises to a perfect extent, inasmuch as the
coincidence is established between all that is man in relation
to God and all that is God in relation to man, considering the
latter always fundamentally.
But who does not see how much scope that leaves for pro
gress, and far from being opposed to it, makes an appeal to
it? In the sense in which we use the word, a well-made
child is also a perfect man ; a well-organised society is a per
fect society ; an animal which is fitted for all the functions of
its species is a perfect animal. Does it follow from this that

Ube iC>rogressiv>e Cbaracter of tbe Cburcb loi
the child has not to grow, the society to progress, the animal
to develop?
The Church, issuing from an uncertain or misguided re
ligious atmosphere; freed from the narrow synagogue in
which the world's future was stifling; estabUshed by Christ in
the perfection of its human-divine essence and ready to defend
it against all the deviations that would tend to mutilate it;
the Church, I say, must now urge itself towards the perfec
tion of its development, which, we might say, has hardly
begun, which has the ages before it, and which, after earthly
trial, must attain to a state of completed perfection, since the
perfection attributed to its beginnings is only a starting-point,
and the perfection wherewith we say that it is endowed to-day,
to-morrow, at any time, is only a stage among stages.
Let us recaU what the Gospel says of the Saviour : He
increased in age and wisdom before God and man. Does
that mean that the Incarnation was only realised in Him in
stages? Surely not. But His human-divine nature, perfect
from the start, only bore its human fruits little by little.
Now this simile is illuminating. It is quite to the point,
for the Church is Jesus Christ continued ; it is the Incarnation
carried on as far as ourselves under a social form.
If then Jesus grew in age and wisdom before God and man.
His Church must also grow in wisdom, as well as in age, before
God and man.
The social Incarnation which the Spirit of God realises in
the Church is perfect in one sense, and always capable of
greater perfection in another. It may always be better
understood, better organised, may always act more efficiently.
" We must not," as St. Thomas says, completing his thought
referred to a little while back, " consider the work of the
Incarnation exclusively as the term of a movement going
from the imperfect to the perfect, but also as a beginning of
perfection for human nature."^
And let us remark well that by thus expressing ourselves we
are not turning towards religious evolutionism as Modernism
understands it, as heretics understand it.
In what does the difference consist? It consists just in
this point. Religious evolutionism consists in making religion
vary; we on our side wish to develop it in its very essence.
Religious evolutionism introduces novelties, that is, dog
matic, ritual or governmental elements which do not proceed
from the primitive germ ; which are added from without, like
the snowball that grows bigger as it roUs. Our idea of
development, on the contrary, maintains the identity of re
ligious dogma, rite and government with those which the
primitive germ bears with it. It only witnesses the revelation
* Summa Theologica, III. pars, Q. I., art. 6 ad 2™.

102 TLbc Cburcb
of the value which that germ contains, the incorporation of
the things outside it which are assimilable to it, and by
assimilable it means capable of entering into its law, of sup
porting its life and enriching it while leaving it itself — like
food, not like a strange body or a poison.
Evidently, what is thus incorporated with the Church's life
is indeed in a way a new thing, but it is not a novelty in the
sense in which all our religious authorities use the term in
order to oppose it. A novelty is a foreign element which
remains foreign, as it is not assimilable; the new thing is an
element which becomes assimilated, and which then leaves
religion, enriched by it, to its own proper essence.
Now in this way we may say that CathoUcism has an
indefinite life before it; that this life must be a progress; a
progress in dogma, in religious discipline, in morals, in every
thing. When this truth is insisted on, everyone accepts it; but in
practice an immense group forgets it, being desirous of
remaining, on the pretext of the fixity of religion, in states of
mind that have perished, subject to orders that have become
oppressive, of continuing practices that have lapsed.
The least drawback of this attitude is that by thus remain
ing stationary in the midst of a universe on the march, we
take the risk of ranging ourselves — and in the name of Christ,
ironically enough — among the cripples of the army of man
kind. But the greatest danger is that the souls of little
faith, and a fortiori the souls without faith, may confound our
position with that of the Church herself, and seeing us
dragging behind through being unable to live our religion in
the temporal surroundings that are imposed on us, they may
come to deny that religion is an article of life; in which case
we have caused God to be blasphemed, by preventing Him
from making manifest in us the proof of His vivifying eternity.
A true Christian must no more be one of those who favour
hanging back than one of those who rush forward so quickly
that they leave the battle behind them.
With the aid of that wisdom which can hold us back from
both extremes, we can avoid this twofold peril.
With our eyes fixed on the unchangeable truth, but seeking
always to understand it better, to put it in relation with all
things, in a word, to live it, we must be Christians of to-day.
and of all days, apostolic and progressive; fixed to the rock
of Peter, and not refusing, by paying out more cable, to face
the deep sea more and more.
Tossed about in its mists, and remembering, as in the
Ligende des Si&cles, The old iron ring on the sunlit quay,

Zbc progressive Cbaracter of tbe Cburcb 103
we must be sure that we do not slight those venerable moor
ings by turning our eyes towards the deep. The man of
progress is all the more the son of a Church that is unchange
able and yet ever in full sail; keeping and discovering the
truth, faithful to one attitude, and yet in spite of all friendly to
free action, and lastly, eternal through time, because she is
the daughter of Him who has in His person joined eternity to
time, the divine and human Mediator, Jesus Christ.

CHAPTER VIII
THE DOGMATIC CHARACTER OF THE
CHURCH
WE have not yet finished bringing to light the
fundamental characters of our Church. After
dealing with its traditional notes, to avoid
ambiguity, we must bring forward and justify
three properties which belong to it, in the first
place because it is a society; in the second because it is a par
ticular society, having one definite goal to reach by working
in such a way as to manifest its nature.
We propose to speak of the dogmatic character of the
Church, of its governmental character and of its ritual or
sacramental character. This last is so important and cen
tral that we must consecrate to it two sections of our work.
The two former will also be referred to again in various con
nections, but we must make place for them immediately.
We will begin with dogma.
The Church has often been reproached for its dogma, as if
it were an incubus on religious thought and feeling, which
latter, it is pretended, has no need of being fixed in formulas
which sooner or later will fall awayy while religion remains;
which have a statutory form, instead of that free movement
which is fitting for the life of faith ; which appear to set up a
super-science above science itself, and, as a result of this,
constantly take the risk of coming into conflict with it,
whereas independence of all that is human and moral char
acter are the first attributes of religion.
These objections, which are offered in a more or less
absolute sense, come from liberal Protestantism ; radical
Modernism makes them its own, and others, without quite
consenting to them, hold with them to a greater or less extent.
To make them ours we should have to renounce our con
ception of the Church as a society; a spiritual society, a
human-divine society.
For this sole reason, that the Church is a society, and not
a collection of individuals without any real bond between them,
it is oblfged to have dogma.
Every society has a dogma, for every society has its own
laws, which are based on a certain conception of the common
life, on the objects which this life has in view and on con
sequences which are deduced from these principles. All the
grounds on which the decrees of the society are based are so
many dogmas. 104

TLbe dogmatic Cbaracter of tbe Cburcb 105
But it is evident that a spiritual society, such as the Church,
has much more need of dogmas even than a natural society,
such as a nation, seeing that the spiritual society, which is
superimposed on an already existing natural society, is com
pelled to justify its existence by proclaiming its raison d'itre.
But where is this raison d'itre to be found, except in the
realisation of higher ends, and consequently in things superior
to judgement, either in themselves or in their relation to us?
The r61e of dogma'^ is to define these ends, and the method of
action they imply.
Do those who wish to see its abolition think it possible to
institute a common life without conceiving or stating a
reason? He that draws nigh to God, said St. Paul — he
means through the medium of religion — must believe that He
is, and there is the first article of the Creed — I believe in
God — and that He is a rewarder, that is the last — I believe
IN life everlasting. Between these two will come all the
rest. Since man is a reasoning creature, no form of life can fail
to assume in his regard an intellectual aspect. Those who
reduce religion to a state of feeling would do well to tell us
where they obtain a feeling which does not transmute itself
into an idea, or which is not the outcome of an idea.
Man is one; no feeling can live in him which is not sooner
or later justified. If then it be proved, as we have attempted
to show, that religious life must be embodied in a collective
organism, the Church, it is only necessary to add that man is
a thinking being in order to conclude that religious life must
be embodied in a collective organism which will think out its
religion, and justify it by beliefs.
Now this thought, this justification of religious action and
of collective religious feeling, is dogma. ^
In the third place, since the Church is not merely any sort
of society, not only a spiritual society in the human sense;
' It is not without reason that the singular is used here rather than the
plural : for the dogmas or particular beliefs imposed by the Church are only
the unfolding of its intellectual soul, if one may so say ; they are the conse
quences of the position that the Church takes up, intellectually, in regard to
the human life it has to govern. It is because the Church proposes to itself
ends superior to those of our temporal activities that it is distinguished from
civil societies, with which the churches of antiquity were confounded, and
that dogma is distinguished from legal preambles, a thing which even Socrates
has not understood.
^ 'Whereby it is evident that dogma is distinguished from private belief in
the same way as socialised religion is from anarchic religion, as Catholicism
from Protestantism. Protestants have beliefs ; they have no dogma, because
belief for them has no authentic means of translating itself into law. ' ' Ortho
dox " Protestantism is a contradiction of the very principle of Protestantism,
as Auguste Sabatier has well shown. ( Cf. Esquisse d'une philosophie de la
Religion : Qtiest-ce gu'un Dogme .?)

io6 tlbe Cburcb
but more than this, a society founded on the Incarnation, and
itself a continued incarnation thanks to the Spirit of Christ
which lives in her, we have a new reason, firstly, for affirm
ing the necessity of 4ogma anew, secondly, for characterising
it by calling it revealed, which cuts short every idea of varia
tion, and consequently replies to one of the objections we
have just noted.
And this also serves to dispsl all fear of veritable conflicts
between dogma properly understood and true science, seeing
that on this hypothesis science and dogma have a common
source. Do they not both proceed from the Eternal Truth,
manifested in the one case by the Incarnate Word, and in the
other by the human word, which is also the son of the Truth ?
If, then, God is with us through the Incarnation, and if this
benefit, once accorded to history, is continued to it through
the Church, according to the Saviour's promise : Lo, I am
with you always, even to the consummation of the world; if
the Church is only the prolongation in time and space of the
divine Head of the race who is given to us ; if, as one might
say, it is the total and permanent reality of Christ, it is un
questionable that this presence of God in humanity must be
translated into ideas, as it is into emotions, into aspirations,
into new modes of action.
Already present in the heart of man under the ancient law,
through the spirit of the prophets God had already infused
into it thoughts which we believe were higher than human
investigation could yield in regard to those religious objects
which in so many ways are beyond us.
Later, in these last days, as St. Paul said {novissime, diebus
istis), present in the heart of Christ and animating His man
hood even unto perfect communion of lives in oneness of
person. He infuses into it the knowledge of universal destinies,
of universal means, and of the acts and ends which relate to
them. So that the teaching of Christ, while it remains a
human word, is a divine teaching; His thought is the divine
thought ; and this thought, received by tradition in the Church,
strengthened by the new outpouring in the Cenacle, socialised,
made the law of an association, naturally takes the name
dogma, that is, belief confirmed by decree.
How could we fail to understand that if the Church repre
sents a life issuing from that of Christ, her claim to instruct
her own members is simply the claim of the organism to
govern its functions, to maintain its material vehicle under
the vital law, to cause the directive idea to rule.
The soul of the living being, the real idea of its organisa
tion, is represented here by the teaching authority. Sub
mission to this principle of life, then, will be life. He who
refuses his submission will be then ipso facto anathema, that

TXbc Dogmatic Cbaracter of tbe Cburcb 107
is to say outside: Jesus is not continued in him, he has broken
the vital Unk; remaining obstinately attached to his own
judgement (pertinax) he leads the life of his choice by pre
ferring the teaching of his choice [hceresis), but it is not the
divine life.
The achievements of this life, then, will not be for him.
The supernatural destiny which it prepares for us, and to
which neither experience nor earthly science can lead us, but
only the submission of our mind to the rudiments the divine
Master proposes, while we wait for the evidence ; this destiny
in whose regard the will by itself is powerless, since to obtain
it we have as it were to rise above ourselves, to overpass our
conditions of life, to go forth from our original environment
to take root in the divine; In Deo radicati et fundati; that
man will have no claim to it who does not desire to be told its
means and its stages.
How give to our steps this transcendent direction, unless
once more, since it is a question of a superhuman goal, by a
superhuman initiation. He who is one day going to reveal
His secrets to us giving us the alphabet of the divine know
ledge, and He who wiUs to impart His treasures to us giving
us the key to them ?
Theoretical knowledge and practical knowledge relative to
divine things are then equally indispensable in this connection,
and intellectual unity in dogma, that is to say in Christ and
in God, throughout the Church, cannot be challenged.
One God, One Christ, One Faith, One Baptism, said
St. Paul. The Fathers of the Church, too, call conversion to
the faith a return to the unity of Christ, to the unity of God.
The fact could not be put more strongly that for us the faith
is a first principle; and that the teaching of the faith, or its
dogma, is the ideal bond which connects and gives a direction
to the elements of that Letter of Christ which, according to
Paul, the religious soul composes.
To teach dogma, in inviting men to the faith, is then for our
Church a primary r61e, that which arises before all others from
her nature and from the quickened realisation that she has
of it.
For her, to exist without demanding faith of those who
agree to be incorporated in her society would be to exist by
not existing, that is to say by refusing to recognise herself
for what she is and to draw the necessary consequences from it.
*****
At the beginning of the Church's life the word dogma was
not in use. Instead of it we find good news (evayyeXiov),
the word of God (Xdyos rov deov), the teaching of the Lord
(/cijpvy/ia), tradition (irapaSocri's), the deposit (rapaO'qKTf), the way
(680s,) etc.
Since the Church was in germ, all it involved was so

io8 Ube Cburcb
also ; things, and words even more. Fully formed and obliga
tory doctrine had not yet clearly taken the character of a law,
because the Apostolic band had not yet clearly and visibly the
character of a society ; it was a social embryo, with a law in
embryo, and so also a dogma in embryo.
But what do words mean, and what does the developed or
embryonic state of life mean ? As soon as it is a life, and that
a human Ufe, it has a governing thought. If contact with God
through Christ and through the Spirit of Christ communicates
a new life to religious humanity, it must produce a new truth.
That is an absolute necessity.
And it is also a fact; for it is not true, as has been claimed,
that primitive Christianity lived without definite doctrine. If
the Apostles' Creed, in its actual phraseology, does not go
back to the Apostles, its articles go back to them; the
greatest rationalists, such as Harnack, admit this to-day.
If a disciple of St. Paul were to come to life again among
us; after his first astonishment at the mighty evolution of
what he had known in its infancy, an astonishment that may
be compared to that which we feel on coming face to face with
a man of whom we have lost sight for a long time, he would
recognise everything, and the identity of doctrine would be
perfectly evident to him.
Make the counter-proof; read the letters of the Apostles,
the Acts, the Gospels, and see if there is not the same doc
trinal foundation, the same formulas of life, the same dogma.
Moreover, to be definite, it would not be difficult to show
briefly that, from the most practical point of view, dogma is
not the excrescence in the Church that it is said to be ; but
that it is a principle of life, suggesting, as thoughts do
always, feeUngs, impulses, actions.
Take the Trinity, the most abstract of dogmas. Whoever
thinks of it has already a glimpse of the divine life which the
Augustines and the Thomases — and we may add the Bossuets
— have been able to demonstrate as sublime. This life of
Three in Unity; these reciprocal influences in fulness and in
equality; these waves of the Infinite which gushes up in its
own fulness, diffuses itself without going out from itself,
receives itself in love; this interior richness which is mani
fested in the world through its triple reflection, creation,
redemption, sanctification, as in the unity of man is mani
fested the activity of various functions; is it not, for the
believer's benefit, firstly an increase of the divine transcend
ence, which unites what is divided and consequently also
diminished, and in addition a renewed sentiment of that
ineffable activity, in which God consists, as opposed to the
vague God of the Pantheists and the magnified man of the
Deists?

Ube Dogmatic Cbaracter of tbe Cburcb log
God transcendent, God living in Trinity, is moreover the
road by which we may arrive at God living with us through
the Incarnation.
If God were only transcendent He would be nothing to us ;
but because He is living in Himself, we can the better con
ceive that He is living also in His work ; because He is
active knowledge in Himself, through the Word, we can the
better conceive that He knows us, and because He is love, we
conceive that He loves us.
The sublime transcendence which gives God His infinite
value thus resolves itself into immanence which gives Him
His value for us. God with us is the Incarnate Word who
instructs us. Through this survival of God in the midst of
His work, and through the words He says, and the feelings
He shows, and the way He takes, inviting us to follow Him,
we see our lives take their place in the great current which
bears them on to their true goal, after they come from Him
who is the beginning and end of all, the Alpha and Omega of
aU things.
When we have started out from God the Creator, God the
Mediator gathers us up and leads us as our Brother to God
the End. Destinies made alluring, elevated, enlightened,
rendered joyous, in spite of their ordeals, by the easiness
with which we can support them, since He who of old was
crucified makes Himself the Cyrenaean when it is we who are
mounting Calvary; this is the fruit of the redemptive doc
trine. Dare we say that all this serves for nothing? Let us
say rather that it is the basis of everything ; that the Church
would no longer be the Church, if it did not bear in itself this
treasure-house of divine and divinising truths.
Go and teach all nations: that is the official mission of the
Church. Baptise them, added the Saviour, as a sign of
incorporation and of fidelity to My teaching; in the Name of
the Father, Who sent Me; in the Name of the Son, Whom I
am; in the Name of the Holy Ghost, Whom I bequeath to
you. Mingle thus heaven with earth, the human with the
divine, the truth which changes with the truth which does
not change, the immutable direction with the variations and
complexities of life. Whosoever will believe and be bap
tised with this baptism, in desire or in fact, implicitly or
explicitly, will be saved. Whoso believeth not, that is to
say who refuses to believe, if it is actually and morally pos
sible, wiU be condemned.
Our Saviour, in expressing Himself thus, did not think that
dogma was an accessory. His society is essentially dog
matic, reposing on the Gift of God, which is truth, first of all,
in order that in the next place it may be feeling well guided,
action enlightened, and not merely instinctive, as those inno-

"0 Zbc Cburcb
vators think who, without wishing to do so, lead man back
to a vaguely superior animality.
The Church is a society which beUeves in certain things,
and which because it believes in those things acts collectively,
as its members act individually, in the direction of those
things. Dogma is then, for CathoUcism, the principle of its unity,
that is of its very existence, inasmuch as it is a body. Thereby
it is the principle of its action, which it directs ; the principle
of the feelings which circulate in it and which are found at
their highest in its saints.
Like the most fervent Christians, the most glorious of active
souls are at the same time the most dogmatic, the most
attached to their doctrinal bases. Such was St. Paul, who,
at each moment, in his letters, passes from the most tender
effusions to the most careful instructions, to return to the
most firm of counsels. Such were Augustine, Jerome, all
the Fathers of the Church. Such, later on, was St. Bernard,
the man of fire and the unbending opponent of Abelard.
Such were all the great mystics, whose flights, before they
escape at undefined tangents, touch the circle and communi
cate with the centre.
The divine centre of our unity, the Incarnate Word tells
us, is His Person, the price of the light that He is and that
He gives us.
When He affirms : I, the substantial I, am the Light of the
world, we cannot dispute the value of that living Light
wherein He wishes us to share.
And since, under the ineffable radiance, we are in united
associations, forming in this as in everything a society of
brethren, we cannot but obey in mind as in heart and action
the law of our association.
" A Church without dogma," a Protestant^ has said,
" would be a sterile plant." It is indeed true, if dogma is
as it were a luminous sap to the plant filled with the flow of
the spirit of God.
1 A. Sabatier, Esquisse d'une Philosophie de la Religion.

CHAPTER IX
ON INTELLECTUAL LIBERTY IN THE
CHURCH
IN our times the dogmatic character of the Church is
perhaps that which has provoked against her the most
bitter opposition, the loudest protests and the widest
revolts. The Church demands faith, and from all sides is heard
the cry that this claim is an affront, that it is an insult to the
human mind, that it stands in the way of the scholar and
tends to paralyse his researches, that it abuses the ignorant
man by imposing on him an arbitrary authority, that it is
opposed to progress by keeping our minds in fixed forms,
whereas the law of intelligence is a law of slow evolution by
means of free enquiry, and lastly, that it throws away as
rubbish that autonomy of thought which man's conscience
more and more claims and upholds.
Now our Church, despising these clamours, or waving
aside with a calm gesture the objections that are brought for
ward against her, justifies her claim by means of a few very
clear reflections.
There could be only two reasons for the claims of the faith
doing injury to the human spirit. Firstly, that the super
natural is a delusion. The man who maintains this must
indeed conclude that the Faith lowers the human mind, like
any other error that takes possession of it. But, on the
excuse of judging the attitude of the believer and of the
Church, would he claim thus to solve, a priori, the religious
problem in a negative sense?
That would be rather premature and frivolous.
Assuming the hypothesis of the supernatural, which is that
of the true believer, one must say : There are things beneath
man's mind, things which it judges; and things above it, by
which it is judged. Matters of faith are of this latter sort,
and that is why they are binding.
But by judging man's mind, these matters magnify it,
and far from debasing it, bring it up to their own level, beyond
itself. " When little things cling to great things," said
St. Augustine, " these greaten them."
Or else men might legitimately take offence at the claims
of faith if such claims were formulated before examination,
without giving free will a chance of asking for reasons.
But so far is such a thought from the Church, that quite on
the contrary she obliges the man who is outside her to wait
for proofs before attaching himself to her.
To be ready to give a reason for the hope that is in us is
III

"2 ^be Cburcb
the ideal which the Apostle sets forth (i Pet. iii. 15), and a
man of the fourth century, Eusebius of Csesarea, cried out :
" The insulting taunt is often made to us Christians that we
cannot prove the truth of our beliefs, that we demand from
those who come to us a blind submission, and we endeavour
solely to persuade them that they have to believe us, without
discussing or examining anything in advance, like a flock of
sheep. It is a calumny that is hurled at us."-'
Now when we speak of proofs we ought to understand what
we mean. We do not mean always learned proofs, nor
those " demonstrations of the Gospel " whose tenor is
accessible to so few, even if they be the real motives of
adhesion of those who put them forward.
The credibiUty of the faith can be shown in many fashions.
There are philosophical proofs, historical proofs, moral proofs.
There are proofs which are complete in themselves; and there
are others which borrow their completeness from good will to
appreciate them, or more deeply still, from grace.
For we must always remember that the religious problem
is not, properly speaking, a problem. We have not only to
discover truth, but to enter into life, aUve ourselves, and
steering towards this truth of life by making use not only of
reasoning reason, but of moral instincts, of the deliberate con
fidence which can be inspired by the surroundings in which
the religious truth is at work, and finally of that divine instinct
which the ' ' religious animal ' ' feels as soon as he ceases to
put obstacles in its way, learning, by wise obedience to it, to
know things divine, as the bee knows the flower.
In any case we should always be able to account for our
faith, and only on this condition will the Church receive its
homage. Before the Church offers herself as a teacher, she offers
herself as a fact; she demands that we should discuss that
fact, and she means us to be free in that discussion; she
allows us to apply all the rules of a considered and prudent
criticism. " Reason precedes faith, and brings man to faith " : such
is the proposition of Pius IX. — the Pope of the Syllabus —
opposed to the claims called faithist or traditionalist.
In these conditions what remains of the supposed intel
lectual autocracy of the Church? Free will, which is ante
cedent to the submission of the believer, wipes it out. There
is no enslavement where there is preliminary discussion,
deliberate adhesion, and only after that reliance on affirma
tions which now suffice because they are supported ex
hypothesi by the evidence of authority, and their particular
subject-matter deprives them of the authority of evidence.
The formula in which we usually express the principle of-
' Demonsiratio evangelica, init.

©n 5ntellectual Xibertg in tbe Cburcb "S
autonomy. Admit as true only what binds your reason, and
as obligatory only what binds your own conscience, is fully
acknowledged here, provided we are willing to understand it.
Cardinal Newman agreed to this in a picturestiue, bold and
rather off-hand manner, had he not been dealing with his own
circle : " I drink," said he, " to conscience first, and to the
Pope afterwards." It was a way of saying that doctrine,
being divine, ought not to be discussed in itself ; but it must
be discerned, and in this discernment we apply the rule, to
recognise as true and obligatory only what somehow binds
our own reason and conscience.
I say somehow, because of what we just now were saying
of the uncultivated, and of the " faith of the peasant," which
is as rationally legitimate as any other.
The Church values Justin, or Augustine, or Newman, and
all who come to her after long enquiries, on that account,
and acknowledges their intellectual value. Those who come
to her humbly, because of the confidence she inspires and
merits, she receives with joy and love, and with approval, too,
because she is conscious of herself and of what is in her;
knowing that her Christ is the Way, the Truth, and the Life,
and that the Spirit which dwells in her, the Church, is the
very Spirit of the Saviour poured out; she knows that she
can save those who trust themselves to her, that their con
fidence " has reasons which perhaps reason itself does not
know," and that she is on earth the hen that guards the
universal brood, under the immense wing of the Cross out
stretched in two directions.

It remains that the believer, having once made his sub
mission, may run the risk of not seeing that free choice main
tained which we have just affirmed solely as antecedent.
Freedom of belief is one thing, the freedom of the believer
is another.
Let the hypothetical believer be a man of learning, or only
a pretentious man, a man of " free thought " ; the form-of his
protest may vary, but it will be fundamentally the same.
Here it is in its highest form.
The starting-point of science is doubt ; its necessary accom
paniment, free thought. To bind scientific research to a fore
gone solution is to reduce it to the search for the best method
of proving a thing, and that is the science of the sophists.
Now if_you ask a Catholic doctor, he will tell you that to
question a datum of the faith is already to sin in one's heart,
because it is to admit at the outset — a thing blameworthy in
itself — that one may be led to deny the dogma, if the argu
ment undertaken should appear to turn against it. a

"4 trbe Cburcb
Before undertaking any philosophic work on the question
of God, for example, the beUever is bound to hold that He is
in Three Persons, that He has created a world of limited
duration, that He enters, into definite and carefully classified
relations with this world, and so on.
And as a prelude to any historical research on the question
of Christ, the believer is bound to affirm His divinity, to
specify His office, to recognise His work in the whole of
Catholic development, and in short to consider as proved all
that a sincere effort would leave in suspense, while waiting to
see whether it is confirmed or condemned by the results.
And all this means being bound by prejudice ; prejudice,
perhaps, in the ordinary sense of the word; prejudice, in any
case, in the etymological sense. For a prejudice is a judge
ment that is not justified, a judgement settled beforehand.
And so this is the condemnation of all sound science.
The mind of the Catholic scholar, dominated by prepos
sessions, advancing only along paths which are indirectly
enforced on him by the fear of prohibited solutions, will be
brought by the force of things and even without noticing his
bias to deflect the truth, to look at only one side of things
and surreptitiously to introduce elements of authority, of
arbitrariness, into his so-called scientific reasoning.
The force of such an accusation must be felt. It is a factor
which may drive away not only men of learning, but even
more, we might say, people with scientific claims or hopes in
the so-called intellectual younger generation, the minds that
possess a surface knowledge of things, subscribers to semi-
scientific reviews and readers of works which pretend to the
popular presentation of the results of research.
Now such people as these are numerous ; and we are
bound to help them.
Happily, this is easy, though in such matters as these the
objection is always clearer than the reply.
Firstly, let us recall this evident principle :, Freedom, in all
things, is not an end, but a means. We are free, in short,
in order to be able to fulfil our destiny; free, in the case
under discussion, in order to be able to attain truth.
This being so, let us examine the attitude of the man who
studies; and is for all that a convinced believer, a man of
faith at the same time as a man of science.
Such a man finds himself face to face with two orders of
knowledge : on one side belief, on the other evidence or
demonstration. Is one of these two orders of knowledge
illegitimate? We have already said that belief is not, sup
posing that it has furnished the grounds of its claims, and
as for evidence or demonstration, they have not to be defended
against any objector.

©n intellectual Alberts in tbe Cburcb "5
Here, then, are two sources of truth. Can they, or can
they not, agree? that, evidently, is the whole problem.
But this problem is solved in advance by this single fact,
that we have said and proved that both these ways are
legitimate. For what is a legitimate way, in the things of
the intelligence, if not a way which can lead to the truth?
And if there are two ways which lead thither, how can they
be divergent?
Could error arise from a true demonstration, and false
hood proceed from duly verified authority? In no domain
could this easily happen, and when deaUng with religious
faith it could not happen at all.
To say that religious faith is legitimate as a means of
knowledge is to say that it is divine; for it has no value for
those who proclaim it except what it derives from this
transcendent origin.
To say, on the other hand, that the use of the reason is
legitimate and necessary, is to take the same thing as under
stood ; for reason has no authority except as far as it repre
sents the eternal order, that is to say, God once more. How
could God be divided against Himself, teaching by revelation
what He contradicts by the intelligence, and setting up in
opposition to each other as two manifestly hostile things on
the one side the Gospel, on the other the book of Nature and
of humanity, when these volumes, which we want to dis
tinguish, are really the three volumes of one work?
If the Gospel be properly understood — the living Gospel, I
mean, such as the Church offers it — it cannot contradict
nature, nor man, nor, consequently, that science which
expresses them both.
If science is in its own domain and operates according to
its law, it cannot contradict the Gospel.
If there be an apparent contradiction, the reason is one
of two things : either the holy teaching has been misunder
stood, or the pretended science in question is only an
erroneous personal opinion, and in place of representing the
universal Reason which we have just called God, it only
represents a faulty personality, an instrument of the truth
badly used, a prism badly cut, wherein the light deviates and
disperses its waves at random.
The Truth is one ; all the roads which lead to it meet, and
all the roads that lead to it are marked out by God. If Faith,
like science, comes from God, all their conflicts are illusory,
and it is we who, by our intolerance, our lack of comprehen
sion, our blameworthy mania for substituting everywhere our
own personal points of view for the authentic truth or for the
authority which preserves it, create those conflicts which our
passions keep up, to the prejudice alike of religion and of
science.

ii6 ubc Cburcb
Now, when the matter is stated thus, what remains of the
accusation advanced above? When it is said that faith
impedes science, is it assumed in advance that the faith has
no foundation ? In that case, no doubt, faith impedes science,
as every error or arbitrary prejudice is an obstacle to the
acquisition of knowledge. But that is begging the question,
and while our opponents pretend that they are only pleading
the cause of free thought, we discover once more that they
are surreptitiously solving the religious question by a denial.
On the other hand, if it is granted that our faith may be
founded on reason, then the plea in favour of free thought is
objectless, since henceforth no one is menacing freedom. We
are only forbidden — in our own name, I might say, since we
have ourselves previously freely accepted the faith — to wander
in bypaths and quagmires. And even then, only the deepest.
For, as Leo XIII. said, " We must let men of science make
mistakes." Science has need of breadth; to call it back at
every false step would mean breaking its impetus, and who
would lose by that but all of us, the man of faith as much as
the rest?
But that is no reason for leaving mankind without a com
pass. Science has shown what it can do by itself.
It heaps up its discoveries in the realm of time; but to lead
us outside time, or to tell us whether time is all; whether
there is anything or nothing beyond life and beyond death,
beyond what is appreciable by the human senses and under
standing; whether there is Someone above this oppressive
something which dazzles us for a moment, sometimes
enchants us, and most often pushes us on from shock to
shock and in the end slays us, that is what this proud reason
cannot tell us.
It stammers, wavers, contradicts itself. It says Yes, No,
Perhaps, by the voice of its highest thinkers, and at the end,
discouraged, can only say : What do I know?
It does not satisfy us. The faith satisfies us ; and it is by
satisfying us with regard to the essential that it makes us
supremely free with regard to the rest.
The man who has lost his way is not free of his road. The
man who feels that he is in the right path can branch out in
every direction, without fearing destruction or disaster.
It is well to drive this point home for a moment, and to
distinguish two cases which may occur in an enquiry.
Either the man of learning has to deal with a question of
faith, or else he finds himself in the vast field of free dis
cussion. In the latter case, that is to say, most often, the field opens
out before him without hindrance. Since every truth that is

©n Jntellectual XibertB in tbe Cburcb u?
discovered can find its place in that superior synthesis where
faith and knowledge are in harmony, he has no reason to
tremble; there is no reason for the religious authority to
intervene. There is no more reason, therefore, for the
defenders of intellectual liberty to become alarmed, unless
they mean only to protest against the abuses which we have
denounced ourselves.
It is not, however, necessary to figure to ourselves the
Catholic scientist as a man obsessed by an anxiety to make
his results accord with reUgion that borders on scrupulosity.
For us science is no sword of Damocles ; it is a sword of jus
tice, and can wound naught but error.
Where would be our confidence in God, if, for love of the
truths He reveals, we were afraid of the truths He suggests
to man ? Or what kind of wisdom would the Church herself
exhibit, if, having it as her duty to encourage all her children,
she rendered uneasy by her untimely demands those who do
her most honour?
Has it not been remarked that the most sensational dis
coveries relative to prehistoric man have been made by priests ?
Discoveries, indeed, which seem, from a narrow point of view,
to cause difficulties in our interpretation of the Bible.
But these priests have told themselves that truth always
has its rights, and that it always makes them accord with
other rights which, if looked at in the right light, are not other.
Many similar cases might be brought forward.
But if dogma is in question ? Then, it is true, and it would
be unfitting to equivocate about it, the progress of the man of
science is limited from without by dogma.
We say from without, and express ourselves with caution,
because we might say that even in this case the real liberty
of science remains intact. But certainly, in face of dogma,
even if science remains free, the man of science is not so.
He is bound to revise his work and if necessary to deny its
apparent results in the name of what he knows to be a higher
light. This is so, because such results cannot proceed, he will
consider, except from an error of fact or of judgement, an
error which he might discover if he could, but which may
always be taken for granted, seeing that God can neither
deceive nor be deceived, when He speaks directly through the
faith, whereas in the case of science His truth only reaches us
through the mediation of our individual mind, which is sub
ject to error. It has none of the guarantees which we have
seen to be present in the Church, by reason of the permanence
of a divine Spirit within her.
Is such a solution a matter for scandal?
Science, mark well, is itself the first to apply this method

ii8 Zbc Cburcb
of verification at every moment. Is it not the rule, before a
solution obtained by the principles of a particular science is
proposed, to confront it with the truths that have been ascer
tained in the kindred sciences? If we add to them the sacred
sciences, we arrive at the thought that surprised us.
As for the apparently paradoxical statement that even in
this case real scientific liberty remains intact, that is easy to
establish. What is it that the faith says? It says that such a thing
is; that therefore it is fitting for the learned man as for the
ignorant to consider it as acquired. But this thing which is
acquired for the man of science is not acquired for science.
The latter absolutely ignores it, and, supposing that it is a
question of a truth within its own domain, its business is to
discover it; not in order to enable us to know that it is true,
since we already know that by hypothesis ; but to make it take
its place in the system of ideas and facts which truly con
stitutes science.
Science is not a catalogue of affirmations after the manner
of a creed ; it is a series of antecedents and consequents linked
together, and it is really this linking, inasmuch as it reveals
the reason of things, which is properly science. Science is
the knowledge of things in their causes, says Aristotlfe.
Should we say of a man that he was strong in mathematics,
because he knew by heart the propositions of the theorems of
Euclid? Such a man would indeed know the conclusions of
science ; but he would not be a man of science. When he
became one, coming to the proofs and their illuminating inter
dependence, would his progress be hindered by his knowing
the bare text of the propositions beforehand ?
Science, even in regard to a matter of faith, is not, then,
dispossessed by faith of its own proper task.. That remains
untouched; in performing it, the man of science, understood
as such and not merely as a man, is entirely free. Neither
his principles, nor his methods, nor even his results con
sidered as such allow the faith to exercise the least influence
upon them.
The Vatican Council (Constitution Dei Filius, art. 4)
declares quite positively that the sciences, each in its own
domain, may freely use the principles that are proper to them
and their proper methods. It calls this a " just liberty,"
which in no wise prevents it from maintaining that the
Catholic man of science must respect dogma, which, to speak
precisely, has the value not of a scientific result, but of a
fact. Everyone is bound to respect facts. When, in this connec
tion, that is called a fact which is a part of the revealed
deposit, it is proposed to men's acceptance without prejudic
ing its use or its verification incumbent on the man of science.

©n intellectual Xiberts in tbe Cburcb "9
Lastly, to speak of that autonomy so dear to our thinkers,
the autonomy which they claim with a pride which discovers
a certain foundation of truth, can it not be said that it finds
every legitimate satisfaction among us?
The faith, whereof w6 have spoken provisionally as of an
exterior thing, to which we must adhere as from without, is
not so exterior to us as that. The Church suggests it to us.
Biit what is this Church but a society which we ourselves
form? What is the Church but ourselves? Not, un
doubtedly, an isolated ourselves, cut off from fraternal and
divine communication; but it is ourselves forming that
organism which I cannot grow weary of calling it, for the
comparison is so illuminating; an organism wherein God is
included, through Christ and the Spirit of Christ; an organism
in which each member, important or insignificant, teaching or
taught, finds life in which to share, and far from losing his
personality, multiplies it, by absorbing the common sap.
We ourselves are the Church ; the dogma of the Church is
then, in a certain sense, our dogma. When our authorities
define it they do not derive it from themselves; they do not
impose it from without on the society as a thing which has
so far been foreign to it; they extract it from its bosom, for
it is the common tradition, under the protection of the common
Spirit, which they borrow from it. They do not mean to
create anything, but only to establish, to render explicit what
was until then diffused in the common mentality or contained
in the common treasure of the Scriptures.
AU their task is to declare, that is to say to make clear, and
moreover to signify to isolated individuals who refuse to
adhere to the common faith on this point that they are thereby
putting themselves in opposition to what creates the social tie
between us, and that they are therefore outside. Anathema
sit: this is the meaning of that formula.
Now when a man thinks to become free thus, he does not
see that this freedom is the freedom of death; the freedom
of the branch that falls, deprived of sap. It is the repeated
comparison of the Saviour : I am the vine, you the branches.
No branch can bear fruit in itself, unless it abide in the vine.
As for the believer who remains thus grafted on the stock,
he is free with that liberty of the being which accords with
its law and preserves its natural connections. Though he
be humble among the humble, he can say that by sharing in
the Christian thought for his part, he drinks in the full living
truth of God; that he has this God for friend and as it were
at his service, since the Spirit to which he entrusts himself,
the collective belief which he accepts, are protected by a
guarantee which is no longer a human guarantee.
His mind can be reassured, his heart, instead of agonising
in this night in which we find ourselves, can expand in a

120 Jibc Cburcb
higher security. He will not be deceived as to what is the
essential of life; he will not be hindered as to the rest. If
he studies, he can turn aside in every direction of the truth
without fearing any conflict between truths that are com
plementary and of necessity in harmony.
He will feel strengthened because he can lean upon the
Divine certainties ; he will feel free, because the Divine cannot
be hostile to liberties, for it is their source; seeing that it is
the Divine which receives their labours, for it is the Alpha
and Omega of inteUectual liberty to pass without trammels
from one certitude to another which derives from it, from
truth to truth; which means from the Divine to the Divine;
and because there is just what is set before him.
The Divinity of faith is allied in him to the Divinity of
reason ; he unites them, like oxygen and nitrogen which com
pose the same atmosphere. And circulating freely in this
human-divine environment, breathing it in and becoming
filled with the Spirit of God which penetrates him, he says
with St. Paul : Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty
(i Cor. iii. 17).

CHAPTER X
THE GOVERNMENTAL CHARACTER OF
THE CHURCH
THE dogmatic character of the Church, if properly
understood, will in itself suffice for us to affirm its
governmental character.
To affirm that the Church has a dogma, that is,
a collective belief, is to demand that it have, in
the inteUectual order, a collective representation, that is, an
authority. But this notion, to which we shall have to return, is too
partial. We must say more generally : There is in the
Church a social authority, which fulfils all the offices that can
be attributed to an authority with regard to such an end as
hers. The Church is a governed society.
There are men to be found, whether liberal Protestants, or
anarchists of mystical tendency like Tolstoi, who pretend that
the Founder of Christianity, far from having foreseen and
willed such spiritual government as operates among us,
showed Himself opposed to every exercise of authority
among His disciples. The princes of the nations lord it over
them; but it shall not be so among you; but let him that is
chief among you be the servant of all.
They neglect to notice that this text itself condemns the
thesis which claims to be based upon it, since by legislating
for him that is chief, it arranges for someone to be chief.
But they bolt this fallacy, and assure us that ecclesiasticzd
authority has only been set up by the help of a deviation,
caused on the one hand by natural ambition in the human
heart, and on the other by imitation of the authorities which
rule in the civil order, and notably the mighty and over
shadowing authority of Rome.
This influence of the Rome of the Emperors over the Rome
of the Popes we have no wish to deny; we have affirmed it
before our opponents, and we have always considered it as a
providential result in the Church's life.
Are we not repeatedly saying that our Church assimilates
all that she finds assimilable in the human environment
wherein she evolves? If it has pleased God to prepare for
her in the juridical work of the Romans, as in Greek thought
and Eastern poetry and symbolism, elements which could be
for her what the food that has already been elaborated by
life is physically for us, in contrast with chemical substances
only assimilable with difficulty; who would be surprised at
her taking possession of them? She did so, and she could

122 ^be Cburcb
legitimately continue to do so, on condition that she took
account of their relations and adapted them to the ends that
she pursues. All things are yours, said St. Paul : Omnia
vestra sunt.
If anything ought to belong to the Church and tempt her
to accept it, it is that marvellous Roman administration, the
most powerful which has ever been seen, the most perfect, at
least as a centralised administration. Now this it is, as we
are going to show, that is suited to the essence of Chris
tianity. We are far, as can easily be seen, from the theories of
religious anarchy whose criticism the Church experiences.
Just now we have to ascertain whether a government
properly so called is in place in the Christian organisation, or
if it must be content with a vague evangelical spirit or a
brotherhood without external ties.
But in reality we solved this question long ago, when we
showed that religion is par excellence a social phenomenon ;
that it demands, and particularly so in Christianity, an
organised society. Well, do we want a group without ties?
a society without any authority? Such a thing nowhere
exists, not even in the most ephemeral of societies.
Put a band of children in a playground ; ten minutes after,
one or several of them will be ruling, and that with the con
sent of the rest, so true is it that one can do nothing, not
even amuse oneself, far less attempt to scale the lofty heights
to which the Saviour has invited the human race, without
the end in view being authoritatively provided with a repre
sentation, a means and a defender.
Can we think that it is Christ, and He alone, who is the
Christian authority? Assuredly, we all obey the Saviour.
But our Saviour is not there. Must He not have a living
representative? Our Saviour does not now speak. Must
He not have a voice? Our Saviour does not now act visibly.
Must not someone guard and defend the flock in His name
from the ravening wolf?
Feed My sheep, feed My lambs, said He to Peter. I am
going away, though invisibly I remain with you ; do thou
then take My place, and be shepherd, not on thine own
authority, for it is My flock; but on the authority which I
leave thee when I say Feed, pasce, that is, lead to its pas
ture, direct, defend the flock of thy Saviour.
Those who wish to govern religion with a memory, though
it be divine, with a book, though it be sacred, without there
being anyone to keep the book, to comment on and interpret
the tenor of the memory, do not know human nature. We
are beings of flesh and blood ; we are not shadows. We
need something visible and consistent, in default of which

Ube Governmental Cbaracter of tbe Cburcb 123
the book, which ought to unite, becomes a cause of division,
and superhuman memories only a scattered perfume.
Do not they prove this who reproach us with existing, and
are themselves from the religious point of view atoms with
out cohesion or form? Who then are these people who
reproach us with being unfaithful to the Gospel by governing
ourselves, and what do they derive from it? What do they
derive from it that can be laid hold of, judged and accepted in
common, with which man can live? They are still looking
for the " essence of Christianity," and finding it everywhere;
in a catastrophic theory of the end of the world, or in sym
pathetic — superficially sympathetic — nonsense about non-
resistance to evil.
While they are looking about them so despairingly, our
Church is defining Christianity and making it live. She
defends it against deviations of every kind and every degree.
If she herself is a deviation by reason of the manner of
authority that she has adopted, it must at least be granted
that this deviation is hostile to all the others, which means,
perhaps, that it is very nature applying itself to the super
natural and making it useful to us by adapting it to essential
forms of life.
But, it may be said, if Christ is no longer here, the divine
Spirit which He promised to send into the world is always
here, and the Holy Spirit is a living reality. He is the
authority which does for our bond, a spiritual bond for a
spiritual organism, the Church. O carnal-minded men who
require a visible authority, do you not hear the Master say
ing : The flesh profiteth nothing ? What is the use of the
visible, when we have within ourselves Him who cries:
Father! Father! and who Himself makes the unity of the
children ?
We have already replied to this illusion.
Not, assuredly, that the indwelUng of the Holy Spirit in
us is an illusion ; nor that it would be incorrect to say that
it is that Spirit who is the bond between us. But this bond,
which is indeed the principal one, is however a bond only in
the manner of a soul, a common soul in which we are one.
Now is not our soul represented in our body by the fact of the
organisation that it calls into being? An organism which
presupposes a whole system of subordination, under the
government of the central nervous system, under the govern
ment of the brain ; a fairly faithful image of the organisation
of the Church !
Precisely because the Holy Spirit is with us. He must be
with us as we are, individual and social beings. He must
reveal Himself by interior actions and by social communica
tions, which presupposes an authority speaking in His Name

124 ^be Cburcb
and receiving from Heaven the right to say, as our Apostles
said at the first of the Councils : It has seemed good to the
Holy Ghost and to us. As if the brain said : It has seemed
good to the soul and to us, us nerve-cells, who represent the
idea of organic realisation for the government of the body.
The Holy Spirit acts in individuals by grace; He acts
socially through organisation, which is, as a theologian
(Schaezler) says, the most express manifestation of the grace
of Christ, being its visible and collective manifestation. The
Spirit, who moves the Church inwardly through individual
souls, moves it also outwardly, because man as a corporate
whole is an external thing, if man as a mental unity is an
inward thing. Religious inspiration and its control by
authority; such, the divine initiatives being pre-supposed,
are the two functions of the human-divine organism, as in
civil society invention and creation come from private effort,
their regulation from public authority.
Thus all comes from the same Spirit, the force that is dis
played and its regulation. Humanity on both sides furnishes
its material, and thereby limits or perverts its effects; but all
the same it is Divinity which acts, as in the birth of a
deformed child or of a monstrosity it is a divine soul that
struggles, but with uncongenial material.
And so the reproach that Protestants offer to the Catholic
Church turns on them and overwhelms them. In their eyes
the great Roman crime is the debasing of man, by submitting
him to an exterior authority. But if we raise ourselves to
the level of the doctrine, we see that such an accusation is
not very serious. It is precisely in order that the Spirit of
God may not debase man in coming to us that an authority
is necessary, if it be recognised that man is social.
Luther, Calvin, for whom original sin slays free will ; for
whom the Divine Spirit that regenerates us does so without
our co-operation, must, at least in theory, repudiate exterior
authority. What could it do except-v set itself up in opposi
tion to the Spirit which does all in man, or else duplicate it?
For the Catholic, man remains man under the Divine
touch. He receives a spirit of adoption, not of slavery
(Rom. viii. 15), and with that Spirit to inspire him he governs
himself. Only if to govern himself means, for individual
man, to lead an autonomous life, it means for social man to
lead a life in accordance with the common order, and so a
governed life, a life that freely submits to the government.
The Spirit working within must be completed by the Spirit
that works without, for otherwise this Spirit would not fall
upon the whole man, and it is in that case that we should
be " debased," deprived in the religious domain of our col
lective existence and the goods it confers on each soul. It

JLbc (Bovernmental Cbaracter of tbe Cburcb 125
is in that case that we should be forbidden to say with
Jacob : / have seen God face to face and my life is safe.
We do not therefore forget that Jesus said : Call no man
Master. But for us it is perfectly clear that this does not
mean. Suppress all authority, but. Understand authority as
your servant. As in like manner when He said. Resist not
evil. He did not mean to invite us to let the wicked triumph ;
but that we should renounce the spirit of egoism and revenge ;
and when He said Take no thought what you shall eat. He
was not preaching laziness and lack of foresight, but incul
cating submission to Providence, our previous effort being
taken for granted.
AU the sophisms which graft themselves on the divine
paradoxes of the Gospel fail to understand its spirit, being
themselves so partisan in spirit, and they go astray as a
result of diminishing the truth.
After this we are free to enter into the real thought of our
Master and to taste His adorable words, Let him that is
chief among you be the servant of all.^
In place of the frightful abuses which pagan authorities so
often committed — abuses which our unfaithfulness to the
Gospel was bound in part to perpetuate and will yet long con
tinue to perpetuate — the Saviour dreams of establishing,
everywhere if possible, but in any case within His Church, a
regime of humiUty and love.
Was it not for this reason that He chose for the first repre
sentative of supreme authority in the Church, for the first
Pope, a man of no importance, who could not bring himself
into the argument; a fisherman, who was likewise a sinner;
a penitent who made a triple act of love that was sealed by
martyrdom? And this to prove at the same time that
authority is not a fief, but a service, and since it is a service,
it is the proper office of love, even if it be love unto death.
Peter, lovest thou Me ? is the question that Jesus put three
times to the man whom He was going to invest with
authority over those whom He had identified with Himself.
And on his timid but affirmative answer, the Saviour said to
Peter : Feed My lambs, feed My sheep.
He must know how to love, if he is to govern in accord
ance with the heart of the divine Master. Fatherhood is the
ideal of the regime He founded.
Yes, this pre-eminently natural authority, sprung straight
from God, granted with creative power to those who say in
the name of love : Be ! and life flashes forth — this authority is
the model of the religious authority. That is why we call
1 St. Thomas Aquinas, commenting on this precept, emphasises that in
transgressing it we misunderstand the human being and treat him as a thing :
" Creatures endowed with reason are governed for their own good ; others for
the good of the higher creatures." {Contra Gentes, III, cxii.)

126 ubc Cburcb
the supreme authority among us the Pope, that is father.
That is why the Pope's assessors are called Bishops, that is
to say watchers, and why we speak moreover of curates and
the cure of souls — curati, those who have charge. We use,
too, the word Abbe, another word for father.
All those names are worthy of veneration and fitting,
because tradition has understood the Master's thought.
Authority as public service ; authority as a r61e that is humble
and full of love, that is a part of the Good News of the
Gospel, and the Christian future tried to conform its judge
ments and its phraseology thereto, though unhappily not
always its actions.
Touching thus, as we must, on this pitiful question of the
abuses of religious authority, we must, perhaps, admit that
it is in part these deficiencies of men that afford a foothold
to the absurd criticisms in which those people indulge who
execrate authority in itself.
How often have we heard it said, in the presence of such
abuses, such authoritative or monopolising acts of violence,
on the part of those whose office it is to impart God and in
whom it happens sometimes that they seem to wish to exploit
Him — how often have we heard it said, even in our own
hearts : Is it possible? Is it possible that this man, so vain
glorious, so taken up with himself and his rights, so attached
to money, so gentle to himself and so hard to others, can be
the representative of Christ, the channel of His Spirit?
Yes, it is indeed possible ! It is possible, and it is well
that it should be so, in order that we may know that God has
espoused humanity with all its wretchedness, that He loves
us to that point, and that it is not with any sham sort of
human kind that He approaches us.
Would God be with men, if all those in whom He mani
fested Himself and acted were angels? He is with sinful
and weak humanity. The body of Christ, as we have called
our Church, is sometimes sick, its chiefest members like the
rest. The higher man mounts on the ladder of authority —
to say so is not to be wanting in respect for it — the more is
he exposed by his office; he is himself smaller as compared
with the office. In mounting up to the divine we see the dis
proportion become more and more evident, between the
channel and the Source of the ideal immanent in the world.
If we read history with this thought before us, and find sad
things there, and even if we find them still to-day, we must
remember that the Saviour said : Blessed is he who shall not
be scandalised in Me. Must we not believe that He extends
the benefit of this saying to the representatives that He has
given Himself, and that scandal, even apparently justified,
would be no more allowable in regard to them?

Ube Governmental Cbaracter of tbe Cburcb 127
Has the man who is not scandalised by the humility of
the Sou of God manifested in the mortal Son of Man any
grounds for being scandalised at the humility of the Son of
God manifested in the social Son of Man, Christ continued,
taking upon Himself the miseries of all in His effort to over
come them?
The failings of the persons who hold authority do not
destroy the authority, precisely because the authority does
not belong to man. To reject it because man is blameworthy
or weak or unintelUgent is to affirm that one would obey him
if he were faithful, intelligent and capable.
The Christian obeys God only ; but he understands the word
He that heareth you heareth Me, and prostrate before the
common Father or bowing low before His representatives of
every rank in the Catholic hierarchy, his heart is lifted high
enough to say Speak, Lord, for Thy servant heareth.
Whether Thy mouthpiece be the harmonious instrument of a
great soul or the grating metal of egoism or ambition, or the
dull and heavy lead of unintelligence, I will not discuss the
tone, for I have understood the message. Since it is Thou
in any. case who speakest, when authority intervenes fully,
it is to Thee that my glad obedience ascends. Speak, Lord,
for Thy servant heareth, and submits.

CHAPTER XI
ON FREEDOM OF CONSCIENCE IN THE
CHURCH
WE find once more, in regard to the govern
mental character of the Church, the same
opposition that is raised against her claim to
impose upon us fixed beliefs. The two ques
tions, indeed, are connected. Is not faith in
itself obedience, an obedience of the mind?
We are asked to believe for the sole reason that light is
the first condition of action for a reasonable being. Thy
light is thine eye, says the Gospel. But the light which
guides our walk does not compel us to walk. Besides light
the traveller needs an impulse : a personal impulse, alone
and on his own exclusive responsibility, if he walks on his
own account; an exterior impulse if he is executing orders,
like the soldier in an army on the march.
Now our Church is an army organised for conquest. Or
to speak more clearly and -without metaphor, it is a divine
and human society, and every society, we would say, if it
wishes to retain its members in the unity of a common life
and to realise for their benefit the ends which have brought
them together, finds itself compelled to bring into play an
action which is on its part a government, on theirs an
obedience. It is against the necessity of a religious establishment thus
founded that objection was first of all made ; and in the second
place, against the fact of this establishment by Christ. Now
we come to the real principle of the opposition that is formu
lated. They talk of freedom in practice, as they boast about
it in doctrine. They rebel against the claim of the Catholic
Church to govern, especially where they like to assert that
liberty is the rule, since the spiritual is the special domain of
liberty. The Spirit bloweth where it wills. Religions of
Authority and Religions of the Spirit is the title of a famous
book. While we do not fail to recognise that these counter-claims
sometimes have an element of the sublime in the aspirations
which dictate them, we desire to show how irrational they are.
Spiritual things, it is said, demand liberty. But liberty is
not independence. Liberty being granted, it remains to
mark out its use, and if liberty is granted in any order, its
legitimate use is to consecrate, and so to serve the order in
which it is found ; and in serving the order to serve itself,
which legalises authority's claim of obedience.
128

®n 3free&om of Conscience in tbe Cburcb 129
The distinction of the spiritual and the temporal is of
immense importance; but it does not involve the consequences
which are drawn from it. This distinction serves to diversify
and to limit the applications and the methods of religious
authority; it could not suppress that authority without
attacking a general law of life, which may be thus expressed :
Every being which lives in an environment makes use of
it, and makes its life accord with it, in symbiosis as a
physiologist would say, is obliged to submit to its law. It
can no longer claim a complete freedom ; for its freedom would
then be the refusal of the very life to which it belongs. And
if this life were useful to it, this would mean its diminution ;
if the life were necessary, it would mean its suppression, at
least so far as it lived in common with it.
We are full of illusions about our pretended independence,
we who in everything live only by dependence.
" I " is a word which is very pleasant to the feeling we
have of ourselves, and also, to our honour be it said, of the
divine spark which operates in us. It would be a mistake as
well as an injustice to lessen more than is necessary this great
aspiration after individuality.
But the Divinity which is in us is also outside us; it over
laps us and rules us under all the forms in which we are
bidden to carry on our life.
We are embedded in nature, which comes from God and
which is doing a divine work ; what would happen to us if we
rejected its laws? Could we even do so? And if we could,
should we not see it turn the immensity of its forces
against us ?
We are connected with a family circle, which, in the name
of heaven, creates us, starts us, and binds our personal pro
gress for many years; what happens to the child, when he
escapes from the protection of his home?
We are connected with a social environment, which, by
means of its traditions, its customs, its conditions of material,
intellectual or moral existence, has moulded the soul and
body of the generations which preceded us and from which we
came. What happens to the person who is uprooted, if it is
true that anyone can ever be quite uprooted, when, rejecting
the social law, he finds himself obliged to fly, Uke the Wan
dering Jew of the story ?
Humanly considered, in spite of our pretensions to freedom,
we are only a point of concentration of the universal forces
which have made up our body; of the moral forces which
have formed and furnished our souls. We are a meeting-
place ; a meeting-place of powers dispersed or enveloping, of
elements whereon we react, but necessarily under a law im
posed by their nature and ours, by the nature of the society
or quasi-society which we form with them. 9

130 Zbc Cburcb
And lastly, we are, quite directly this time, intimately, and
with a unity beyond expression, in society with God. Even
without speaking of positive religion, we are bound to Him
in as much as He is the universal Environment, which con
tains and interpenetrates all others; that ineffable Environ
ment whereof St. Paul has written that it is in Him we live
and move and are. And so we all say, when we realise this
great condition of our life : We have to obey God. It is the
supreme expression of our consciousness.
So, in every order and at every stage, the law of obedience
applies, and it is by means of it that our proud individuality
comes to light.
Comte's saying is often quoted : Obedience is at the base
of perfection. It is a saying of great scope, because it applies
to every domain, and helps us to understand that the freedom
to which we hold so fast, far from excluding obedience,
evokes it, and that obedience in its turn, far from destroying
freedom, completes it, since to make our existence perfect,
to cause it to live in its environment and to absorb all its
resources, as obedience, if properly understood, is seen to
do, is to help us to be ourselves, seeing that this environment
is ourselves ; ourselves prolonged, sustained, stimulated, while
awaiting the reactions that make us autonomous.
But have we not said also of our Church that it is our
selves? It is ourselves because it is God and the Spirit of
God ; it is ourselves because it is Christ, the universal Man,
in whom from the religious point of view we are one ; it is our
selves, because of God, of Christ and of us all, if we consent
thereto, is formed an immense living being, of immense multi
plicity and yet one, since the essence of Christianity consists
in a life in common with God; in this world dimly, by grace
accepted and lived ; in the other, by glory communicated by
our Father, enjoyed by us as sons and brethren, together.
Here there is one single human-divine body, and in it the
law of the body is transposed, as we have had to say so
often. The freedom of the members, whereof each has its own
law, and, as it were, its will, is our freedom in the Church,
with this difference, that the members of the body have no
separate destiny as members, whereas we as individuals have.
The subordination of the members, each of which obeys a
collective law, in order to live by it while serving it, is our
obedience in the Church, with this difference, that as each of
us has a destiny, the government of the Church must
respect it.
It remains always true that in this there is a hierarchy,
because neither the member in the body nor the Christian in
the Church is a reality free from attachments.

©n jfreebom of Conscience in tbe Cburcb 131
As, therefore, the brain represents the whole organism for
the direction of its life, and in consequence each of its mem
bers also, so the religious authority represents in the Church
the collective conscience, and consequently each conscience
as well.
To believe is to participate in the directive idea of our life
in common in the Lord, and it is, then, not to make an act of
intellectual abdication, but to draw from Him who is first of
all Truth in order that He may be Way and Life; to awake to
oneself, as a disciple and a partaker of His light.
Likewise to obey is to share in a common action, which in
this case is a divine and divinising action; and this in one's
due place, as every life in common demands; and thus it is
not to make a practical abdication, but to draw on Him who
is the Life, and the better to possess oneself, as a sharer, in
Him, in the divine life.
The individual conscience and the social conscience of the
Church, represented truly by authority, thus mutually support
each other, and far from our own losing anything thereby, it
is reinforced, as the sound of the single string is reinforced
when it is stretched on the sound-chamber and shares in the
deep vibrations of the atmosphere which is shut up between
its sides like a soul.
By means of this fruitful subjection, the citizen of the
Kingdom of Heaven, as Christ called His Church, is truly
nourished with all the divine sap which circulates in humanity
thanks to this outpouring of heaven on earth.
I am the vine and you are the branches ; the branch cannot
bring forth fruit except it abide in the vine.
The authority which represents Christ makes the same
demands, but for the same benefits; and the man is very
undiscerning who does not see that to belong to himself with
out giving himself is simply to mutilate himself by allowing
the best of him to atrophy.
When this best is the very life of God communicated to us
in the Church, to deny oneself to it is to divest one's being of
all the nobility of the divine which is meant to be manifested
in it, as well as to do unspeakable injury to the pitying and
brotherly majesty which willed to bear humanity on its breast,
across the meritorious difficulties and the fruitful miseries
with which our mortal life is filled.
Let it not be said, then, that religious obedience is opposed
to our personal initiative. Religious obedience is bound to
respect personal initiative properly understood. If it does
not respect it, it is guilty of an abuse, and we are not attempt
ing to apologise for abuses. But apart from abuses, religious
obedience does not only respect personal initiatives, it
enriches them, and that is why it exists.
To speak of serviUty in this connection is in reality to

132 trbe Cburcb
misuse all the terms employed. For servility would consist
rather in departing from our natural ties — by which must be
understood also our supernatural ties, since the supernatural
is for us a second nature — under the pressure of things inferior
to us. To abase oneself below oneself and to deliver one
self to what abases one, that is slavery.
We must add — or perhaps it would have been better to
begin with it — that religious obedience, in ruling us, only
exercises rights which have been granted to it by our own
free will. For, as we said before in regard to faith, it is
conscience which comes first in this matter, authority occupies
only the second place.
Before admitting or refusing that multiplication of life
which religious feeling, which is a social feeling, offers to
supply to us in exchange for the necessary obedience, we
must first of all examine whether it is fitting for us to enter
into the organism in which this exchange operates.
No one asks us to believe before we have ascertained and
decided in principle what has to be believed. Likewise no
one asks us to obey except on the same condition.
The Catholic Church offers herself to us ; she does not bind
us. He who lives outside her embrace may indeed have to
endure her maternal importunity; but he has not to fear her
tyranny. For those who are unbaptised the Church has always been
full of consideration and reserve.
But if you consent, or, not yet being in a position to con
sent, someone who counts for you in that as in everything
else causes your existence to enter at least provisionally into
the spiritual organism which must cause it to grow and bear
it up to God, where would be the tyranny in its claiming your
obedience? The first initiative covers and informs the final
submission. Nothing then is tyrannical, neither the beginnings nor the
development of our religious life.
There could only be oppression in the event of authority
exceeding its rights, as if, when the brain works badly, the
disturbed organism is driven to react instinctively in self-
defence. But who is going to give this disorder as much as
a right? It is admitted as elementary, in reUgious philosophy, that
every law has its limits, as well as its justification, in its
raison d'itre. What is the raison d'itre of religious authority
for us ? To bind us to Christ and to God for the sake of our
supernatural destinies. It is this end then that determines
the extent and the limits of the rights of religious authority.
It has to do with the direction of the spiritual life and of
what depends upon it in so far as it depends upon it. What

©n jpree&om of Conscience in tbe Cburcb 133
depends on it directly is directly amenable to it; what depends
on it indirectly is amenable to it so far as it does so.
When, then, authority goes beyond its proper domain, it
exceeds its own rights and has no claim on our obedience.
In such a case we shaU be practically in the position of the
Christian thinker of whom we said that the claims of faith
cannot bind him beyond certain things.
Evidently, there is always room for prudence, for mistrust
of oneself, and even more for maintaining a respectful atti
tude towards individuals. But the question is one of free
dom, and that, in this case, is unimpaired. What more can
we desire, if we are really defending not anarchy, not the
loosening of religious ties in the name of an individuaUsm
inimical to all life, but the inalienable rights of the individual ?
Is it not strange that it should be precisely our century — a
century of social science and of solidarity if ever there was
one, and consequently of authority, apart from wandering into
the most inconsistent Utopias — which rejects the Church
because she refuses to be individuaUst !
Thinking that they had destroyed the religious life by
killing it in themselves, we saw its politicians attempt but
yesterday to replace it by enunciating theories of moral
unity, of monopoly and spiritual collectivism, theories which
cannot express anything except on condition of inviting men
to erect once more, and this time arbitrarily, the authority
they claimed they had destroyed.
But we are assured that if this experiment had been pur
sued or were to be pursued to-morrow, in spite of our tragic
lessons, the truth would not be long in making itself im
pressively felt.
The more a man departs from lawful authority, that is,
authority normally constituted, whether by God or by the
nature of things, the more he is obliged to fall back into
arbitrary claims to authority.
To upset the order of nature, and even more the order of
God, who, for us, is more natural than nature itself, is to
destroy the harmony of forces; and violence, unbending
against the rebellion of things, against the more terrible rebel
lion of souls, is the only refuge of him who wishes to main
tain unity at all costs.
May God keep us from such authority, and maintain moral
unity among us ! The Church undertakes such a mission
with regard to her baptised children. More and more she
fulfils it by means of gentleness. She sometimes admonishes
with severity ; she does not use violent constraint. The only
punishment of those who refuse is to be handed over to them
selves. Would to God that this sanction were not the most
terrible of all !
To be handed over to oneself means to be handed over to

134 xrbe Cburcb
the nothingness that we are without God, when we reject His
redeeming hand. To be handed over to oneself means to be
thrown into the sea, a tiny, proud castaway who struggles a
moment, raises his head, and then sinks, overturned, broken
by what had seemed ready to support him, engulfed by the
nameless and cruel death whose name is God, but God out
raged, God despised and forsaken, who in His turn forsakes.
Tragic isolation, which makes us the flotsam of an angry
Infinity, when we might be the passengers in the noble ship
amidst the universal storm !
The world is storm-beaten under the breath of the Creator
Spirit, which grows gentle in fruitfulness like the tossing,
unfathomable depths of the ocean. Lord, forsake us not !

BOOK III
THE SACRAMENTAL LIFE OF
THE CHURCH
I.— THE SACRAMENTS
CHAPTER I
THE GENERAL IDEA OF THE
SACRAMENTS
WE have attributed to the Church as its funda
mental characters the dogmatic character, the
governmental character, and the sacramental
character. Dogma, hierarchy, worship whereof the
sacraments are the centre, and which the sacramentals carry
into a wider field, are indeed the three aspects of Catholic
life as tradition has always envisaged it.
Why, in the Catholic Church, does religious life clothe
itself with this sacramental character, which makes us trans
pose into the spiritual sphere and mark by means of sensible
signs all the happenings of life : birth by baptism, growth by
confamat£oia»_Domialun.ent hy^^e Eucharist, ggnetatipn or
the nourishment of the species Jbywaf nwony^ g;Dvernment
ByTToIy Order, the attempt at, moral renovation by penance,
deaW itself, considered as an event like any other and not as
a ^termination, by extrerne. unction, etc. ?
This sacramental character is based on the same notion as
¦ell the other characters of the Church.
We are in a supernatural society, that is to say, in rela-
_tion with God, as a whole, and together with all that we are.
Now the supernatural is only nature pushed farther, beyond
its own frontiers, and transposed into a higher mode. Daily
life, then, must be transposed too, to be put on the same level.
Yet it must continue to be itself and preserve its own natural
relations. The conciliation of these requirements is effected through
sacramentality, which makes channels for God's action
through every field of life; and also makes man's action
ascend into harmony, and in all its fulness to meet the divine,
and translates this exchange or this gift into visible actions,
because we are of the vsible world ; with the collaboration of
matter, because matter and spirit, in religion as in aU else,
are the two faces of reaUty; the result expected, moreover,
'33

136 XEbe Cburcb
being equally twofold, since the redemption towards which
we tend by our religious effort concerns our body as well as
our soul ; in this world so that it may be a docile companion ;
in the other so that it may be blessed with the overflow of our
happiness. These few words might suffice at need to justify the sacra
mental life of the Church; but to those who are not too
frightened by philosophic points of view a few considerations
may be presented which may perchance help to throw more
light thereon.
By sacraments we mean rites which imply a visible action,
a matter, forms which express an effect expected from God,
and to which, given all the necessary conditions, we attribute
effipacy to produce this effect.
For example, baptism consists in an act of purification, in
which water has its place as the matter, while words animated
by an intention determine its use; and its result for the sub
ject of it is a spiritual effect, namely, incorporation into the
Christian unity.
» Why, we ask, these exterior acts, this introduction of
matter, this salvation by means of incantations, touchings,
ritual words, ceremonies, rhythmic gestures, all of them
things which appear to be borrowed from a domain of life
very far removed from the spiritual, the proper object of
religion ?
Let us first of all remark that the Saviour, who said : The
flesh profiteth nothing. The hour cometh when the true adorers
shall adore the Father in spirit and in truth, none the less
submitted in fact to the baptism of John, instituted a baptism
of His own, founded the Eucharistic supper and more or less
explicitly all the rest, giving the impetus to the whole of the
ritual movement of the Church.
So that the " spiritual " who desire to exclude from re
ligion the manifestations they think to be tainted with
paganism cannot base themselves upon Him.
But such persons, if they are philosophers, might perhaps
consider the saying of Pascal : " Man (in religion as in every
thing else) is neither an angel nor an ass, and unluckily
whenever he wants to play the angel he only plays the ass. ' '
Man does not consist of the spiritual only. And since man
"is undoubtedly spirit, but spirit incarnate, and incarnate in
the unity of one sole substance : what is philosophic in re
ligion is that the human soul ascends towards God, to whom
I religion has to bind it, along with the flesh and by making
'use of the flesh; and that God descends to man, to the mind
and the heart of man, by the flesh and by making use of the
flesh. The flesh therefore is a natural means of communica-
(bon for religious reciprocity between God, who, having made

Zbc (Beneral 5&ea of tbe Sacraments 137
man, has to approach him as He has made him, and man
who, being thus made, must correspond with God's action in
accordance with his own nature.
It is for this reason that the whole religious movement starts
from an Incarnation. The Flesh of Christ, which is at the
same time divine and ours through fraternal solidarity, is
given to us, makes expiation for us, and stoops even to
immolation before the ineffable and offended God. And
inversely, in It and through It, God welcomes humanity to
Himself, adopts it as His child, glorifies it, and eternises it by
anticipation. So that in the Scriptures the Saviour's Resur
rection is always presented as not only the pledge, but the
beginning of our own. It is with it as with a giant
whose head is in the heavens, and who must ascend thither
altogether. Are we not the Body of Christ, all of us in whom
the universal Man is continued and wills to be completed, in
whom God follows up and wills to consummate the conse-
jjuences of His Incarnation?
Here we have already the motive for introducing into re
ligion sensible and operative signs, rites which express us
and are meant to give us to the supernatural; which express
the supernatural and are meant to give it to us.
The real and physical efficacy of the sacraments, for the
giving of grace, is thus explained.
*****
But this is not all; there is a more general reason for the
same truth, joining with it also the explanation of these inter
ventions of matter in the religious life; water for baptism,
bread and wine for the Eucharist, oil for anointings, and so on.
The point of contact of religion in us is the essence of our
human nature ; that whereby we are all of us one, without dis
tinction of race, age, nation, sex, social situation, ideas, par
ticularist tendencies, and so on. And that is why the true
religion is universal, or Catholic; catholic in space, catholic
in time, profoundly catholic, cutting clean through all that
distinguishes, divides, separates the human children of God.
Everyone agrees in this. But this is not enough. Why
thus stop half-way?
Having arrived at that which makes us all brethren, our
basic human nature, we are enabled to pass the barrier, and
to feel ourselves brethren, in the unity of all being", of every
creature that issues from the universal Source.
We have extended thus far our notion of the Catholicity of
the Church, we have comprised all this in its unity. Are we
not invited so to do by the wonderful teaching of the Gospel
included in the words the Kingdom of God?

138 xrbe Cburcb
The Kingdom of God — that is to say, the universality of
creatures of which God is the Father, whom He leads all to
the same end, the manifestation of His goodness. He leads
them, it is true, by different paths, and in accordance with
an order that takes account of their natures, of their respective
values; but it is precisely according to this order that matter
is for spirit, the transient for the immortal. So that we see
aU nature spreading, like a carpet, beneath the feet of the
thinking creature. Angel or man, man of this world or of
another, every immortal living being must benefit by Paul's
saying : All is for the elect. And doubtless, in this phrase
with its immense content, Paul means to proclaim that final
order which eternal life has to realise, that which the philo
sopher of Konigsberg caUed the kingdom of ends. But before
the kingdom of ends comes the service of ends; before the
goal comes the road, and the law of harmony which the
subordination of matter to spirit expresses must be mani
fested in it in the same way.
Matter, then, has its r61e in the religious movement. Man
carries it along with him ; through it God comes to man. And
particularly is this true of our body, which is conjoint matter :
which is nature, in us, in order to connect us with nature;
which is of the universal lump although it carries within it
the leaven of the spirit. But it is true also of the elements of
this world ; water for the baptised, symbolic and active oil
for holy unction, air for the vibration of the sacramental
words, bread and wine to be transmuted, while retaining
their symbolism, into the Reality of the Lord.
External matter is not so external as all that. External
matter is only man continued, since it is the power of the soul
that fashions it, unites it in a small way to itself, abandons it
at death only to take it up again, like the statuary who makes
endless working models of the same clay, makes it submit to
himself in a broader and looser, yet real fashion, by his
dominion over nature; for this too is a manner of imposing
the soul on matter, since the idea, if not the spirit itself,
moulds it into shape.
When we think of these concordances we ought not to be
astonished at the apparent materiality of our rites. This
materiality, which is moreover quite relative, since the spirit
is always the end, since the spirit is also the condition, see
ing that matter without it can do nothing — this materiality
is only an integration.
Man's religion is material like himself, like his interior and
exterior environment; and it is fitting to give this environ
ment a share in our action and in the actions which concern

xrbe General 5bea of tbe Sacraments 139
us, in order that they may be really our action and our
concern. *****
It may be usefuUy remarked that sacramentality is not the
law of the Church alone. It is the law of all things.
There are sacraments in nature also.
What is nature itself but a sublime sacrament ? Syrrtbol of
God as it is, and able effectively to communicate His presence
to us, it tells our mind something of what He is; it gives our
spirit, by means of life wherein the whole of nature plays its
part, a little of that multiform divine nourishment which is
its being.
But since nature left to itself and our mind left to itself
could have no intercourse with each other, they had to find a
common ground, our body. Hence the body, too, is a sacra
ment, that is, an active symbol, since, by being a universe in
epitome, a microcosm, it expresses that other universe, and
serves as a passage whereby the great universe may cause
our soul to awake to it and to herself.
Lastly in the operation of our being, between soul and
body, there are also sacraments.
Vibrations that affect our organs by external actions, and
inwardly transmuted into images, sensations and felt impulses
— what are these but active symbols, which express the world
and make it act ?
Is not the mental image a sacrament, in relation to the idea
that it suggests, since it suggests and signifies, and is there
fore at the same time both sign and active reality?
Thus harmony shows itself everywhere. Supernature is
reflected in rlature; nature is crowned by supernature. Matter
plays its part of servant in relation to mind. Good in itself,
it becomes excellent when it lends itself to communicating to
us the Best. It is the ladder whereby God mounts to us from
the depths of being, that He may emerge, without our resist
ing Him, from the innermost depths of our being.
This divine ascent, which grace realises in us, has for its
general means Christ, since He is the rightful intermediary,
the true Way of life, as He called Himself, when He said : No
man cometh to the Father — and doubtless also nothing comes
from the Father — but by Me.
And then, an unexpected consequence, but one which
closely binds up into a compact bundle all that we have just
said — It is Christ, the person of Christ that is the sacrament
par excellence, the first sacrament, the sole sacrament, since
whatever we call a sacrament is only a continuation of His
syrnbolic and real action; symbolic, since He is a manifesta
tion of God ; real, because He is God given to us.
Christ, by expressing the divine and causing it to act ; by

140 xrbe Cburcb
employing to that end, as weU as His soul. His suffering and
glorified Flesh, after taming exterior nature; and then by
founding, in order to carry on His Body and Soul, a visible
society wherein the spiritual life depends on and uses sensible
reality; Christ, by so doing, made Himself truly the Way, in
the proper sense of the word.
Every soul draws near to God through Him as by a road
of flesh.
Every soul touches God by means of those successive con
tacts whereof the sacrament of baptism is the first, whereof
the most holy Humanity of Christ is the last.
When we give one of the faithful thftt sacrament of which
we shall shortly have to say that it sums up all the others, the
Eucharist, we say to him : May the Body of our Lord Jesus
Christ keep thy soul unto eternal life. In the Dominican rite
the words are " keep thee," body and soul, " unto eternal
life." The Body of Christ has the power of saving our soul
because he touches God's soul who touches God. And our
own soul, if we continue the chain, can, with Him, save our
body, and in part its natural continuation, the world.
The ordering of these things is indeed sublime.
We would like to show that it is not so unusual as it
seems to certain folk. The greatest modern philosophers
have forged systems which revive in an astonishing fashion
these old sacramental points of view which narrow rationalism,
unscientific at bottom, wished to believe dead.
Leaving at this stage these questions which make us
digress from our subject, let us examine, one after another,
the seven links of this sacramental chain, which for our
Church, that vessel moored to God, is as it were the chain of
its anchor.
As we test the firmness of each link, we shall regain the
feeling of the divine reality to which they attach us, and see
under what conditions we are upborne by the solid ground
lying unfathomably deep below the tossing waves of the
visible world.

CHAPTER II
BAPTISM
THE sacraments, then, are signs and means of
supernatural life which, through the Church,
extend to us the sanctifying action of Christ and
of the divine Spirit which is in Him.
To this we would add that the supernatural life
is similar to the natural; that it allows of birth, growth,
nourishment, a remedy for its ills, a recovery from its
mishaps, and in regard of the Societies which it rules, a
government and multiplication of its subjects which overcome
the effects of death.
It is these various functions which it is the mission of the
seven sacraments to fulfil.
The first — in order, if not in honour — is naturally that
which effects birth.
When Jesus was on the point of entering on His public life,
that is, of undertaking, by means of His preaching. His
example. His authoritative decisions. His miracles, and after
wards by His sufferings and death, the work from which the
Church was to arise. He betook Himself to the bank of the
Jordan, and as all the people, says St. Luke, were baptised
with the baptism of John, Jesus also was baptised.
He accepted solidarity with His people, as. Himself divine.
He had accepted solidarity with humanity.
This baptism of Jesus inaugurated His proper mission. It
was as it were His entry into the Kingdom of God which He
was going to found on earth. He entered it as the sun enters
into the day, and after Him, we, the satellites, should
enter too.
Baptism is indeed, for the Christian, the entry into the
earthly Kingdom of Heaven, the Church. The spiritual
washing, which frees us from the sin of the race and from
what we have added to it on our own account, is only a pre
lude and a negative disposition.
Moreover, what is the sin of the race, so far as we have
part in it, but the fact of being deprived, by our collective
fault, of normal and filial relations with God? Every sin,
original or actual, is only that. So that to be incorporated
with God through Christ and to quit the state of sin are the
same thing.
But to signify this effect negatively, by saying that bap
tism frees us from sin, is not enough. We must say : Bap
tism incorporates us into Christ. And as, for us, the approach
to Christ is the Church, seeing that we attain to Him only
141

142 xrbe Cburcb
through her, as we attain to God only through Him, it is even
more definite, or in any case more direct, to say : Baptism is
incorporation into the Church.
The ancients called baptism illumination. And this word
is not only a beautiful expression, but a useful lesson.
Truth, in religion as everywhere in life, is the first of things.
We only live according to certain forms because we believe in
certain things, in certain ends, and wish by our acts to adapt
ourselves thereto. He who comes to God, as St. Paul said,
must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder, and all
the rest of what He has said to men through Christ in order
to throw Ught on the eternal road.
The first thing, then, is to believe; and thus to enter into
the light of life. Practice comes afterwards.
We cannot admit that inversion which makes some people
apologists for the " ancestral act," that is, for the exterior
forms of the faith, while they refuse the faith itself. Bap
tism, which opens the door of the Church, is called the sacra
ment of faith, because faith is the first disposition that must
be brought to it.
But, as faith is an act common to God and man, to man
who assents and to God who operates on his heart; as bap
tism, the sacrament of faith, carries grace with it ; in con
sideration of its divine side it is called illumination, to mark
the interior action of the Spirit, to which the soul gives itself.
But then this question immediately presents itself : Why
give baptism to children, in whose case faith can only be a
fictitious acquiescence, as far as they are concerned; and a
sleep of grace, as far as the divine effect is concerned ?
Ought not this gate of the Church, which we call the sacra
ment of faith, to be reserved for those who can advance
towards faith?
Can a spiritual society admit into itself those whose minds
are not yet awake?
What is the meaning of this incorporation of one who is
absent-minded? For is not the little crying infant whose
soul is held captive in unconsciousness a victim of absence
of mind ?
Thai Christian life is wider than this individuaUst objection.
We human beings are not only individuals; we are associa
tions, and in this double character of ours it is the associa
tion, not the individual, that comes first. Individuality is a
conquest. If this famous solidarity about which so much noise is made
and which some folk pretend they have invented in opposi
tion to us be anything more than a vague word, it means that
some of us can stand for others ; that, given the proper condi-

Baptism 143
tions, we can make decisions for others, act for others, and
likewise, when all conditions are fulfilled, believe for others.
This is no paradox; it is the most ordinary thing in life.
A father believes on his child's behalf that bread is a neces
sity ; he gives it to him : he believes in the benefits of sanita
tion, and applies its precepts ; he believes that instruction is a
tool of life, and teaches; he believes in morality, and incul
cates it. He does not wait for a belated act of free-will to
enable his child to make up its mind as to all these things.
Likewise the father who believes that Jesus is the Way, the
Truth, and the Life, and that the Church is Christ acting
to-day, incorporates his son into the Church ; he recites the
Creed in his name ; the Creed of the society, from which the
child is not yet detached ; his entry, unconscious, and yet
spiritual, through solidarity, into that common Church which
is like Hugo's common earth :
Where thy mother holds her mother and thy sire his sire.
The child will have to renew this gift of himself later on,
to take its responsibUity upon himself; but from the begin
ning, God, the founder of paternity, and chooser of the
solidarity, sanctions it, by doing in this child, so far as the
child is capable of it, what He would do in the well-disposed
adult. He places in him a seed of grace of which the soul
will make use when it has awakened to itself, unless it prefers
to profane it, by repudiating both God and its father's affec
tion and love.
To receive baptism is then, positively considered, to draw
near to Christ by means of His Church. Negatively, it is
escape from evil, and, therefore, renunciation of godless nature
and all its perverse powers or tendencies. This is what is
meant by renouncing Satan, his pomps and his works. And
to indicate that we do not draw back but go forward, we say :
And I give myself to Jesus Christ for ever.
The symbolism of the sacrament is connected with this
double notion.
Its matter is water. Not only because water purifies,
which conriecls'it with the negative action of baptism, but
for other and more profound reasons.
Human traditions have always tended to connect water
with the origin of things, as if in anticipation of modern
theories which take life's beginnings from the bottom of
the sea.
From this point of view, baptism means : Thou who art
born of the sea, dive again into that still deeper sea, the sea
of the Divinity, whereof the ocean is but an outpouring. It
is in this Origin of origins, this Source of sources, that thou
must lose thyself one day, in order truly to find thyself, and

144 xrbe Cburcb
from now on, by grace and holiness of life, it must order
thy innermost being, as the water of the sea, the element in
which thy life began, bathes thy members.
The washing of baptism, then, will act as a stimulative and
truly regenerative goad, since it must restore to us, by its
very constitution, our original and natural element, the
element of the divine.
Here we have only modernised ideas borrowed from the
doctors of the Church, who add that the natural coldness of
water and its refreshing purity are symbols of the refresh
ment which grace opposes to that sinful excitement of the
flesh which impels us to evil.
By its transparency water also signifies the soul's recep
tivity of the divine light.
When, in the completer ceremonies of olden times, the
catechumens were immersed, there was seen also a kind of
death, followed by a resurrection, as if the man of sin were
destroyed to make room for the new man engendered by the
action of Christ.
All these symbols are beautiful, and there is no reason to
overlook them in our rdsumd.
Such, then, is the matter of baptism. And given this
symbolic matter, the ritual words, animated by the intention
of the minister who in his action is united to the Church, and
thereby to Christ, and by them both to Him whose word
operates above all — these words, we repeat, consecrate the
matter, by determining its spiritual signification, and thereby
they achieve the sign which the institution and permanent
presence of the Saviour cause to become effective.
- I - ^ M I I I I I I M -y^-
Moreover, since we have compared baptism to a birth, and
we know that every birth needs to be aided by those who
have or are deemed to have the fulness of life, we introduce
the godfather and godmother, whose office, so rarely under
stood in the days of our decadent Christianity, should be to
encourage in the new-born child of Christ the religious life
which he has received ; to defend it in him, and to aid him,
if necessary, to bring its fruits to perfection.
Lastly, since baptism is the rite of birth in Christ, through
whom we draw nigh to God, and in the Church through which
alone we draw nigh to Christ, it is natural that baptism
should be declared necessary, necessary with the necessity of
a means, as we say in theology. Where shall we find a
means of salvation outside that which gives us to Christ, who
said : " No man cometh to the Father but through Me " ?
And where, again, shaU we find a means of salvation outside
the Church, which is only the continuation of Christ in time?

Baptism 145
There is in this a necessity which implies, by its very con
stitution, the reUgious plan of the world.
Amen I say to you, declared Jesus to Nicodemus, unless a
man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into
the kingdom of God.
In these words, the necessity of baptism shows itself as it
is, that is, not a pure material necessity; not the necessity of
an exterior rite; but a moral necessity, namely, the necessity
of spiritual incorporation with the Saviour, whereof actual
baptism is only the official and ordinary means.
We cannot, then, say that whoever has not received the
baptism of, water is lost. That would be an atrocity of which
religion is not guilty. But since it is the official means, if it
be not utilised, a moral substitute is necessary. The uncon
scious infant has none, and that is why, if he is threatened
with having to leave this life without having actually lived,
we attach such great importance to the fact of his sanctifica
tion without his co-operation, in covering him with the
influence of Christ through the collective influence of the
Church, of which baptism is the sign.
Only in this way can the moral necessity we have referred
to be satisfied, and that goes without saying when once we
have understood the character of visibility, the social and
consequently exterior character which the spiritual has to put
on in the Church.
From this point of view, the benevolent opinion of certain
theologians, according to which infants can be incorporated
by their parents' faith, is very illogical. The Church aims
only at the spiritual, and the spiritual suffices at need among
those who are capable of it. But when the subject furnishes
none of it, it does not belong to the Church, a social organisa
tion functioning in the visible world, to supply for it through
the invisible. The parents' faith does not represent the
Church. On the contrary, the rites that have been instituted
represent it. And hence the difference of judgement with
regard to these two cases, when it is a question of incorpora
tion with the Church.
Does this mean that the fate of innocents has no concern for
us? God forbid ! But, in the first place, unbaptised
children are not, properly speaking, innocents, for the fault
of the race affects them. All the same, as this fault is not
personal, we all agree broadly that they are not punished for
it, unless in a sense of the word which no longer gives rise to
scandal. They are punished in this sense, that they do not get as far
as the Christian expects to do ; and that is a negative punish
ment. Positively, while we have no revelation in regard to them,
we hope that their lot is a happy one; that they bless God for

146 xrbe Cburcb
their life, and that though they may have something left to
desire, they do not feel envy, being satisfied with their lower
humanity. Theirs is as the temporal lot of a child born in Guiana,
whose parents were deported convicts, and whose brothers,
by a happy chance, were brought back to France. The
latter would have reason to praise God ; but the former would
have no right to make indignant demands. He is not
punished personally. Guiana is a place one can live in. If,
however, he feels the pressure of a family liability, that is a
condition of human affairs which does not afford any justifica
tion for revolting.
Has a man good grounds for complaining, if he has
the lot that he deserves, because a happier lot has eluded
him? The child who dies without baptism has merited nothing,
conquered nothing personally ; collectively, he belongs to a
guilty race ; he has nothing to demand ; he has nothing to
hope for except from the free goodness that welcomes him.
If he complains because others have had access to regenera
tion, God can reply to him what the master of the vineyard
replied to the jealous husbandman of the parable : Am I not
free to do what I will with mine own? Is thine eye evil
because I am good?
We must understand, here as elsewhere, that in the consti
tution of an order, inequalities are not injustices, although
there is in this matter, it must be admitted, a problem of
providence which is beside the present question.
As for the adult, who can be united to Christ through the
spirit, his case is not the same. If he does not despise the
official means, yet does not find it within his reach; if he is
invincibly ignorant of it; even if he despises it, but does so
through an error which is not morally imputable to him, such
a man may become one who is baptised by the Spirit, and
may receive the effects of baptism.
God's grace is not tied down to the sacraments, say all our
doctors. Actual baptism, as a means of incorporation with
Christ, is the law; but the law does not tie the hands of the
Lawgiver. God, who holds the key of souls, sa,ys St. Thomas
Aquinas, has no need, if He wills to enter, to call the porter,
the hierarchical Church. The sacraments are our servants,
Sacr amenta propter homines; we are not their slaves.
The same St. Thomas, wishing to mark, on one side, the
correctness of the official language, and on the other to
reserve the rights of God and of the individual conscience,
establishes his teaching concerning the necessity of baptism
in two articles the order of which is curious.

Baptism 147
First article: Is baptism necessary for salvation? — Answer,
Yes. Second article: Can a man be saved without baptism? —
Answer, once more. Yes.
Under this apparent contradiction, the fact is that the first
article, in its general form, lays down the law; whereas the
second, in its particular tenor, is concerned with individual
cases, and aUows for the accidental, whatever its extent
may be.
The verbal means of conciliation between these two theses
is included in the famous distinction of the three baptisms :
Baptism of water, which is always the official means ; Bap
tism of blood or martyrdom, which is greatly superior to it,
since it carries even to heroism the gift of oneself to Christ
which makes on our side the whole value of baptism; lastly.
Baptism of desire, it being understood that this desire may
be simply implicit, carrying with it no knowledge or recog
nition of real baptism.
The baptism of desire, understood in this last fashion, is
not other than conversion of heart, as St. Augustine says,
that is love of supernatural good so far as it is understood,
and the sincere disposition to adopt its means, whatever they
may be, as soon as they are known.
Now this disposition is called a baptism because, since it
in fact constitutes an interpretative baptism, it assures its
fruits, and incorporates the man whose soul arrives at it not
only with God, who sees the heart, but with the Church itself.
Not the hierarchic and visible Church, since that by hypo
thesis is either unknown or misunderstood; but the interior,
invisible, universal Church, of which the other is only the
symbol and the means.
None the less would it be said that the man thus justified
owes his salvation to the Church as it is, to the visible
Church ; for however much he may approach to it considered
only as invisible, he cannot dissociate its body and its soul.
The Church, to the soul of which he becomes united, saves
him none the less by its body ; or rather by the whole of her
self. Such as she is, she is the sole means of salvation, just
as Jesus Christ is, whom she contains and represents to us.
Yet the spiritually baptised, if inculpably ignorant of or
mistaking the outward Church, only belongs directly to the
inward Church, the Church which can be defined as the
society of souls of good will,^ after these necessary explana
tions. Such is baptism.
In all the other sacraments we shall find something of it,
as in every development we find the starting-point.
* Cf. injra, book v., chaps, i.-iv.

148 xrbe Cburcb
Baptism, the door of our Church, ought to seem as
precious to us in the spiritual realm as those gates of the
Baptistery at Florence, which Michael Angelo called gates
of Paradise, in the history of art.
It is indeed the gate of Paradise, this baptism of ours,
since it incorporates us with Him who said : I am the door
of the sheep: if any man enter through Me, he shall find
pasture. The Christian has only to watch that he does not go back
from this door, by dreaming of the evil from which it cuts
him off; by turning his back on the Eternal towards which
it sets his face, as the giant opening of the Egyptian pylons
set the face of the faithful towards the sanctuary, far off and
full of mystery, beyond the sphinx-lined paths that led up
to it.

CHAPTER. Ill
CONFIRMATION
BAPTISM effects our birth into the spiritual Ufe,
either, in the case of an adult, by a personal act,
or, in that of an infant, by the act of another which
is authorised by Christian solidarity, which the
future is to consecrate, and God, in the mean
while, sanctions.
Confirmation, as its very name indicates, confirms us in
what baptism produced. That is, its purpose is to complete
what the first rite began.
It is a complement, a complement on our side, because it
calls for a more complete, a more active giving up of our
selves to our higher realities ; a complement on the part of
God, by a renewal of grace destined to aid this giving up
and to make it fructify.
If we thus begin twice over, it is firstly because our life
is subject to time, and it is good to seize it again at every
turning, in order to draw from it all that its inconstancy
permits. It is also to follow more closely the conditions of
the symbolism that is at the base of our sacramental institu
tions. By the symbol we hope to strengthen the reality; it will
be wise, then, in part to bend the reality to the symbol.
Now in physical life, which, as always, furnishes our
religious symbols, birth is followed by growth.
It is not that these two functions are essentially diverse.
Birth is a first growth ; growth is a continuous birth. So we
would say, in the spiritual, that all the sacraments merely
continue the effect of baptism, and that baptism is only the
entrance to the other sacraments. But yet we distinguish
these two things, birth and growth. Our rites, too, make
the same distinction.
Moreover, there is a capital difference between the re
ligious symbol and physical reaUty; for the laws of the
spirit, although they are parallel to the laws of the body, are
not identical with them.
Physical life has a maximum. One is born an infant ; one
becomes a youth, and then a man; after that comes the
decline, and the perfect age is passed. In the spiritual, the
perfect age is not only not passed, but not attained. It is an
ideal. Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect, said
our Lord. We cannot claim to attain to that. We steer
towards it as the ship does towards the stars.
A sacrament of perfection cannot then, in reality, give its
149

150 xrbe Cburcb
effect ; it can only symbolise it, and signify a progress which,
by the direction that it takes, puts us on the way to fulness.
What is that direction? That is what the symbolism of
the sacrament is going to teach us.
The child, as compared to the man, is characterised by his
weakness. Growth, for him, is the obtaining of strength,
and the capacity really to live the life of a man. Thus con
firmation will be the sacrament of strength in order to lead
the Christian life in its fulness.
On the other hand, the child is entirely given up to its own
self-development. It feeds, it plays, it sleeps, it prattles, it
attempts little gestures which represent in embryo what it
will do later on. But all this is for it only a kind of self-
creation. Properly speaking it does not act; for it does not
produce. It does not communicate any of its life to others.
It does nothing for the benefit of society. It is society which
turns to it to form it by a physical and moral education.
If our eyes knew how to see, instead of only submitting to
appearance, we should perceive, above the cradle which
shadows a young destiny, humanity and nature leaning, the
ages bent, God's Eternity present and the whole race, by
means of humble representatives, fostering a life which does
not yet know what life is.
A mother who suckles her child, or puts the tiny spoon into
the tiny mouth which the inexpert hands cannot even help, is
the symbol of humanity, which has its agelong toil drawn
out for or poured into the needy souls of the young.
Later on, the relations are partially reversed. While still
continuing to receive, the completed man gives. What the
ages have done for_ him, he helps to bequeath to them
enriched. He adds his collaboration to that immense col
laboration whereof he was the beneficiary, and to the sup
port procured for him by his surroundings he adds his support,
like the pontoon supported by the water, which in its turn
supports. In addition, the man who acts thus for the good also defends
the good. The two actions complete one another; for our
good being ceaselessly lain in wait for, ceaselessly menaced,
the man who labours is always in the position of the builders
of the temple, who held the trowel in one hand and the sword
in the other.
What is there in the spiritual sphere which answers to these
facts? A double application of them will be manifest; an
application to the Church herself, an infant before she grew ;
and an application to each of us. And the effective symbols
which correspond to these two cases are the descent of the
Holy Spirit on the Apostles in the one ; Confirmation in the
other.

Confirmation 151
For the society, the manifestations of the Spirit in the
Cenacle are^the striking mark of the interior effects of the
sacrament in the case of individual Christians.
As at the Baptism of Christ, the first of our baptisms,
visible signs revealed what would be the effect of baptism in
each one of us, taking account always of what was special
to the case of Christ; thus too at the Cenacle, in the matter
of confirmation.
For the Apostles, the symbols of the Spirit are the tongues
of fire, the sign of ardent conquest and of collective com
munication ; the rushing wind, passing over the spaces of the
earth and the sea, like the bearers of the Good News. And
that signifies a combined action. It is the Church which is
confirmed here. It is the Apostles also, but the Apostles
considered as the representatives and founders of the Church.
For each Christian the point of view changes, as it
changes to a much greater extent for Christ Himself.
Although each of us is invited to act for the society, his
action, being individual, has not the characters of the society.
We find ourselves thus brought back, with regard to
symbols, to the symbols of strength and of the personal com
munication of the faith.
Now in a question of strength, athletics offer quite
naturally the storehouse for comparisons. The ancient
athlete anointed his body with oil, to strengthen it, to pro
tect it, to make it supple in bodily contests. We admit
anointing, and oil, which is its matter, as a sign of the
strengthening of the faith and of preparation for Christian
contests. Once more, oil serves to give light and heat by its com
bustion, as the Holy Spirit enlightens the soul and renders it
enlightening and burning for others.
Taken as it is from the sober and evergreen olive, it recalls
the serious side of the Christian life, its vigilance, and the
attentive providence which guides it, etc. The Fathers of
the Church were never tired of developing these symbolisms.
We are much less inclined to it to-day ; but the general data
subsist. In life symbolism has a permanent value which
religious institutions had to consider.
With the same thought, but enlarged this time, since
Christian virility must employ itself in aiding the life around
it, to the oil of the strong we add balm, to signify that in the
spiritual, the perfume which is spread abroad, that is,
example, is a strength.
Our psychologists have shown this well enough. Example,
by formulating in the writing of action that which was vaguely
formulated in our soul, aids in its realisation. By imposing
on the eyes, and thereby more or less on the heart, what
ever risked being buried in the dormant conscience; by

152 xrbe Cburcb
veiling the rest; by justifying the hope of progress; by
demonstrating as able to be done and a good thing to do
that which it shows us as done, example overcomes hin
drances and opens a road. It persuades the mind and the
heart to make the inward sign which commits us to action.
Why should the Christian life neglect this strength? The
good odour of Christ, as St. Paul says, when it emanates
from a soul wherein Christ lives, is highly effective. The
balm of the sacrament is a figure of it. And besides, in
making use of this matter, we apply to the faithful the sign
of the Cross, as we impose the sword or the banner on the
knight, to invite him to fight for justice.
We mark him on the forehead, as being the most apparent
and noble place, where is affirmed the firmness of his atti
tude, as it is there that is manifested, in case of weakness,
either the blush of cowardice or the pallor of fear.
He who must not be ashamed of Christ, nor fear any
thing that separates one from Him, may well boldly bear on
his forehead the sign of the Cross.
By these exterior signs the believer admits that God is
present, introducing under the sign the reality that it pro
claims so far as this reality depends on God, who stirs his
heart without doing violence to his liberty.
This gift of God really acting in the soul is what is con
nected with the idea of the sacramental character, which
must be understood as an interior facility which active good
will is to employ. So the Apostles, at first timid and shut
up in the Cenacle, make use of the gifts of the sanctifying
Spirit by exposing themselves firstly in Jerusalem, and after
wards throughout the world, ready to brave all and to face all
to preach Christ.
And we do not wait till the Christian has attained bodily
to the age of a man to imprint this mark on him. The soul
has no age. Considered in itself, it is above time, although
it displays its manifestations in time. As, then, it can be
reborn, according to the spirit, however old be its body; so
it can become adult, according to the spirit, however young
its body may be.
So we give confirmation to children. It is only neces
sary to wait until manifestations of interior grace, which are
not confounded with grace itself, are proportioned to the age
and circumstances.
Have we not, moreover, seen children conduct themselves
in a more Christian manner than the greater number of adult
believers ?
What lessons our little ones give us, when their young
hearts, already freed from unconsciousness and not yet
delivered up to that egoistical scepticism wherewith we are

Confirmation 153
so often imbued, hasten generously to action or to the
sacrifice !
The seven children of Felicitas, unflinching in spite of
tongs and cauldrons, Tarsicius and so many of their less
triumphant brethren might make those blush who are the
victims of human respect, of that strange weakness which
little by little invades watchful men, when, their initial eager
ness departed, they do not know how to renew their strength
by an intense Christian life.
To sum up. Confirmation presents itself as a complement
of baptism, a completion, in the sense of a fulness which
enables us to fight against obstacles and try to overcome
them. The confirmed Christian is a soldier; a citizen who doubly
represents his country ; inwardly, by the discipline which
firmly obeys the social law; outwardly, by his fearless action.
Moreover, the minister of this sacrament is no longer the
simple priest, or any Christian whatever, or even the un
believer who unites himself to the Church by correct inten
tion, as for Baptism ; it is the Bishop, the supreme chief
of each religious organisation, who intervenes in this as one
whose action is completive. Like the general-in-chief who
confirms an order of march ; like the artist who retouches
the marble, after the workman has cut it ; like the chief of
state, or the minister who signs the document prepared by
the clerk.
We are, as St. Paul said, a letter of Christ written . . .
not with ink, but with the living Spirit of God: not on tablets
of stone, but on the fleshy tablets of the heart.
This letter, signed and sealed, is not for all that a finished
writing. It is in great part a blank sheet. We must develop
the formula of life which the hand of the Saviour has con
firmed with His signature. It is the business of our whole
life. The confirmed Christian completes and begins; he com
pletes the constitution of his inner life ; it remains for him
after that to live. His best means will be the Sacrament
which nourishes, which contains, in a real though spiritual
sense, spiritual Food personified, most high and noble, most
sweet and efficacious — let us give Its name — the most Holy
Eucharist.

CHAPTER IV
THE EUCHARIST
WE have now reached the centre of the sacra
mental life of the Church.
The Eucharist is the Sacrament par excel
lence; the first, as is very evident, in the inten
tion of its Founder; the only one, it might be
said; for aU the others more or less directly depend on it;
and, lastly, the one which holds such a rank in the con
stitution of the Church as to be, so to say, identified
with it.
The starting-point of the sacramental idea is this : the
regulation of the supernatural life according to the general
laws of life. We find them in the life we know best, the
physical life.
Now, in the physical life, nutrition, to which the Eucharist
corresponds, is not only an important function, the principal
function, inasmuch as our continued existence depends upon
it; it is, in a certain fashion, the unique function.
All the physiologists tell us that assimilation is the funda
mental process of life, to which everything leads up.
A birth is only the nutrition and segmentation of a germ,
segmentation proceeding from nutrition as a derived
phenomenon. Any sort of growth is only a nutrition carried on by a
differentiation according to the demands of an evolutive
principle called soul. A functioning is only a nutrition
revealed by a consecutive differentiation, which liberates
force and uses it. Thus everything in the body is reduced
to nutrition starting from a g«rm.
So all is reduced, in the spiritual, to the proper effect of
the Eucharist.
There is this difference alone — a capital difference, it is
true, and one which thus renders our comparison imperfect
(are not all comparisons so, when it is question of matter and
of spirit?) — namely, that physical nutrition absorbs the food
into our bodies, changes it into us and not us into it. On
the contrary, the Eucharistic food incorporates the Christian
into Christ, in order to incorporate him with God. " Thou
wilt not change Me into thyself," said Christ to St. Augus
tine; " But I wUl change thee into Myself."
This is the food which is strongest; living food, like a
prey that devours its hunter; but in order to bear him up
to a state of life transformed to which it is good to mount,
since we do not grow, and do not even subsist, and cannot
IS4

xrbe Eucbarist 155
live, eternal clients of death as we are, except on condition
of laying hold of the Divine.
O ye who pass away, come to Him who abideth.
*****
The effect of the Eucharist is then to feed the spiritual life in
us. This is what is represented by the bread and wine that
are its matter; this is what is indicated by the words of
Jesus; Unless you eat the Flesh of the Son of Man and drink
His Blood, you shall not have life in you.
And all the effects which food produces we attribute to the
grace of the Eucharist.
The support of our life, which, without union with Christ,
falls back into the manifold insufficiency which has made us
require the religious bond to save us from the nothingness
of man.
The progress of our life, which mounts so much the higher
as it leans on the strength of God, on the universal value of
His Christ, finding itself fed by the more and more intimate
infiltrations of the Spirit which the contact of the Saviour
infuses into us.
The reparation of our life, ceaselessly ambushed by mis
chance, which, in the physical sphere, is called sickness;
accident, which, in the spiritual region, is called sin and the
effects of sin ; a moral wound, sickness of soul, which the
spiritual food, becoming a remedy, heals. What is a
remedy but a kind of food for the sick man, as food is a
remedy for weakness and death?
Lastly, the delight which normal nourishment produces,
normally absorbed, the Eucharist produces also as an effect of
unifying love; of the love which is always a joy, because it
responds to the twofold desire of our nature, to give and to
give oneself; and so to receive, in order to enrich at the
same time as to enlarge the field of one's being.
These four effects, accompanying the terrestrial traveller
throughout his life, will urge him towards his destiny.
That which is sustained, progresses, is repaired, and
enjoys with all its strength, is the thing which succeeds.
Carnal food, by itself, cannot carry us, even materially,
where man is going. It combats death only provisionally.
Nay, more, it carries death in itself, since, like the architect
who would replace the stones of a house one by one, sub
stituting new stones for them, but whose effort would over
turn the foundations, food only repairs our organs by
gradually destroying and wearing them out.
Alimentation is an exchange; it assimilates by dissolution,
until by this action the organs are at last exhausted, and
death, after being postponed for a while, seizes upon us.

156 xrbe Cburcb
The divine food does not proceed thus. It disintegrates
nothing but evil; it makes us grow without ceasing, only
urges us onward, and thus enables us to succeed. It triumphs
over death, which has no hold on the life of the spirit, and,
by uniting the spirit to God, will one day regenerate the
body too.
I am the Resurrection and the Life, said the Saviour. He
that believeth in Me, though he be dead, yet shall he live;
and he that liveth and believeth in Me shall not die for ever.
That is why He contrasts the food which He gives, and
which is Himself, with the poor aliments of the body, say
ing : My Flesh is meat indeed., and My Blood is drink
INDEED. Carnal food is nothing more than a tottering stay, which
at the first shock gives way with the house itself.
The Eucharistic food keeps us unto eternal life. He who
receives its effect and does not thwart it with a sinful will
conquers death. What is called by this name continues to
perform its action ; but its scythe cuts no longer, and the
goad with which it urges succeeding generations towards
the tomb is too dull for further victories : Ubi est, mors,
victoria tua: ubi est stimulus tuus?
Nor is this all : it is not even the main thing, for us who
wish to see in the sacraments, not the individual life of the
Christian, but the life of the Church.
The Eucharist is not a solely individual rite. Those who
think so do not know it. Those who act as if it were only
draw from it a partial fruit. It might be said that they
draw from it nothing at all, if their good and cramped inten
tion does not outrange their vision in their own despite.
The Eucharist is meant to incorporate us with Christ, and
must incorporate us with Christ as He is, and Christ is not
a solely individual being. He is an individual so given up
to His office that He becomes identified with it and becomes
a universal Being. He is the Son of Man. We only become
incorporated with Him on condition of becoming united in
Him to all men; of becoming united to them through love,
which is the principle of all ; of becoming united in love also,
and through love by the organisation of our life in common
which is the end of the Church.
This is far from a purely individual act.
Nothing is exclusively individual in Catholic life. We
have seen that Baptism is a social act, as an incorporation
into the religious society which has Christ for its Head and
His Spirit for its common soul; that Confirmation is a social
act, as the sacrament of strength and of fitness for spiritual
contests, from which the society reaps the benefit. The
Eucharist is the most social as well as the most intimately

xrbe Eucbarist 157
personal of all the sacraments, because it is the sacrament
of love.
Through it man unites himself to Christ, and unites him
self to all that Christ has united to Himself. He receives
Him together with His Body, His Blood, His Soul, and
His Divinity; but by remembering that His Body has been
broken and His Blood shed for aU men; that He is Brother
of all in soul, preoccupied with the good of all, looking after
the destinies of all, and that the God that this universal Man
is going to make ours is the mysterious bond of all men, the
common foundation, transcendent and immanent both, of all
beings. It is indeed this which is also implied in the Eucharistic
symboUsm, as the Apbstles understood it. We are but one
bread, all we who partake of the same bread and of the same
cup. This image is clear. The matter of the Eucharist is
a synthesis of elements which come together in unity. The
bread is made of the multitude of grains which the flour
mingles and the fire unites ; the wine, of the multitude of
grapes which the vat gathers together and fermentation
unites into one. It is the symbol of Christians united to
Christ, the living Leaven of the human lump.
Besides, the use of common food under the form of a
banquet accentuates the symbolism and widens it, by dis
engaging it from all subtlety. The banquet is the symbol
par excellence of life in common. The family table is the
centre and rallying-point of all the lives which the black
beam overhangs, as the Greeks said in speaking of the
family. The table is the sign of union, and it helps to main
tain it. Thus the Eucharist, the Christian holy banquet and
family board, makes the bond of souls and presents itself as
a fraternal sign between us.
I fancy that this is what the Saviour meant when He sat
at table with the Twelve to institute the Eucharist, and said
with a loving sigh : With desire have I desired to eat this
Pasch with you. It is because this new Pasch signified and
tended to realise what He had come to effect, the union of
all men in Himself, to make a single family with God as its
Father of infinite wealth.
If now we remember that the unity to be established among
us is not just any kind of unity, a purely sentimental unity;
that it is a functional unity, an organic and organised life, a
real society, which is the Church, a society ruling us in
spiritual matters as the State does in temporal : if we recaU,
I say, this fundamental truth, we shall come to say that the
fruit of the Eucharist is, as theologians say, the oneness of
the mystical body of Christ, i.e., its fruit is our religious con
stitution itself.

158 xrbe Cburcb
In speaking thus we seem to be hair-splitting, whereas we
are really just touching upon one of the finest and pro-
foundest points of Catholic theology.
I have already remarked that the Eucharist is fundamentally
identified with the Church. And now I prove it by saying
that the purposed end of the Eucharist is to unite us to
Christ, all of us together, not as a stray flock, but so connected
with one another as befits our nature, with respect to the
supernatural, i.e., so far as we form the Church.
The Church united by the cement of charity to its Christ
first of all, and thus member to member according to the
laws of organic life, thanks to the spirit of Christ, which is
love and which is life; such is the effect we expect from the
Eucharist. All its individual effects are derived from this.
To believe the contrary, and that the Church will constitute
itself in love because individuals have first of all drawn from
Christ individual effects to be socialised, would be pure
Protestantism. CathoUcs say that the society comes first; that the society
is the creative thing in relation to the individual.
The communicant can only get individual effects when he
communicates with the society by communicating with Christ
as He is, as the universal Man; by accepting the love which
unites him to Christ as He is, as if He were an organic law
producing the whole religious organisation ; for Christ as
He is is both of these.
To this we must always return; for it is the foundation of
all Catholic doctrine.
No individual draws from Christ, and through Him from
God, outside of whom there is nothing, otherwise than as
the leaf draws from the earth, by means of the branches,
the trunk and the roots; according to the organic law of the
tree, in union with the general laws of all life.
To wish to be united with Christ by isolating Him, or by
isolating oneself (for He does not permit Himself to be
isolated from His work) would be to be the leaf which, so as
to draw from the earth the saps which nourish it, should
tear itself from the tree and lie on the soil. What would it
find there but abandonment and death?
Hence arises that conception already hinted at, which even
great theologians have not understood, but which was
famiUar to St. Thomas Aquinas; namely, that in a certain
manner the Eucharist is the sole sacrament. Not that it
suppresses the others; but it subordinates them to itself and
appoints itself their end. They are only its porch.
As in our Christian churches everything turns towards
the tabernacle; the naves lead to it, the apses crown it, the

xrbe Eucbarist 159
domes overhang it, the coloured windows focus the light of
heaven upon it, the lofty pillars increase its glory, the statues
follow in its train, the cruciform shape of the building recaUs
the sacrifice from which it came; so, in spiritual realities, all
comes from the presence of Christ in the midst of us, all
comes sacramentally from the special rite which gives Him
to us, which gives Him to us, I say, in His own proper
nature, the other sacraments doing nothing but forming
channels for His action.
It might be said, and St. Thomas did actually say, that )
every sacrament is only a desire for the Eucharist; a real
desire, to which is united, expUcitly or implicitly, the per
sonal desire of the recipient, seeing that every desire or
every efficacious action is only such through Him who is
present in it, and who is our All. Glowing and vivifying
Sun, around which revolves the religious world which carries
us with it; sublime Pelican, which each day smites its
breast to nourish us with its substance; Head of the race,
immortal and ever active, whom the mysterious Eucharistic
sleep renders fruitful, as, in the rod of Jesse, the patriarch
sleeping and dreaming of a numberless progeny saw its
twigs bud, shepherds and kings arising from its open side.
In this image, if it were thoroughly examined, we should
find a thought which would put the final touch to this hasty
sketch. The genealogical tree, which spreads out with the number
of generations, grows taller too with the fulness of the time
that measures them. So Christ, our eternal Ancestor,
includes time in His action, as He includes the multitude
of men.
And as the multitude of men is organic through Him in
the Church; so is the fulness of time organic through Him,
comprising the distant preparations of His temporal life.
His life and His Sacrifice, the growth of His work through
the centuries, and finally the future, which rejoins the
eternity out of which the past arose.
Now this cycle of time is figured in the Eucharist and is
found in its effects.
Relatively to the past, the Eucharist is the commemora
tion, and still more, the mystic renewal of the Saviour's Pas
sion and its universal preparations ; by reason of which it is
called a sacrifice. Many people do not know the ample
meanings of what we call the Mass.
Relatively to the present, it signifies and tends to realise
progressively the unity of Christians in Christ and in His
Spirit, and therefore it is called communion. The Greeks say
(Tvva^is, assembly, intimate union.
Relatively to the future, it presages, prepares and antici-

i6o trbe Cburcb
pates the final union of the elect with God, through Christ,
in the eternal Church, and it is therefore called a viaticum.
The word Eucharist, which signifies thanksgiving or happy
grace, relates also to this prospective fulfilment, although it
applies equaUy to its harbingers.
The sacrament of the altar directs us also towards the
last end of man's destiny. It is the sacrament of life; but
of true life, which only gives an earnest here, which extends
its empire beyond death.
We go to the Eucharist as to the sacred booking-office
where we are given our ticket for starting, while waiting till
our time is up.
The old Israelites had to eat the pasch hastily, staff in
hand, loins girt, sandals on feet, and standing; for the pasch,
for them, signified the passage. And we also pass. But our
passage is not the drop into the dark pictured by the dis
turbed imagination of the living; it is the exchange of one
homeland for a better and a final home ; of an interior life
constrained, sad, and terribly transient, for a life eternal and
complete, of a relative union of human beings bound
together by love for a perfect union which no separation
hereafter can ever unbind.

CHAPTER V
PENANCE
THE three sacraments which we have studied are
the transposition into the supernatural of these
three vital functions : birth, growth, nutrition.
And since this last is the fundamental fact of
life, we have said that the Eucharist, which corre
sponds to it, is, in a manner, the sole sacrament, to which
all the others are subordinated and in which they are included.
These three sacramental actions. Baptism, Confirmation
and the Eucharist, corresponding to normal and universal
functions, must be considered as necessary per se, and on
any hypothesis.
Not that salvation is in fact absolutely bound up with
them; but normally they are imposed. So is the Christian
life constituted.
Penance, on the other hand, the fourth of our sacraments,
is necessary on occasion, after the manner of a medicine,
which does not enter into the normal functioning of life, but
comes to its aid in case of suffering or deterioration on the
part of the organism. Unhappily, since such accidents are
for us all of daily occurrence, penance also will be necessary
on a larger or smaller scale.
In what kind of deterioration the sacrament of penance
comes to our aid; how it repairs our wounds, and what is
the r61e of the Church in the matter, are the questions to
be dealt with.
Since our spiritual life consists in a life with God, through
Christ and through the Church of Christ, every infraction of
the law of this common Ufe tends to separate us from its
operation and to deprive us of its fruits.
Sin, as the infringement of the Christian law is called,
makes us as it were sick members of the spiritual organism,
the Church; and if it be grave, dead members, dead cells.
And as in an organism every weakening or mortification
of an organ, a member, any part whatever, concerns firstly,
the part itself, which no longer lives, no longer benefits by
the vital activity; secondly, all the others, which are all
affected by reason of the body's solidarity, wherefore physi
cians say that every malady is a general malady ; thirdly, the
soul, which can no longer, in the organism thus deteriorated,
reveal its powers and perform its task : so, in the spiritual
organism, every mortification of a member through mortal
sin and every weakening through venial sin concerns firstly,
the particular member, which no longer lives or whose life
i5i II

i62 xrbe Cburcb
is diminished, which obtains not at all or at any rate obtains
less, in this world and the other, the result of religious
activity; secondly, the whole Church, not only by reason of
the moral contagion that is always possible, but also by its
direct solidarity, since the Church suffers in each of its mem
bers as much as the body; thirdly, God, whose Spirit is the
soul of the Church; who realises through the Church His
ends in man's regard, and can no longer do so when and
in the measure that its members withdraw themselves by sin
from under the law of life which He guides.
Thus, the sinner is found to be blameworthy in regard of
himself, of the Church, and of God.
If he is to recover, it can only be by a spontaneous act, by
an intervention of the Church, and by an intervention of God.
No medicine will act on a member of the body unless the
member in question reacts through its forces of life to free
itself from the malady.
Nor will it act unless the organic solidarity interests the
whole body in this recuperation of one of its members.
Nor will it act lastly — and this is the most important of
the conditions — unless the spirit or directive idea of life called
the soul makes itself the agent of the recuperation, as it has
been the agent of the making, the growth and the nutrition
of the organism.
The actions performed by the penitent, contrition, confes
sion, satisfaction, make up what we have called the organic
reaction, through which the man whom evil has overcome
seeks to free himself therefrom.
Pardon and the restoration of grace are the share of God,
who suggests and accepts the effort of recuperation.
Lastly, the intervention of the priest as judge, as minister
of absolution, as the determiner of satisfaction, is the part
of the Church, in whose name the priest exercises his
authority. This is what is signified in a few words by the formula of
absolution, I absolve thee in the Name of the Father and
OF the Son and of the Holy Ghost.
Thou who repentest; thou who accusest thyself; thou who
offerest reparation ; I, minister of Christ and of the Church
which is His Body, I absolve thee. Not of my own authority ;
what am I, a sinner like thyself, even to hear thee, in a
matter of conscience, far less to absolve thee? I absolve
thee in the Name of the Father and 9/ the Son and of the
Holy Ghost; in the Name of Him who is the Source of that
life which thou hast lost or which is languishing in thee ; who
is the soul of the body that we form in Christ ; who restores
to thee, through me and through thy own acts, the mysterious

penance 163
influence of life called grace, the hope of life's manifestation
called glory.
The effect of penance is thus revealed by its purpose and
by the machinery which we have just attributed to it.
It re-establishes the sinner in grace.
It restores to him his rights as a son.
It reconciles him not only with God, but also with the
society of his brethren, the Christians united with Christ,
which he had left.
It restores him to the Kingdom of Heaven, which is earthly
as much as it is heavenly.
It reintegrates him in the unity of the mystical body and
plunges him once more into the current of life whereof God
is the principle; whereof Christ is the intermediary through
His merits; whereof the Church is the channel, and whereof
we are all at the same time collaborators and beneficiaries.
There are people who find this degrading !
One cannot read an anticlerical work without finding ful-
minations against the odious confessional, declarations of
the opposition between the contrite attitude of the penitent
and the proud demeanour of the free man.
Free from what? we venture to demand. Free from
remorse? Free from virtuous regret for his faults? Free
from attachments to the Eternity that judges us? Free
from realisation of that universal solidarity which makes
every individual value a common treasure, but also of each
individual fault the disgrace and shame of all?
If it is of this that the " free man " is proud, we can only
say that he has no reason for his pride. But confession pre
supposes the very opposite to such feelings. Those who come
with a great heart to it realise this. Those who come with
a poor one must rise to the level of the institution. That
would be better than abusing or misunderstanding it.
On the side of man, penance appears as an act of justice
which the penitent exercises against himself. He is not
dragged to the tribunal; he comes freely. Knowing that
sin is an evil, he purposes to abolish it, and contrition is the
soul of the act of justice he thus performs. Contrition is, as
St. Thomas so well defines it, "a sorrow for our faults
together with the will to destroy them."
To this end, the sinner, not content with an interior repent
ance, which is, it is true, the most important thing, performs
an act which is intended to prove the quality of his repent
ance, since he puts it to a proof directly proportioned to the
offence. He has offended God; to God he makes his address.

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He has been untrue to himself, to the self for which he is
responsible and which he has led astray. He turns back,
pledging himself by a real act, more decisive than a simple
interior act; more capable of breaking off with a clean cut
that automatism to which the Scripture makes aUusion in the
words ; He that committeth sin becomes the servant of sin.
Lastly, he has brought an element of corruption and dis
turbance -into the holy society of souls ; he declares before an
authorised representative of this society that he is ready to
restore order; in it; to satisfy the mercifully slight demands
of loving justice.
/ confess to God almighty, to Blessed Mary ever a Virgin,
to St. Michael the Archangel, to Blessed John Baptist, to
the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul, and to all the Saints, to all
that is pure, all that is great, all that is united with God in
holy association, that I, sinner that I am, have broken the
agreement; that I have forgotten what bound me to that
common life in God which we call the Christian Ufe; that I
have behaved like one who no longer believes, no longer
loves, no longer hopes, and who seeks his pasturage of
worldly pleasure, pride, avarice, anger, where good reigns
not, and despises the bread of which the Saviour spoke, the
will of His Father.
Through my own fault, through my own fault, through my
own very great fault. Wherefore I beseech the Blessed Mary,
ever a Virgin . . . and the whole line of saints once more,
all those who are united to the great eternal family, and you.
Father, who represent it by the fact of institution, to pray the
Lord our God for me.
If there is anything low about this, let us be glad often to
renew this lowness !
I quite understand that what jars here is this intervention
of other persons in the sphere of our conscience. But we
cannot be in the least disposed to condemn penance on this
point; for it is precisely from this aspect that confession
enters into our study, and makes evident what is our con
tinual preoccupation, the collective character of the religious
bond, and its organisation as the Church.
Penance, we say, is a sacrament; that is, it is an external
and operative sign; a sign of repentance on the part of the
penitent, and of pardon on that of God.
It is a sacrament of the Church, that is, a social act.
And the act is social under two aspects ; for the penitent must
recognise the right of the collective body to judge him, since
it is through this collective body united to Christ that he is
in relation with God, his judge, God in turn being in saving
relation with him through the same social means, namely,

penance 165
Christ, who is mediator for aU; through the Church which
continues Him, extends His action to us, applies to us His
merits, in accordance with the law established at the begin
ning when He said : Whatsoever thou (Peter) shalt bind on
earth shall be bound also in heaven; and whatsoever thou
shalt loose on earth shall be loosed also in heaven. And to
all : Whose sins you remit, they are remitted unto them, and
whose sins ye retain, they are retained.
Pascal remarks very justly that at bottom we owe our
confessions to aU men; " for," says he, " is it just that we
should deceive them?" Social life is based on confidence,
and so on truth, and so on veracity. We cannot lawfully
desire more consideration than by our acts we deserve. And
again, if confession is the first of reparations, since in offend
ing against the good whereon a spiritual society is founded
we have offended against the society, we owe the avowal of
our faults to all its members.
The public penance of the early Christians owed its exist
ence to this way of thinking. At all times of its main
tenance it was only demanded for certain crimes, and it was
speedily given up by reason of the inconveniences relating to
our common wretchedness; but the absolute right has not
perished ; our belief in general judgement recalls it and
applies it. Meanwhile, a prudent and merciful arrangement
satisfies in principle the social character of the fault by
requiring secret confession to a representative in place of
that public penance which prudence has put aside.
There is then no question of conferring on a man a sort of
divine character ; but we assert that the divine, here as every
where, is mixed with the human, and that the divine, in
dealing with matters in its own realm, must pass through the
human, in order to reach us in accordance with the laws that
govern man and so that it may be useful to man.
If we had started this chapter by pointing out the useful
ness of confession as such, we could show that rationaUst
ideas in this connection are governed by a thoughtlessness
which psychology does not approve; that the greatest minds
have made their way into daylight, and have recognised con
fession to be an institution whose inspiration is as deep as
its intention is moral.
This method of stopping the flow of evil by setting in its
path a real and visible dyke, which invites to interior reaction
by means suitable to the half automatic, half conscious func
tioning of the human species ; which uses the social in favour
of the moral; which compels each of us to reflect on and to
specify his case, because he has to explain it; which sets sin
before us in full daylight, instead of in the vague shadows
where it loves to linger in order to live; .which makes us

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judge the evil all the more inasmuch as we are conscious
that it is judged by another; which despoils it of its charms
and gives it up to its malice considered by two people alone;
which procures for us before the invisible and dumb Eternity
the feeling that we are heard, pardoned and encouraged for
the future ; which thus gives us that consolation, the absence
of which causes discouragement and despair, that we have
before us a blank sheet whereon we can henceforth write a
holy text : this method, too, of adding friendship and brother-
liness to the judgement of the soul, since the confessor makes
himself our counsellor, support, consoler, provided only that
he knows his own office and that we know ourselves to be in
need of his aid; all this belongs, perchance, to a strain in
human nature deeper than does the Protestants' confession to
God alone; deeper, even more certainly it may be said, than
does confession to nobody, on the pretext of preserving
independence and pride.
It is usual to attribute the effects of sacramental penance
to the Passion of Christ, because this universal act counter
balances, and does infinitely more than counterbalance the
burden of human malice.
The crucified Saviour, the first link, human and also
divine, of the chain that binds us to the Author of Salvation,
re-establishes the contact when sin has intervened to inter
rupt it.
The old mystics said that from His opened Side Christ
poured forth Water and Blood, symbols of purification and
of love ; Baptism and Penance on the one part, the Eucharist
on the other. It was one way of expressing the fact that
the Church and the sacramental functioning of the Church
are a continuation of the Saviour who merits for all, and the
social form of an action which in Him was only apparently
individual, since He is the universal Man, the security for
the whole race, by that merciful agreement freely instituted
under the name of the New Testament.
All our doctrines hold together. The sacrament of penance
is only a particular case, applicable to the sinner, pf that
common life in Christ whose formula we have given.
The theologians of the Middle Ages called penance a second
plank after shipwreck ; secunda tabula post naufragium. The
first plank which bore the traveller was the ship' s deck, whereon
with all his brethren he sailed towards eternal life. Ship
wrecked by his sin, the path to the haven forsaken, the
penitent sees stretched towards him the helpful plank of the
sacrament, which reaches out from the vessel and offers itself
to him, by means of which he can regain the coUective trans
port and continue his journey.
From the fact that penance is thus a help in accident, or,

penance 167
to take up once more our first metaphor, a medicine, it
follows that it can be repeated as often as it is necessary.
The heretics of olden time who did not believe in the
necessity or the possibility of several pardons, in the course
of a man's life, hardly understood either the human heart,
since they thought it guaranteed against relapses, or the
heart of God, since they thought that one day could exhaust
Its mercies.
We know how miserably weak man is; but we know too
that the strength of God is greater than man's weakness and
that He is more tender than man is perverse.
The mercies of the Lord are a multitude, says the Psalm.
And this though Cain, the despairing, may say : My iniquity
is too great for me to receive pardon, or though Judas find
only the halter to free him from his crime.
A son of Christ, though he sin often, never becomes
desperate. He has read the parable of the Prodigal Son.
He knows that the Father waits, when we think we must
ask life apart from Him to provide us with joy, until life
has answered in one way or another through conscience or
disappointment : I am not thy God. And He, who is that
God, the only hope of true life for us, and particularly of
eternal life, will come, we know, before we repent, in search
of the soul, and will clothe the sinner, as of old, in the white
robe, with the ring of reconciliation, the sandals that protect
his wounded feet, and will restore to him his place at the
family banquet for which the fatted calf will be slain in sign
of festivity, where the joyous song will be heard : For this
my son was lost, and is found.
The heavenly Father is always ready to pardon the eternal
inexperience of earth. His hand takes once more the feeble
hand which thinks itself able to do without Him. His
shoulder is bent so that the weary head of mortal man may
rest there. In His sacramental silence, or in the murmur
of the priest who absolves in His name, we can hear,
applied to guilty as well as to innocent misfortune, the
words which our sweet Master pronounced of old : Come to
Me, all ye who labour and are burdened with the weight of
life, and I will refresh you.

CHAPTER VI
EXTREME UNCTION
THE fundamental idea which is at the basis of the
sacraments now receives, in the individual field,
a last application which is not the least affecting,
although it is ordinarily the least indispensable.
It is the business of the sacraments to come to
our aid in all the circumstances of the spiritual life; circum
stances which are in part connected with, and which are
always parallel to those of bodily life.
As Baptism corresponds to birth. Confirmation to growth,
the Eucharist to nourishment. Penance to the healing of such
evil as may befall us, so Extreme Unction is the sacrament
of the supreme evil, that which, at least according to the
fears of the living, borders upon that state of the dead which
is a life, but which is no longer a life with which the sacra
ments are concerned.
We have said that the sacraments come to the aid of man
as he is in time ; body and soul, and by making use of the
body. When the body is given back to the universal life,
the life of the soul is pursued and the Christian brotherhood
is able to reach it by means of prayer; but the sacraments
cannot reach it; it has entered, beyond the realms of time
and space, and consequently beyond the reach of visible
actions, where the spirit can only go by itself.
Extreme Unction, then, is the supreme intervention, in
favour of one who is departing, of the society united in
Christ and in God which we call the Church.
It is the sacrament of departure, if the recipient really is
to depart; in any case, of what living Christians regard as
the gravest of dangers, requiring a special help, which Mother
Church is bound to provide. To the man whose life is fading
from him, and whose soul, made for God, seems to bend
towards the abyss of Ught
Like thirsting beast that bends above the stream,
must not the Church afford the helps which will assist him to
purify himself, to hope, to repair his strength for the great
crossing? Death is an event, as we have said, like any other; it
transfers us and does not destroy us. This is indeed true;
but it is true only of our spirit. But we are not spirit alone ;
we are a compound; incarnate soul, animated flesh, and
therefore it is our being that becomes dissociated when vital
functions are no longer possible and the elements that it
governed are scattered, leaving the real idea which we call
168

Extreme XHnction 169
the soul to its pure ideality; a thing that belongs to man,
but not man.
Now, it is hard to see the dissociation of one's being-, even
though it be for the survival of one's higher self.
To be poured out into the mysterious, even though it be
illuminated by that " dim light " which our faith affords us :
light for the consciousness, which trusts to it and confides in
it; dimness for the intuition, which is bewildered by the
total absence of all that constitutes experience, not only actual
experience, but even possible experience — to be poured out
thus into the fulness of the mysterious is a disturbing thought.
And is it not also disquieting to know that Justice as well
as Love is sitting at the gate of the other world, and that no
man knows, as the Apostle says, at any rate with a direct
certitude that is capable of putting to rest every apprehension,
whether he be worthy of love or hate?
And so religion comes to bring its help to the man that is
at some uncertain moment to die. It expresses this help by
means of a rite whose symbolism is borrowed in part from
that of confirmation, because of the similarity of the case;
but with special features, and in a way that takes account
of the differences.
The matter of the sacrament is oil; the athlete's refresh
ment for final contest; the medicine for the soul grieving
and never free from sin ; the source of heat and light for the
soul benumbed and groping on the edge of the great, half-
open abyss.
By its penetrating and diffusive action, oil speaks of the
depth and universality of the spiritual effect which it is
desired to exercise in this fearful extremity. By its soft
ness it recalls that hope which is so necessary at the moment
of coming face to face with the eternal silence.
The anointings are performed on those parts of the body
which may represent the principle of the moral miseries from
which it is desired to deliver us, even as a bodily remedy
endeavours to reach the root of the evil.
But the roots of sin are, unfortunately, the very roots of
our action. Everything can be abused. Life, which is a
divine benefit, can become in its entirety a source of vice or
misery. That is why the sacrament aims at purifying,
firstly our instruments of knowledge, secondly our motive
powers, thirdly our executive powers.
The eyes, the ears, the nostrils, the mouth, the hands, the
principal or the exclusive organs of our senses; the feet,
which signify outward action; the loins, which recall the
impulses of our senses, are touched with the symbol accom
panied by this prayer : By this holy unction and of His most
tender mercy may God pardon thee whatever sins thou hast
committed by the eyes, the ears, the tongue, etc.

170 xrbe Cburcb
We use the form of a prayer because we have to do with
one who is without strength and who cannot therefore help
himself; because the dying man has, as it were, already
departed, delivered into the hands of God, where prayer alone
can foUow him.
This is indeed the moment for imploring mercy, this
moment of supreme anguish, when the shut eyes are without
doubt about to close altogether before opening on a better
light. When we depart, all covered with the dust of action, with
the spatterings of life that has dragged us constantly through
its mire, with the wounds we have sustained in our fight for
good; struggles aU too weak, indeed, but never entirely
relinquished, what should we call upon if not the mercy of
the eternal Samaritan, who knows our paths and who has
so closely measured our strength?
Agnosce, Domine, creaturam tuam non a diis alienis
creatam. . . . Remember, O Lord, that Thy creature who
lieth here has been formed by no other hands than Thine. . . .
Remember not then his old sins, nor the excesses to which
anger or the fervour of an evil will have led him. For though
he has sinned, yet he has not denied Thee, God of aU that is
good: He has believed in Thee and has had a zeal for Thy
work. So sigh the prayers of the dying, the accompaniment and
commentary of extreme unction. So thinks the minister who
is present to act in the name of the Church.
And even if he himself, distracted and a little blunted by
his daily repetition of the same rites, does not often enough
think thus, yet it does not follow that nothing results from
his action, though it has thus become hackneyed.
The minister is not alone. He counts only by reason of
his place in the hierarchy, and that is the least. He has
above him the whole hierarchy, represented by the Bishop
when he blesses the oil of unction. And the hierarchy itself,
in so far as it is visible, is only the living symbol of the eternal
hierarchy of souls, which is the true Church; the Church
over which Christ presides ; which the Holy Spirit penetrates ;
which includes all ages, all places, all races, all beliefs that
excite virtue and are lived, all that interior Kingdom of God
which the Apostles called the Elect, because it is what counts
in respect of eternal life.
It is this holy society which is acting here, in the name of
the solidarity of which the God-Man made part and which is
invoked by conscious or mute suffering.
It is the prayer of this united group which is here con
densed, if we may so say, in the symbolic element which is
employed, in the actions and words which employ it.
It is the whole band of the elect of all times which.

JEjtreme XDlnction 171
arranged in its hierarchy and knowing that God is at its head,
bends over its suffering child and brother.
When the great Pascal wrote those terrible words " A man
dies alone," he was thinking of the associates or accom
plices of a wanton life. They indeed, when death lays its
hand on us, disappear as if they belonged to another world;
they can do nothing for us, and we die alone, without such
deceptive supports. But the Christian solidarity established
in God through Christ and through His immortal Church
death does not touch. The dead and the living pray for us,
when we suffer or die in communion with them in the Lord.
The sacrament, given in the Lord's Name by those who
represent the society, signifies and applies this prayer; the
sufferer receives its effect as to the soul, to the extent that
he is disposed thereto, and as to the body, to the extent that
Providence allows.
Indeed, the sacrament of extreme unction has a double
purpose. It does not signify a departure, and those are quite
wrong who regard the man in the cassock as a bird of mourn
ing who brings news of separation. He is a physician; a
physician of soul and of body, as the other kind of physician,
if he knows his business well, is a physician of body and soul.
What the Church brings to the sick man is a help, and
her motherly care, though concerned about souls before all
things else, yet does not fail of interest either in our bodies,
nor above all in our feelings, which at a deathbed are so
oppressed. As to the soul, the proper office of extreme unction is not
the remission of sin; that is supposed to have been already
acquired by the sacrament of penance, which normally pre
cedes anointing. Penance delivers us from evil, and prin
cipally from that evil which breaks our bond of friendship
with God; mortal sin. Thereby it is a sort of spiritual
resurrection. , Extreme unction, although accidentally it may
play the same r61e, like a tonic which sometimes acts as a
remedy, is yet not directly ordained therefor. It aims at
what are called in theology the remains of sin, that is, the
moral weakness which sin drags in its wake.
It is the sacrament for those who are convalescent in soul,
who have need of relief all the more prompt because their
body is in danger. In order to win eternal youth, it is
necessary that we should appear before God healed of evil.
Now what the person in good health could do by his own
virtuous efforts, prayer and collective action are asked to do
in this case. Extreme unction is speciaUy a social succour,
for the benefit of the man who cannot supply individual action.
And so it is not given to persons condemned to death, nor
to soldiers in extreme danger, nor, in general, to those who

172 xrbe Cburcb
are about to die, but are not weakened and as it were
snatched from themselves by the half-death of sickness.
Such folk as these have other succours with which they
can, themselves co-operate. They confess, they make their
communion, or they supply by an interior act what these
sacraments afford us.
But the sick man is expectant, and his brotherly expectation
sees a brotherliness as wide as our universal Church, as
tender as the soul of Christ and as mighty as God, coming to
meet it.
With regard to the body, the sacramental prayer asks for
healing, and it would expect it, as it expects a spiritual effect,
with entire confidence, did it not know that that result, like
all things temporal, does not provide an opportunity — any
how if we are wise — ^for a firm request.
There are things, says St. Augustine, which God would
grant us in His anger, and refuses in His mercy.
God's mercy walks in other paths than ours.
He who knows the supreme goal of life can alone regulate
the means to that great end. The sacrament, which operates
through Him, and not Uke a healing machine, heals if He
finds it well; consoles, if His steadfast goodness wiUs it; and
if that be better in the long run, leaves the poor chrysalis to
crumble into dust, so that the immortal butterfly may be
freed. We have always to be leaving and seeing others leave. It
is fitting that we should make a sacrifice of our death and
its accompanying sufferings, sufferings in ourselves, suffer
ings even more in those who are around us than in ourselves,
to be joined with that of the Saviour; who saves us with it
from true death, and assists us through it to save the world.
In extreme unction, then, we find a new manifestation of
Christian solidarity which, possessing God in itself through
Christ, hastens, bearing its gifts, wherever its action is seen
to be needed.
That solidarity it is which enables us to be born in Christ ;
that it is which helps us to die, in order that we may live
again. Christ risen from the dead dies no more ; the Christian, con
formed to Him in all the phases of a destiny that is hence
forth a common one, dies no more than He. Extreme unction
seals him for the existence that has no end and which allows
neither of separation nor of suffering.
This is the last sacramental office which the Church per
forms in regard of the individual.
We must now provide for the recruiting of our religious
hierarchy and of our societies of immortals by means of the
two sacraments of Holy Order and Matrimony.

CHAPTER VII
HOLY ORDER
GOD'S creation requires not only beings but also
actions, and in these actions an hierarchy, thanks
to which the goods of Providence flow from their
causes to their effects, like the water in the irriga
tion channels of man's making.
In religion, the beauty of order is introduced by what is
called precisely Order, namely, the ordained hierarchy which
communicates the effects of redemption to the faithful, after
they have entered into the holy society of souls to become
united to God,
Some people protest against this organisation, and prefer
a religious individualism which we have already encountered
several times on our path. At each encounter the motive of
our opposition to it remains the same.
Those who see an encumbrance or undue subjection in the
fact of an hierarchy whose office it is to act in ordinary cir
cumstances as the channel of graces, have not reflected care
fully on the nature of human life.
" How many men there are between God and myself !"
cried Rousseau. He might have said this of temporal things
too. How many men it takes to communicate to me the
benefits of nature, of the race, of my country, of all that is
human ! I am placed in the world, I am nourished, I am
educated, I am instructed, I arri governed, I am served
through all sorts of intermediaries of whose service I am only
too happy to avail myself if I consider the matter.
The same law applies in the spiritual realm. It is but good
sense. We may add that it is a necessity, if it is true that'
the supernatural borrows its conditions of functioning from
nature, as well as its support and its starting-point, by simply
transposing them.
The sacrament ^of Orders, then, like the anointing of kings,
is a sensible sign and an act of real attribution of power ;^
but a spiritual power, a participation in that spiritual king
ship which Christ exercises as the universal Man, the channel
and the meritorious source of graces.
Its sensible sign is differently constituted in accordance
with fhe different orders; but they all have this in common,
1 The character impressed by this sacrament is called by theologians a real
power of sacramental action, as the character of baptism is a real power of
sacramental passivity. Without baptism no other sacrament can be received ;
without orders no other can be conferred, at least of those which imply a
hierarchy. Baptism is an exception, since it can be conferred by anyone, by
reason of its imperative necessity. 173

174 xrbe Cburcb
that the consecrator marks the power which he intends to
confer by the tradition of the religious objects which are
used by it; the chalice with wine, the paten with bread for
the priesthood; the Gospel-Book for the diaconate; the
empty chalice for the subdiaconate ; and so on.
To the symbols are added words which express in the im
perative the use of these things : Take thou authority, etc. . . .
The imperative formula is introduced, and the omission of
the ordinary clause. In the Name of the Father, and of the
Son, and of the Holy Ghost, is decreed, in order to indicate
that the power of order emanates really from him who confers
it, instead of its being the case, as it is in the other sacra
ments, that the minister is only a channel of influence, who
neither possesses nor can possess what he communicates.
From the fact that the sacrament of Orders is thus destined
to continue Christ and to direct the action of Christ, it follows
that its principal object will be to ensure among us that real
presence of Christ in which we have seen the centre of the
whole of the sacramental life of the Church.
The Eucharist is not only the principal sacrament; it is in
a sense, as we have said, the sole sacrament, inasmuch as it
contains what every other sacrament is only a vehicle for
putting in action.
To constitute a hierarchy, therefore, in order to communi
cate the Saviour's sanctifying action, is before all else to
establish a power of consecrating the Eucharist; it is to
estabUsh a priesthood in the proper sense of the word.
All the orders inferior to the priesthood, the diaconate, the
sub-diaconate, the minor orders, are only servants. All the
higher powers, the episcopacy, prelatures of every rank, the
papacy, are only servants also, though in another way.
These continuations in two directions can easily be ex
plained. The fulfilling of such an office as the priesthood,
which supposes preparatory, concomitant and subsequent
circumstances, or in a word manifold conditions, has need of
an organisation. It needs heads who first of all may deter
mine those who are to exercise the power of order; who will
afterwards control them; not in their principal office, which
is the action of consecration, but in the use that is made of
it, in the preparations and exterior conditions it supposes.
Tbe^fiisbsp, or High Priest, as he was called in the old
¦ Law, himself a priest, will exercise this power.
We say of him that he possesses the fulness of the priest
hood, in order to express that his function, inasmuch as he
is a priest, besides being complete, is independent, and that
.^e^reafimunicatesit to others_by ordination. In the same
way "TEF'iivnrg" creature who no~lbnger depends on his
begetter and who can beget on his own behalf is said to have
the plenitude of life.

fboVs ©rber 175
Above the Bishop, above the various prelatures which are
evidently servants, there is the Pope, and the Pope is a Bishop
like any other Bishop, from the point of view of his power of
Order; but he has in addition a universal jurisdiction, that
is, a power of government which is itself also relative to
the preparations and outward conditions of sacramental
action. Since the Church is one sole body, and unity can only be
obtained in a social body by means of a central power which
unites all particular powers in the search for a common end,
the government of the apostolic see is indispensable, and those
who refuse to be subject to it are rightly called schismatics,
since they are enemies of religious unity.
But it remains that every power, even the Pope's; every
office, whether administrative, or apparently political, or
properly and visibly religious, must gravitate around the
priesthood, because everything gravitates around the
Eucharist. And this, in its turn, is explained by the fact
that Christ, who is the substance of the Eucharist, is the
whole of our life in God ; the universal Means, the sole Source
of light, of vital enrichment, of joy.
As the lines of our religious architectures all go straight to
the tabernacle, and there curve into each other in order to
surround it, disappear to make room for it, ascend to let its
fire soar upwards, descend into hollow crypts that it may
thrust its roots down deeper, return to swell the curve of a
column so that again a pointing finger may be directed
towards it; and, in short, seem to outgrow its dimensions in
every direction, to flee from it, to forget it, to dominate it, but
only so as to be subservient to it ; thus all Christian authority.
Pope, cardinals, archbishops, bishops, honorary prelates,
foreign nuncios, canons, parish priests, abbots mitred or not
mitred, and below the simple priest, deacons, subdeacons,
acolytes, readers, exorcists, porters, all, higher or lower,
priests or not, are for the priest's service. Not, it is true,
for the service of his person, but of his office, since the
universal Church itself is only a collective priest, the spiritual
body of Christ the priest, whose Heart, the living ciborium,
offers us the Divinity.
Here we can see how mistaken are they who see in the
Church only an administration, a political system, a society
for temporal ends.
In the definition we have given of the sacrament of Orders,
we can lay hold of the real essence of the Church, whose
forms are established by this sacrament.
It is a mystical essence at bottom; administration and
politics, which are joined to it through the necessity of its
functioning among men, being only servants of the mystical

176 xrbe Cburcb
reality which is its soul, as in the living being, to use the
metaphor whereto we always come back, the physico-
chemical, and even more the mechanical reactions, are ser
vants of the vital idea.
The Church desires to make us divine; for that end it
makes use of a living Means, the Christ. Where the Christ
is, then, there is what is essential to its role, the principle of
its organisation, the vital nucleus where all its movements
are co-ordinated.
Let all function according to the law of its institution, and
we see the whole hierarchy, from top to bottom, from right
to left, in all its ramifications and degrees, employed in one
sole work ; sanctification through Christ, with the Eucharist,
which gives us Christ substantially, as its centre of influence.
We know only too well that a thousand deviations can
always be introduced to interfere with this law. When we
make use of man, we must expect his humanity soon to make
itself felt. But the theory that governs a living being is not
the theory of his deviations from his law. We are dealing
with normal physiology, not with pathology.
Besides, the economy of the sacrament of Orders itself
involves the recognition of these easy deviations, since it
attempts to prevent them.
It might have been thought that the sacrament of Orders,
unlike the sacraments that have an individual sanctification
as their end, would communicate to the recipient only a power,
and not a sanctifying grace. Do we not always say that the
office of a priest is independent of the value of the man ; that
for the faithful what really matters is the office and not the
value of the individual?
For the office to be holy and sanctifying, it is sufficient that
the Holy Church be reflected in it.
That is very true, and it is necessary that we do not forget
it, so that we may avoid certain kinds of scandal. But it
must be said also that such a state of affairs is not the ideal,
and that the religious institution, which strives after the ideal,
attempts to make the individual character of the person
answer to his office. It does so by determining the condi
tions that the candidate for Orders ought to satisfy; by
watching, as far as it humanly can, to see that these condi
tions are fulfilled. But it does so also by attributing a sanc
tifying grace to the sacrament that creates the powers.
Christ, in consecrating His servant, wishes to give him
the means for fulfilling his task not only materially, but
worthily. For the dispenser of God's goods not himself to
possess them and not himself to live them is a disorder. The
curse of Heaven threatens the sanctifier who is not himself

HioVs ©r&er 177
holy; the preacher who does not practise what he preaches;
the giver of Christ to others who goes himself to the idols of
the world and the flesh.
The scribes and Pharisees are seated in Moses' seat, said
the Saviour ; do therefore and observe what they say to you;
but act not according to their works. For they say and do
not. They bind heavy burdens and hard to be borne, and
lay them on men's shoulders, but they themselves will not
lift to them one of their fingers.
Malice may create such situations, and human misery,
more widespread than malice, may explain them ; but the
religious institution is not directed towards them ; it aims at
perfection, which is the harmony of the perfume and the
vase, of the channel and the water that runs through it, of
the priest and the holy life that he ought to promote.
Do we not know, besides, that authority, which is bound
up with the power of Order, is in the Church a work of
charity and humility? Where shall we find these virtues
unless in the inward union of the heart to God by grace,
instead of the dominating and brutal gesture of the hand of
justice striking?
What is needed is that the higher the power, the greater
should be the grace, in order that one may be endowed with
greater abasement of humility before God and abasement of
service towards one's brethren.
Our doctors, penetrated with this thought, present as a
sort of divine law the coincidence of the hierarchy of powers
in the Church with the hierarchy of virtues. The Episcopate,
they say, is a state of perfection, precisely because the Bishop
possesses the fulness of sacred power. That power, far from
dispensing him from anything, holds him to it the faster.
Likewise, in its degree, the priesthood ; likewise all the divers
powers granted to men of religion.
Sancta sanctel Let the performance of holy things be
done in a holy fashion ! and the holier the act the holier the
fashion of performing it. Alas ! We who so speak cannot
pretend to satisfy this divine wish. We know our short
comings, and hence willingly own ourselves to blame.
There is only one sort of blame that we find it hard to put
up with, and it is that of the folk who show themselves all
the more eager to hunt out the bad or middling priest as
they are themselves worse Christians, worse citizens, worse
fathers, husbands, friends or representatives of their pro
fession. But however it may be with their merits or our un-
worthiness, we say that that does not constitute the general
law. The law of the religious institution is such that the
communication of the truth and of the love of God must be
effected by the priesthood as by the sun-illumined star which

178 xrbe Cburcb
diffuses light after taking its share of it to transform it into
life. Wherever God passes He must produce His divine effects.
When He passes through the priesthood to reach the faithful
He means to sanctify the priesthood. He tends to do this
by offering it His grace.
If this grace be refused or diminished, that is our own
fault, and moreover a great evil ; for, as St. Jerome said,
" When the laity are superior to the priests in virtue, then
comes the ruin of the Church."
" If a man's Ufe is despised," said St. Gregory, " it will
follow that his preaching will be despised." It is not just
that this should be so ; but it will be so, and whoever conduces
to such a result will have to answer for it. It is not just,
we repeat, because the sacrament of Orders, although it
confers grace, does not really consist in the conferring of
this grace, but in the conferring of a power.
The faithful therefore must not let themselves be disturbed
by the imperfections manifested in the exercise of this power.
As it is commanded to the priest to maintain a bearing
worthy of his high functions, so it is necessary for others to
know how to receive as from God what comes through the
priest, without judging him, the intermediary. To continue
our recent metaphor, the light which comes to us from the
stars is always welcome, even though it come from a dead
star, which reflects without itself making use of the beneficent
influence of the heavens.
Let us put this aside in order to raise ourselves to the
beauty of the religious conception which makes the hierarchy
subserve a work that is no less than the divinisation of man
kind. Since the Holy Spirit has become man socially in the
Church as the Word was made man individually in Christ, it
functions according to human laws, fitted to realise what He
wills. In each individual the Holy Spirit allots His gifts in accord
ance with the various powers of the soul.
What we call supernatural virtues, faith in the under
standing, charity in the heart, strength, temperance in our
sensitive faculties, and the rest, are indeed a sort of hierarchy
which make our inner government a real thing. So, in that
human-divine body, the Church, the Spirit takes various
forms according to the organs of that body, and the sacra
mental character attributed to the orders is as it were a social
grace, destined to procure the other.
All is thus seen to be harmonious and perfect, divine and
human. As, in the life of our globe, the blood of the glaciers flows

1boli3 ©rber 179
through the capillary vessels of the mountains, the veins of
the rivers, the living tissue of the plain, and afterwards the
evaporations of the air, and then all that inhales and expects
its sustenance from the earth ; so the Christian order makes
the goods of the soul of God flow through Christ, the
universal glacier which is fecundated by the divine cloud of
the Spirit : from Christ through the hierarchical priesthood
by which the sacred things are distributed; and lastly, from
the priesthood to the faithful. And that this latter should
invisibly be in direct relation with the Source, as the earth
drinks in the dew as well as irrigating waters, is a rule which,
far from exempting the hierarchy, is binding on them. Nor
mally it must make use of visible means and receive its salva
tion from that system of life which establishes our Church in
God.

CHAPTER VIII
MATRIMONY
WE have seen that the sacraments are divided
into two groups. Five of them are for the
sanctification of individual life; two are con
secrated to social life.
Of these latter, that which we have just been
examining. Holy Order, has for its end the government of
the Christian society.
Matrimony, with which we have still to deal, relates to the
propagation of the species, and its purpose is to ensure it
under conditions worthy of the religious man, worthy of
religious humanity.
Certain folk would fain ask us here : Why are you con
cerned with these things ? The rites of nature, the propaga
tion of the human species and all the interests attached thereto
are the business of the private person or of the legislator.
The life of religion is above and consequently outside their
domain. In reality they would like us to have a religion so sublime
that it would nowhere touch reality, and to dream of a sanc
tity which would be the sanctity of nothing in the real world.
What is religion for if not to sanctify life, the whole of
life, in order to urge it on to its supreme ends?
Marriage ought to gain all the more from this observation
as it is evidently connected with the primary constitution of
human nature.
Man is a compound of spirit and of flesh.
If he were pure spirit, there would be no room for marriage.
Each individual would completely represent his species in
himself. The human couple would be meaningless. More
over, since death would not exist, nor those changes which
are the measure of time and space, there would be neither
child nor adult, new-born nor man in the decline of life. The
matrimonial union, which completes the living and replaces
the dead, which guards cradles and deathbeds against the
twofold weakness of the extremes of life, would have no
longer any reason for existence.
But we are incarnate. The human species is realised in
manifold individuals who are echeloned through time like
the manifestations and the progress of individual life.
There is an exact parallelism between these two orders of
life. The part which food plays in each of us in defending us
from ever-imminent death and repairing our losses, pro-
i8q

/Ibatrimons i8
creation plays in regard to the race as a whole, repairing it
incessant losses. Procreation is the food of the race.
There is only this capital difference for the Christian, tha
in our bodies that which is replaced by food is entirely los1
and on the contrary that which death causes to be lost is foun
again, singularly transplanted. Hence what is gained b
birth for the renewal of the race is gained for eternity. Deat
only strikes with its mighty and hurried blows this sad anv
of earth in otder to send the sparks flying, the souls, whic
will be to-morrow stars in the firmament of the spirit.
In this way marriage helps to secure the kingdom c
creative ends. ' ' To fill up the number of the elect " is th
noble end attributed to it by theologians.
But while it is thus meant to give mankind a greater exter
sion, marriage, rightly understood, is also intended to giv
it a greater worth. This is its second purpose, a directl
individual one, but indirectly a collective one; for thos
individuals who are worthless in themselves are equally wortl
less for society, and they will not be of the elect if they ai
worthless as human beings.
Now the whole man, to realise his worth, normally require
the union of man and woman, who represent in all resped
the two complementary sides of humanity. The one uj
holding the other; each receiving and imparting values c
light, of action, of feeling, of life in all its forms, and last!
of fruitfulness, the work of man will possess all its resources
it will be sure of its future; it will be able to mount, froi
parent to child, towards better realities, since the chile
thanks to its education by both parents, will be as it were th
sum of two souls.
And moreover, as the genealogical tree lengthens an
widens, all its combinations will rest on this first good, tl
well assorted union, well ordered and well lived, and tl
whole social body, which issues from this stock, will fin
therein its value and the assurance of its progress.
Such is the ideal; such is the raison d'itre of marriag(
considered as an office of nature.
But if marriage is an office of nature in the individual an
social order, we must for that very reason say, as in all ot
former arguments, that it rises to the dignity of a religioi
function. For nature is not without God ; it is enveloped in the world'
religious plan; man must cause to enter upon the path of h:
real destiny all that helps to urge it forward, and which
badly managed or neglected might pull it back; for Chrii
has espoused humanity as it actually is; male and femah
And since the union of male and female represents the ver

1 82 xrbe Cburcb
constitution of true humanity, it enters with full justification
into religious order and Christian institution.
For this reason marriage will be for us a sacrament as
well as an office of nature.
We know well enough by this time that this means two
things. A sacrament means a sign, a symbol; but not any
kind of symbol; an active symbol, doing that which it signi
fies as far as our dispositions permit and their permanence
maintains. Now what does marriage signify, and what is it meant to
secure ?
St. Paul tells us that it signifies the union of Christ and the
Church; that it will therefore tend for its part to secure the
effects of this union, and that it is therefore a great sacra
ment; Sacramentum hoc magnum est; ego autem dico in
Christo et in Ecclesia (Eph. v. 32). This idea, though at
first sight rather singular in its mysticism, is profoundly
philosophical. The Incarnation, in order to have its effects in humanity,
to realise that divinisation of man which is the end of the
Church, must have its reflection and its consequences in the
union of the two sexes, of which each represents for its own
part an aspect of humanity. Thence the whole of the re
ligious constitution of the world must start in some respects.
Man united to woman to form the whole man, including
therein matter, his natural continuation, which marriage par
ticularly brings into the question; the whole man in his
nature united to Christ to make man religiously whole, that
is, divinised by grace; lastly Christ, the universal Man,
united to God in a personal unity; this is the whole integra
tion of the creature in God; this is the fulfilment of the
religious plan.
And we can easily see the eminent place, both symbolic and
real, which marriage occupies in it. There is the symbol,
because the reciprocal gift of the spouses to form a complete
life is the image of the vaster union of all humanity with its
Redeemer. And this symbol is an active one, because it tends
to realise in part what it signifies, through grace.
Every sacrament communicates a grace. By the institu
tion of Christ, the ministry of the spouses who give them
selves to each other, august priests of life, is fruitful in
grace and draws down God not only to be the witness of
the bond, nor even as it were the guest or the unseen friend
of the new family, but as the guest of the hearts, in order
that nothing of what has its germ there may be in contra
diction to the ends of the contract, whose greatness we have
just remarked.
This guest will not be an unwelcome third person; he will

/ibatrimons 183
be a bond. God does not separate. He unites; He is the
universal Bond of all that His providence supports. Can
the place in which we are separate us? God is the place
where all spirits are. Can the law of action of the members
separate them? God is our most profound law of action; His
thought, which is mother of all, being also the preserver of
all, the worker of progress and happiness for all.
The sanctifying effort of this sacrament will then tend to
realise the union of the spouses in accordance with the laws
that relate to the union of man with Christ in the Church,
and thereby to the union of man with God in the Incarnation.
This is a difficult work. More than anywhere a sacramental
help is needed here, because there is need of ruling, of curbing,
of sanctifying the most formidable instincts of mankind ; the
instincts which give rise to the most frequent and the gravest
deviations. To unite man to woman in a true union is one of the greatest
problems of life.
Between man and woman there is a principle of separation
which illusion takes for a bond, but which is at bottom a
cruel enmity; I refer to the egoism of the flesh. As the
egoism of the individual is opposed in social life to the interest
of the fraternal society; as sin, in the universal life, opposes
the realisation of creative ends; so egoism, male or female,
principally carnal, divides the human couple, and prevents the
establishment of a truly common life.
The outwardly unfaithful man or woman divides the pair
and tends to divide other pairs. The man or woman out
wardly faithful, but inwardly egoistical and carnal, divides
the pair by interposing between the spouses the sinful per
sonality of one of them, or of both, instead of the complemen
tary union of values.
"Man," it has been said, "is inwardly separated from
woman by his desire of possessing her outwardly." This
truth, the result of profound and universal experience, shows
one of the most necessary parts which sacramental grace is
needed to play; to overcome the impetuous instincts of nature,
and to restrain them by love; by love governed by a reason
enlightened by the divine reason, attentive to all the duties
which love, properly understood, imposes on the human pair.
So that what might cause disasters in us may become a
strength; that even our inferior being, brought into the
moral order, may become a source of greatness in us.
In dealing with passion, theologians distinguish two uses
of it which render it either perverse and destructive or virtuous
and fruitful.
There are antecedent passion and consequent passion, that
is, passion which precedes the use of reason or faith, and so

184 xrbe Cburcb
hinders it ; and passion which follows the exercise of reason or
faith, and is of service to them.
A man is in a state of anger at the moment when he ought
to make a decision on an action; he decides badly, for anger
blinds him. But when the decision is taken, and the man is
wholly engaged in the performance, it may happen that a
generous anger, kept within its proper limits, is a strength.
What would we do without anger, without passion generally,
on the battlefields either of war or of life ?
So the man who covets a woman anteriorly to Christian love
or apart from its laws separates himself from her; for he
refuses the union of lives, the moral and rational, fruitful
union, in conformity with individual and universal nature, in
conformity with God who ties the sheaf of love. And he
renounces these fulnesses for a superficial union, transitory,
exposed to every conflict, and blameworthy.
On the other hand, he who approaches the woman with a
true love in his heart, a love, that is, conformed to the laws
of life, of that individual life which is continued in social and
divine life, such a man may lawfully allow the divinity of love
to infiltrate through all the channels that our nature opens
to it.
With religious charity in the soul, love means reasonable
esteem, an affectionate heart, rightly directed devotion in
action, and lawful passion in the senses.
All will be well, because all will be drawn from the true
sources ; because the same current will flow from God, from
whom comes nature as well as supernature, the flesh as well
as the spirit, noble pleasure as well as sacrifice. Those who
nobly enjoy are ready to accept suffering when needed.
In the fermenting-vat, the sugar that is introduced becomes
alcohol, sweetness is transformed into strength. So in a
moral life well founded at the start, even pleasure and happy
passion can work for the good, tighten the spiritual bond
instead of breaking it, and far from withdrawing from God,
draw near to Him by means of complete life.
How puerile it would be, and what a dangerous heresy from
the religious point of view, to believe that passion in its proper
place is offensive to God I We are not Manicheans, that we
should incline to believe that the flesh is under a curse, and
that all matter springs from the Principle of Evil. Rather do
we say that matter and the flesh come from God.
The echoes of lofty and divine feelings in the senses are
themselves lofty and divine, and God acknowledges His seal
upon them.
The vibrations of the Uving dust that has become the flesh
of man are a part of the great throbbing of nature's beat
ing heart when the Creator Spirit broods and passes over it.
Did not Jehovah say They two shall be one flesh? And

/Ibatrimons 185
what does this mean, if it be not the last consequence of a
union first linked together in God, the Creator and Sanctifier,
carried on by the mind and will of two beings who agree to a
common life, and finally fulfilled by mystical rites, thanks to
which other spirits arise, and a new fatherhood finds its
place in heaven ?
All is holy, all great in the sacrament of matrimony. All
which it includes comes from God and has to return to Him.
But the steps of the ladder must not be altered. For if the
bottom step is put too high, it cannot fit in there, and a fall
results. The flesh carries on the spirit, and is only in part its
symbol, in part its servant. To put it at the top, or to let it
act as the highest, is to spoil everything.
That is why the Church is so severe with regard to devia
tions in marriage. She has allowed nations to break off from
her rather than yield to the caprices of their rulers. She is
of iron, in face of those excesses which would sacrifice the
spiritual, social, divine order to the demands of the flesh.
But within that order she blesses. She professes that the
realities of marriage are not only exempt from sinfulness,
but good and meritorious; that they are not only good, but
holy, in as much as they are an effect of the loving and
inseparable union of lives, like the union between Christ and
His Church, within the human-divine synthesis of life.
Thus our Church, without false modesty or childish
timidity, dares to bless the marriage bed, after blessing the
souls. Like an ancestress with her eyes and her heart full
of eternity, she says in solemn tones : Bless, O Lord, this
bed, in order that those who are to lie thereon may be estab
lished in Thy peace, and may persevere in Thy will, may
grow old and multiply for many years, and attain to the
Kingdom of Heaven.
Surely that is far greater than any Puritan narrowness.
The Church, praying thus, and counting on her sacrament
to aid the good desires of the married pair, is conscious of
grappling fast to God one of the ends of the chain that ties
together our human clusters; of thus bringing into accord
with the divinity that generated them not only spirits, but
the matter which continues them and which is their field of
action, in a word, all that is sprung from that universal
Paternity which might better be called a Motherhood, since
what it engenders does not arise from it.
God is a mother who conceives and never brings into the
world, because outside herself there is no world which may
receive her holy burden.
Thus considered, marriage, all marriage, is a religious func
tion, since in it the natural function and the social function are

1 85 xrbe Cburcb
involved in that organisation whereof Christ is the Head
and the Holy Spirit is the principle.
Hence we are not astonished when we hear our great
Apostle declare : This is a great Sacrament; I speak in Christ
and in the Church (Eph. v. 32).
And our theologians insist on this in saying that it is to the
Passion of Christ, as always, that the sacrament of matrimony
is attached, because it is on the Cross that the sad nuptials
between Christ and redeemed humanity were celebrated.
As at the baptism of Christ contact with a sacred Flesh
sanctified the waters of the world and deputed them to the
sanctifying function of Baptism; so the love of Christ dying
for men sanctified love, which desires to live and would even
consent to suffer and die for what it loves.
It is not in grief that man and woman are united ; but it is
in love, and love that suffices for all joy, also suffices for all
sorrow and for all destinies, including death.
That is why the Church, without speaking of the absolute
and highly justifiable opposition which she makes to divorce,
has never liked — we say liked — second marriages.
She allows them; she often approves them; she would at
need advise them on account of particular circumstances ; but
she prefers that union which is left devastated by death,
because in this breakage that nothing can mend, this desolate
widowhood, faithful even in absence, the eternity of love is
better reflected, and because eternal human love is the symbol,
and as it were a detached particle of that divine love which
unites the Saviour to men in our universal Church.

ll.— THE SACRAMENTALS
CHAPTER I
THE GENERAL IDEA OF THE
SACRAMENTALS
THE sacramental character of the Church, that is
to say, her tendency to make use of expressive and
effective symbols for a religious end, is especially
shown in what are properly called the sacraments ;
but these do not exhaust it. She herself is funda
mentally sacramental, and consequently she is so in all her
manifestations. The Church is a sacramental, so far as she is a symbol and
means of unity between God and man, just as Christ, her
Chief, the " Head " of the organised mystical body, is a
sacramental, because He is the expression of God as given
to man, and of man as given to God.
Hence we should find in the Church marks of this profound
character, besides the sacraments properly so called. These
may be distinguished from the sacraments in as much as
these latter answer to the fundamental needs of the religious
Ufe ; and for this reason they have been made the object of a
more special institution, and endowed with a more • direct
efficacy. But for the secondary rites in question a name is
used which connects them with the common principle, a word
which, though weaker, is yet expressive of the central idea :
they are called sacramentals (Sacramentalia).
Some people, in their desire to explore this corner of
theology, go rather astray, and at a pinch become scandalised.
They ascertain that the need of parallelism has led to the dis
tinction of seven sacramentals, as there are seven sacraments.
Then, when they consult learned authors or documents,
St. Thomas, the Council of Trent, etc., they find reference
made to many (multa) or to an indeterminate number (Si quce
alicB res • • •) and they are surprised.
However, this is quite natural.
In handbooks for children, everything can be clearly
defined : but in science, everyone knows that clearness is
diffused in a thousand shades of meaning that can only be
apprehended with difficulty, and this is much more the case
with regard to reality.
Can anyone tell how many colours there are in the rain
bow? There are three; seven; they are innumerable. In
thoughts and feelings there are even more shades of dis
tinction. 187

1 88 xrbe Cburcb
Classifications may be attempted, but they are never ex
haustive. Reality is inexhaustible : reality is ineffable in the
etymological sense of the word; it cannot be stated in a deter
minate number of concepts or of words ; it dives deep into the
twofold Infinity of our existence; the Infinity of Matter, which
is subdivided even to nothingness; and the Infinity of Mind,
which extends its endowments as far as God, the term of the
ideal and inaccessible.
The sacramental character of the Church, because it im
pregnates the Church through and through, until it even
becomes confounded with her, is subject to this condition.
Her sacraments are seven, as there are seven colours in the
spectrum; but the atmosphere of the sacraments, so to speak,
all the rites which accompany them, and those which start
out from them in order to sanctify life by giving it a religious
significance, a religious direction and import ; all this is sacra
mental too. And if it be said, as it is indeed sometimes said,
that there are seven sacramentals, this only means that we
have agreed to confine ourselves to the principal ones; and
the choice of these may give rise to dispute.
In reality, there are as many sacramentals as there are
things, actions, words, rites which naturally form part, or
which the Church invites to form part, of the great sanctifying
current which, in the name of the Incarnation, leads us from
the sensible to the understanding of the Divine.
We can, then, only give examples. The choice of them will
be a question of practical convenience. Before enumerating
them, we will begin with a general definition.
Sacramentals are outward acts of religion, or things con
secrated by religion, for the purpose of bringing us nearer to
God through Christ.
The effects we expect from them are those which the
Christian life demands. The purification of the soul; the
satisfaction of justice for our faults ; the expulsion of evil
spirits ; the alleviation of our sufferings, if our heavenly
Father thinks it expedient; the removal of evil influences on
the same condition and the inner liberty of the children of
God ; such are those which theology enumerates.
Those little familiar actions, those unimportant things, an
aspersion, a cross traced on the forehead or breast, a formula;
such things, when they enter on the great current of religion,
become efficacious. They become so by reason of our psycho
logical make-up, wherein the sensible plays so great a part.
They become so by reason of their institution, which has the
power of winning over higher powers ; the power of associa
tion, which is creative so far as the individual is concerned;
the power of Christ, in whom the Christian association finds

xrbe (Beneral 5bea of tbe Sacramentals 189
its centre; the power of God, who is joined to Christ, and who
is joined also to us through Him and through the Church.
It is a natural tendency of man to seek for symbols in
nature, to speak and to act metaphorically, to attach to things
material a moral meaning. All literatures make this manifest,
and the inner constitution of languages proves it, for sym
bolism is their foundation.
Is not an ardent supplication an allusion to the ardour of
fire? Is not a deluge of calamities a metaphor borrowed
from water? Does not the use of the phrases Attic salt, the
salt of wisdom, call to mind the active and preservative proper
ties of salt ? To speak with unction, to apply balm to sorrow,
etc., are a series of symbolic words. And if I make a ges
ture of denial, do I not appear to wipe off, as from a black
board, what has just been said to me, or to get rid of a mental
obstacle as I would sweep away a stone or a branch ?
All our formal actions, all our salutations, our exchanges of
visiting-cards, our birthday or wedding presents, our funeral
customs, everything in our social life is formed of symbolism
and is directed to the bringing together of matter and mind,
to express, and thereby to stimulate the mind.
Put these symbols at the service of the religious idea; do so
with feelings which correspond to the action, in the name of a
common Christian tradition, under the aegis of authority, or
by formal institution of the authority which expresses and
governs the society, hoping, or rather believing, that Christ,
the reUgious Head of the human race, united to His members
in what they do in His name, will give to the pious and
significant actions which we institute an efficacy answering to
our interior dispositions, and to the higher dispositions of His
Providence; and you have sacramentals.
All the poetry of nature may be incorporated in them, as we
shall see if we make ourselves familiar with the wonderful
liturgies of antiquity.
And besides the poetry of nature, directly borrowed by our
authors, we find in the sacraments all the pearls which the
pagan cults, which arose among the most artistic peoples of-
the universe, had accumulated through the ages without being
able to enshrine them in correct dogma or pure morals.
These signs, which are so natural, so close to daily life, so
expressive to the universal mind, are of great efficacy, pro
vided always that the soul of them be retained, in reaching
man's heart, which is always so wide open to natural
influences. By their soul is meant the Christian sense that is attached
to them, their higher significance, the doctrine wherewith they
are impregnated and the allurement of the feelings which it is

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their office to stimulate. Without that they are but dead, and
one is inclined to say to the man who makes use of them
without understanding them, without thinking of and desiring
their moral effect, and who sees the unbeliever smile at his
side : Yes, the unbeliever is right. He may well mock at
what you yourself have made puerile; he may well consider
worthless what you yourself have kiUed. Let the dead bury
your dead.
But a thing is not to be judged by people who abuse it, nor
by the language of strangers who misrepresent it.
Sacramental action has an efficacy of its own, as an ex
pressive and evocative symbol, as a power-idea, as one of our
philosophers would say.
It has another efficacy as well, or, to put the same thing in
other words, the former is reinforced by the fact of the
Christian unity which includes the individual who performs
the act.
Our unity, whereof our authorities are the connecting-link,
puts the prayer and the merits of each at the service of aU.
When the Church says, as in the blessing of the Paschal
Candle, Lord God, Father Almighty, Light unfading who hast
created all lights, bless this hallowed light, that thereby we
may be inflamed and illuminated by Thy brightness . . . we
believe that this is not said in vain.
And how can it be in vain, when, at the head of our unity,
stands He who said. When two or three are gathered together
in My name — and much more when there is gathered together
that universal assembly which the Institution calls into being
and sets to work — there am I in the midst of you.
Our unity becomes fruitful with the fulness of God, for it
is united to God through Christ. Firstborn among His
brethren. Head of the human race which is deified through
Him, Christ communicates a divine efficacy to all that He
touches. If the Church, by means of its liturgical institu
tions, puts the humble things called sacramentals in contact
with the wide-spreading fount prepared for us all on the
Cross, nothing but the insufficiency of our own dispositions or
our providential needs can limit their effects.
All in one through Christ ; God in all, through Christ ; our
selves united hierarchically, the faithful under their pastors,
pastors and faithful under the Man-God ; this is the condition
required for the stream to flow, for prayer to ascend availingly
and for favours to descend upon us.
God then bestows Himself by means of our rites, and by our
rites He draws us to Himself. God is made man once more,
in this humble way, in order that man may be made God.
The sacramental rite, being a prolongation of the Incarna
tion that is diffused everywhere, in all directions of life, tends

xrbe (Beneral Jbea of tbe Sacramentals 191
to ensure the effects of the Incarnation. If we correspond to
what it seeks, our Ufe is organised happily, that is to say, in
conformity with its ends. Our evils grow less, or change
their sign, as a mathematician would say. In place of a
slavery in relation to matter or to the mind, human or super
human, that oppresses us, they become a salutary trial, a
method of estimating our value and a stimulant to its growth ;
in a word, a help to us.
Let us say it again, because it is the basis of the sacra
mental idea; matter is the servant of spirit; the moral order
dominates the physical order, and, through Christ united to
God, exercises its dominion for the benefit of whoever is
fittingly disposed towards it.
If we run right away from this religious action, which unites
us with a redemptive Omnipotence, we fall once more into the
raging conflict of forces. Overwhelming natural forces,
social forces thrown into the struggle for existence, interior
forces delivered up to an exhausting multiplicity of life; we
become their slaves.
With God, whose fatherly purposes dominate all things, we
again find security. Illness, inner weakness, vital accidents,
temptation, death, which are His servants, become ours as
well. They are our " sisters," as St. Francis of Assisi said.
We are free from their threatening, assured, on the contrary,
of their co-operation.
It is to this that all the sacramental actions of the Church
tend in so far as they are an application of redemption. The
little actions called sacramentals, lesser sacraments, as they
were called in olden times, take their place here in their order.
We are not going to sacrifice them to cavillers.
We say indeed that it is truly meet and just, right and
healthful, in order to serve God and mount up to God, to
make use of all natural realities, all symbolic values, all the
fruits of our union with one another and with Christ, in order
that God may come to us and we may attain to God conform
ably with our nature and with our vital relations ; in order that
we may enter into the redemptive plan, which is based on the
Incarnation; in order that we may set free creation, which
also groans, from its anarchic undoing, from the servitude of
corruption. Far from materialising Spirit, of which Protestants and
rationalists accuse us, our worship has for its end the impreg
nation of matter with Spirit. It does not want that deceptive
dualism which, after having rationalised to the bitter end and
yet not being able to abolish the flesh, nor the ground on
which it walks, nor the exterior objects by which it lives,
simply succeeds in leaving the flesh to corrupt, and things to
become conquerors, and Spirit to be extinguished in them,
through not having known how to make use of them.

192 xrbe Cburcb
That is all the more true the weaker our human nature.
And it is all the more true of our weakest humanity, namely
the little ones.
Without any partiality — for she owes all things to all men —
the Church inclines most willingly towards those who can
count on her alone for their spiritualisation; towards those
whom matter easily captivates, because they are nearer to it,
having to live on it daily, without being able to mount, poor
miners buried in the obscure galleries of life as they are, to the
regions of light.
The Church takes them where they are and speaks to them
of what they know. She uses a language of images, a lan
guage of action, a language for primitive folk. And that
shows a motherliness which all ought to appreciate, with
which all ought to unite, even if they do not need it for them
selves. ! '1
The great fraternity is opposed to the deadness of bumble
dom. And besides, let us remember, the regime of the child
is good for men too, for they are but big children. The
regime of the earliest races is good for the civilised man in
so far as elements of his first ancestors remain in him,,
" Scratch the Russian," said Napoleon, " and you wiU find
the Cossack." Scratch the proud rationalist, and you wUl
find the man of sensitiveness and automatism. To take pos
session of his sensitiveness and to guide his automatism for
his good is a merciful act on the part of religion.
Let us let Immensity treat us as children, as primitive folk
in the moral order, as savages in the eternal civilisation into
which, by means of the sanctifications which our rites
endeavour to secure, we may humbly try to enter.

CHAPTER II
THE MASS
IF the sacramentals are, compared with the sacraments, a
kind of secondary marks of the sacramental character
of the Church, we ought not to be surprised to find that
the sacraments properly so called are in part the source,
and for the rest the centres of attraction, the rallying-
points of the sacramentals. Those of the latter which are
detached from them, like holy water or the Confiteor, do not
fail to come back to them ; those brought forth in their atmo
sphere, like the sign of the cross or ritual alms, take service
there under the form of accessory ceremonies or annexes.
The Eucharist too, the sacrament par excellence, the sacra
ment on which all the rest depend, draws to itself more or less
closely everything which can be called sacramental, and that
is why the Mass, especially solemn Mass, High Mass, is the
centre of the whole Catholic liturgy. ^
The Mass is intended to be a commemoration and mystical
reproduction of the redemptive act. Now for Catholicism Re
demption is the starting-point, the all-embracing condition,
the explanation and support of the religious movement as a
whole. The Mass then reflects all the aspects of religious
feeling, all the phases of history in which it is framed, all its
attachments, all its tendencies and all its results.
Religion means adoration. Religion means praise. Re
ligion means thanksgiving. Religion means repentance,
invocation, confidence and love; religion aspires to union inti
mate and full, as well as to eternity. The phases of religion
envelop the ages. It claims to embrace everything. Matter
even, with all its manifestations, united with intelligence and
made to serve mind, comes within its range. The various
parts of the Mass, words or actions, conformed to this multiple
essence, will give its most definite, sometimes its most splendid
expression. By its very divisions, the sacred rite conjures up the
different epochs of religious history, and along with it the
succession of human acts in regard to the end of religion.
The preparation, or Mass of the catechumens, which extends
from the beginning to the offertory, belongs to the Old Testa
ment, that is to say to the expectation of Christ, and
mystically, to interior purification, the condition for God's
coming to us. Historically considered, it is a survival of the
Saturday night office, in the synagogue, which the Saviour
practised at Nazareth, at Capharnaum, at Jerusalem, and
which the first Christians, remembering the Master's word
1 The Mass was the grain of mustard-seed from which sprang the whole of
the Catholic liturgy. (Dom Cabrol, Liturgical Prayer, chap, vi.)
'93 13

194 xrbe Cburcb
I am not come to destroy, hut to fulfil, piously preserved,
Christianising it more and more.
When the Apostles wrote to the distant Churches, their
letters were read there, and they have been so read since
under the name of Epistles. When the Gospels were written
for a memorial of the divine deeds, they took a place of
honour. And as when the Scriptures were read in the syna
gogues suitable commentaries followed, so to the Gospel and
Epistle is added the sermon.
As a symbol of purification, at the beginning of solemn
Mass, the Asperges gives the tone to the Confiteor, an admir
able formula on which we have commented already, and which
calls up a little later on the alternating supplications which
are a kind of Litany of repentance and sorrow. Lord, have
mercy on us I Christ, have mercy on us I Lord, have mercy
on us!
And this is said in Greek {Kyrie . . .) even in our Latin
rites, just as both Greek and Latin rites keep Hebrew words,
Hosanna, Amen, Sabaoth, to preserve terms consecrated by
long usage, and also to mark the universality of Christian idea
and institution. On the Cross, the inscription over the Re
deemer was written in three languages, Hebrew, Greek and
Latin, the language of mystery, the language of philosophy,
and the language of law and administration.
To the preparatory part of the Mass is also joined the Gloria,
that liturgical pearl, a pearl of the dawn through its very great
antiquity, which the art of the centuries has set in an ever-
expanding azure whereof Beethoven has made a world. '^
Taken as a whole, the collects are a mine of jewels, and
they are told off by priest and people next in succession.
Let us pray, sa^s the celebrant {or emus), and he lifts up his
arms in the gesture of the orante of the catacombs, and raises
his voice to/ express the thought of the day, to invoke the
merits of t^e saint who is being celebrated, to recall con
tinual needs, uniting all with Him who is the rightful Mediator
and without mention of whom no prayer is ended : Per
Christum Dominum nostrum.
Amen I reply the people, and this word has two meanings :
Amen ! Thus indeed it is, thou hast well expressed our inten
tion. Amen : So be it ! May God hear thee !
The preparations ended, the vestibule crossed, the liturgy
draws nigh to the temple.
In the primitive Church, divided into Catechumens and
* In the Mass in D Beethoven plainly tries to set forth the whole of
humanity at the foot of the mystic Cross. His Dona nobis pctcem in particular,
with its accompaniment of sounds of war, is an attempt to contrast religious
thought with the warfare of mankind. His Gloria is truly a universal act of
praise.

xrbe ^ass 195
faithful, when the Church still lived amid a non-Christian
environment whence it obtained its recruits, a deacon turned
round at this point, and said, as to-day we say at the end :
Ite, missa est. Go, it is the dismissal, or the sending away.
Whence our word the Mass. And the Catechumens departed.
Then the mysteries began. They were inaugurated by the
Credo, the natural bond between the exoteric and the esoteric
parts of the rite. The profession of faith is here reduced to
its principal elements ; but yet it runs through the whole key
board, from God eternal and from the beginnings to the re
integration, by the resurrection in God and by the eternal
life of all things.
Then the priest returns and says, as before at the collects.
The Lord be with you! This salutation, coming down to us
from the old salaam, from the grave and sweet salutation
which Jesus gave to His disciples, often returns in the course
of the liturgy. It marks the reciprocal relation between the
representative and the congregation.
The Lord be with you! says he who is instituted to com
municate the sacred things {sacerdos). And with thy Spirit!
reply the people, " for you to conceive, express and obtain
what is the prayer and need of us all. ' '
And the celebrant plunges into the liturgic mystery, while
the organs, conscious of the solemnity of the moment, play
some solemn piece and meditate together with us, for the
priest has said : Let us pray. Happy thus to conceive their
rdle! In olden time, the faithful came up at this moment to offer
gifts, which recalled those of the Epiphany, and which con
sisted first of all of the bread and wine of the sacrifice, then of
other gifts in kind or in money for the upkeep of worship.
The offering, still practised on certain occasions, is a survival
of this. The blessed bread is another, besides signifying
fraternity, and being also connected with the agape. ^
During this time, the priest proceeds to the offertory. He
presents the bread, whose grains, moulded together into one,
tell of Christian unity ; the wine, the product of a number of
crushed grapes, whose common fermentation gives them their
value. With the wine he has mixed a few drops of water
which are absorbed in it, and he asks that by this mystery we
too may be absorbed in the divinity of the Saviour. He
incenses the oblation, the altar, the Cross. He himself, as
the representative of Jesus, is incensed by the deacon, and
all the clergy, all the faithful are incensed also, though un
equally, because all, though unequally, make part of the unity
* In the same connection we may recall the offering which the bishop
makes at his consecration-Mass of two small barrels of red and white wine,
two loaves and two candles.

196 xrbe Cburcb
of Christ, and so are in a certain sense Christs, saints, as
St. Paul calls them, united to the Saint of saints.
It is at the altar, above and below the altar, all around the
altar, that the incensings tarry. It might be said the priest
is attemp'ting to impregnate it, to spiritualise it, in order that
the consecrated Victim, borne up on the fragrant fumes, may
mount, as on the wings of our aspirations, towards the throne
where He intercedes.
After this, the priest washes his hands, so that he may touch
only with clean hands, the symbol of a pure soul, the com
plete purity of the Lamb without spot.
He prays, summing up the intentions of all. He invites
them to pray with him {Orate fratres). The secret prayers
serve to determine the purpose of the oblation, the end which
it proposes. And thus terminates the first part of the Mass of
the Faithful.
The preface inaugurates the second. The bond between
the two is formed by the impressive beginning which is the
end of the secret prayers, and which announces the echo of
the redemptive fact across the ages : Per omnia scecula
scBCulorum. We are familiar with the sublime dialogue then exchanged
at High Masses between the priest and the faithful, and after
it that recitative which has inflamed all artists with enthu
siasm, and which mounts, more and more grandiose, up to
the Sanctus, bearing hearts on high {Sursum corda), giving
thanks for the living Gift whose presence is about to be
renewed, as well as the sacrifice ; proclaiming it meet and just,
right and healthful to praise the Holy Lord, the Almighty,
Eternal God at all times and in all places, ever more and
more ; sending up like fumes of incense, or rather like the very
voice of the universe in ecstasy the words Holy ! Holy ! Holy !
which in the Bible are the song of the hosts of heaven
{Sabaoth), that is to say, of the stars, and of the sublimer
army of spirits.^
The earth joins to this her Hosanna, and the voice of
children, as on Palm Sunday, is added, saying : Blessed is He
who cometh in the Name of the Lord!
Then there is the Canon, that is, the rule, the thing of rule
par excellence, the precious rite, and therefore definite, invari
able, the centuries which change all things daring not to
change in anything those simple words. It tells for- whom
the sacrifice is offered : that is to say, for the whole world ;
next, for Holy Church, whom God is besought to preserve in
her unity; for the heads of the hierarchy who represent the
group, the far-off and highest head, the Pope, the nearer head,
the Bishop : for all who hold the Catholic and Apostolic faith;
lastly, narrowing the circle, for those who have been more
' The threefold repetition is a Hebrew superlative.

xrbe /ibass 197
particularly recommended to the priest, those who are near
him and alive. As for the dead, dear or remote, the circle
wiU widen again presently to include them. For that we must
wait till the consecration is over, for thus the whole Church,
divided between two worlds, will be grouped around her
present Saviour.
Memento ! Remember. The faithful ought to join in this
invitation, and declare to God by name, or by simply opening
their heart for God to read, their desires each for each and
each for all.
In order that they may be favourably heard, the priest
invokes in a long enumeration all the categories of the saints ;
he calls upon them, and it is in their presence procured by
remembrance that he solemnly extends his hands over the
sacrifice prepared, as of old did the high priest over his victim.
" May this sacrifice," he says, " the sign of our worship
and that of all Thy family, be in every wise blessed, marked,
ratified, made fitting and acceptable, in such sort that it may
become for us the Body and Blood of Thy most dear Son our
Lord Jesus Christ. Who, the night before He suffered, took
bread in His holy and venerable Hands, and raising His eyes
to heaven, to Thee, God, His almighty Father, giving Thee
thanks, blessed, brake and gave it to His disciples, saying.
Take and eat ye all of this, this is My Body. ' '
Here the priest, confounding himself with Christ, the nar
rator with the Author of the drama renewed and present,
passes from ancient history to eternal history, and feeling him
self, his very self, the representative of all the holy family,
of all the Church united in its head, of the human race, con
scious and unconscious, provided that it does not deny its
soul, of the universe, joined to man and an inferior partici
pant in his destiny, he says, himself unworthy, but the
authorised voice of One who is more worthy. This is My Body,
this is My Blood.
All men are united to him, and each in his place ought to
strive to become a Christ also, a Christ for his own salva
tion and for that of his neighbours; a Christ for humanity
united in Jesus, and which He offers with Himself to the
eternal Father; a Christ of our dumb universe for which he
must speak, because it also is a son of God, it also is redeemed,
brought back from chaos to order; it also is predestined, the
new heavens and the new earth being promised to the future. ^
' Formerly, from the Orate fratres to the Communion, a curtain was
drawn before the priest, in memory of the Holy of holies, and in order to
heighten the impression of mystery. Only the little bell announced the
Elevation. In the Eastern churches the arrangement of the altar, hidden by
the ikonostasis, discloses the same feeling. Among us the priest remains
more or less easily visible (in Spain hardly so), but he speaks in a low voice
and does not turn towards the people.

1 98 xrbe Cburcb
That is why, all together throughout the ages {per omnia
scEcula scBculorum), bidden by healthful precepts {prceceptis
salutaribus moniti), obeying the divine institution with a
humble boldness {divina institutione formati audemus), they
begin to say — or to chant — the prayer which embraces them
all, the Pater noster.^
By the daily bread which is asked for is meant in the first
place the expected Eucharistic bread. In adding Forgive us
our sins as we forgive, is anticipated the kiss of peace, which
primitive usage made general in memory of the Master's
words : If thou bringest thy gift before the altar, and there
rememberest that thy brother hath aught against thee, go
first and be reconciled with thy brother. Reasons of good
order have reserved this ceremony to the clergy, or in any
oase have modified it; but its spirit remains, and the dona
nobis pacem, grant us peace, resounds in the ears of all.*
During the kiss of peace, the priest again takes up in
detail the petitions of the Lord's Prayer, introducing therein
fresh grounds for hope; the Blessed Virgin, the Saints, all
the good distributed through the Church, above all the Lamb
of God who taketh away the sins of the world {qui tollis
peccata mundi) and whose mystical presence becomes more
intimate through the following third part of the Mass, the
Communion. ^
Indeed, first the priest, afterwards the faithful are invited
to unite themselves to Christ effectively so that thereby they
may be better united in spirit. They ask that the Body of
Christ, united to His Divinity, may keep their soul, and the
body that is united to it, unto eternal life.
The priest says in his name and in the name of. those who
have communicated : Thy Body has become my Food and Thy
Blood my drink; may they cleave to my soul, and may no
trace of sin remain in me, who have received the sacraments
of purity and holiness.
The anthem called the communion is sung, the list of col
lects at the start is resumed with renewed hope; twice the
priest and faithful salute each other with the Christian saluta-
* In Eastern liturgies the Pater is recited in common. In the Latin rite
the people say only : But deliver us from evil, to which the priest replies
Amen. In the Mozarabic liturgy the people reply Amen to each petition :
Hallowed be Thy Name — Amen ; Thy Kingdom come — Amen.
* The pax, a small metal plate adorned with a religious picture, is some
times given to the faithful to kiss after being kissed by the priest.
3 Before the communion the fraction takes place, which formerly consisted
in a division of the consecrated bread among all the faithful. To-day it is
nothing more than a gesture, but it is an expressive one ; it signifies the com
munity of spiritual nurture, the divine distribution. The Eucharist was long
called the Breaking of Bread. ' ' As this bread was dispersed upon the hills
as com and has become a single loaf," so the Christians of the whole world
and of all ages ought to become a single spiritual body.

xrbe ^ass 199
tion. The Lord be with you! Lastly the priest or deacon bids
the assembly depart, saying, Ite, missa est — Go, this is the
sending. I translate it thus because pious authors do not like the
formula translated otherwise. It does not refer to departing;
it means that we are to go whither the Saviour sends us.
When the Apostles left Jerusalem after the great drama of
which the Mass is a repetition, Jesus said to them His Ite,
missa est, and it was a real mission which He gave them.
And we too have a mission in the name of Christ. We are a
royal priesthood, said St. Peter. The Mass, a contact with
God, must charge us with healthful influences which we ought
afterwards to spread abroad. The last gospel, the blessing
at the end and the suppUcations which Leo XIII. and Pius X.
have added to it, succeed in impregnating us with sentiments
and thoughts to this effect.
Is it understood how such a rite, accompanying a sacrament,
takes itself a sacramental character, eminently capable of
drawing men near to God, of drawing them away from sin,
of forgiving all debts and of warding off all evils, in the
measure of their dispositions and providential necessities,
from those who take part in it ?•¦¦
The Mass, considered as a ceremony, is the richest of the
sacramentals ; it contains and surpasses them all. We shall
not forsake it then when we speak of the others, particularly
in recalling the lofty prayer which is incorporated in it, the
Pater noster.
1 "I declare," wrote Newman, "that in my eyes there is nothing so
moving, so consoling, nothing which so surpasses and overpowers the imagi
nation as the Mass as it is celebrated in our churches. "

CHAPTER III
THE PATER NOSTER
WHEN the Divine Master was seated on the
Mount of the Beatitudes, instructing his dis
ciples, one of them, moved by an impulse that
was more than individual, and constituting
himself the mouthpiece of a group that was
itself a mouthpiece, and, in short, acting in the name of
humanity, since the Twelve, in the thought of Jesus, repre
sented the twelve tribes of Israel, which in their turn stood
for the world — one of them said suddenly. Master, teach us
to pray. And Jesus, as if He had always anticipated this
apparently unexpected question, Jesus, who had the Holy
Spirit ever on His lips, replied :
" When you pray, say :
" Our Father, Who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy Name.
Thy Kingdom come. Thy Will be done on earth, as it is in
heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us
our trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation. But deliver us from evil."
We picture the scene as a mighty vision. Is not the little
Galilean hill a height from which Christ dominates history —
Christ, the Son of Man, whose every word and action has a
universal bearing, like the little cinematographic film whose
magnified projection is only limited by its fineness of detail
and the power of the light?
Below the Master lies the Holy Land, a figure of Catholicity
throughout the ages. Around Him are the first elements
of the hierarchy which is the religious framework of humanity.
It is on this dramatic world-stage that we hear the formula
proclaimed, concise, dense, rich in all that a rightly com
posed prayer should contain, setting it forth in fitting order,
and in forms so suggestive of fruitful thoughts when analysed.
Our Father! These two little words, , like the simple up
lifting of one's eyes, calmly break away from the thousand
theoretical and practical errors which in all ages have gathered
about the name of God. This expansive plural gathers us
all in one when we speak to the Infinite, who is over us all.
This loving name, respectful, intimate yet not familiar, con
fiding, full of wants, but wants ruled by a Father's wisdom
and kept within bounds; this name drives right away the
thought of God as a mere idea, a mere metaphysical expres
sion, the " God of philosophers and learned men," and also
the idea of God as a fetish, which led all the old religions
astray. Have we not already in these two words a won
derful upward soaring of the soul, which is borne yet higher
by the quaUfying addition who art in heaven?

xrbe pater iRoster 201
Who does not feel the astounding confidence these words
are intended to convey?
Father, who art in heaven! Thou whose Name echoes in
imagination " to the highest point of the luminous and
inaccessible ether ' ' ; Thou who from that height seest aU, who
art able from that centre of the machinery of the Universe to
do all things ! Thou who dwellest also in the heavens of the
inteUigence, that is, in the domains of the mind, and in us,
who belong to them : who art therefore within, as Thou art
without and above; to whom we can appeal in silent contem
plation as well as, and better than by crying out through
space : Thou whom we must believe to be infinitely far off by
nature, but very near at hand by Thine inward operation
and Thy goodness; who, because Thou art free from our
mutability, our ignorance and weakness, canst succour them
in us, by raising us who dwell on this cold and obscure planet
in the direction of Thy greatness; truly in every way Thou
art in heaven, O our Father !
I The order of the petitions which are presented to this
universal Father corresponds to that of our desires, when
ruled by a religious mind. Firstly divine things, secondly
earthly. Firstly the coming of the true goods, then deliver
ance from evils.
At the head of the divine goods stands that which con
cerns God Himself; the sanctification of His Name, that is
to say His glory, the only good which can touch Him, since
His Being is fulness. That He may be known, praised in the
mind by adoration, praised with the lips by prayer, praised
in deeds by virtue; that is the first desire which our filial
instinct causes us to form.
There follows the manifestation of His Kingdom. We
shall know that it is He who governs, if all that thinks and
that is able to turn aside from Him comes back to Him. The
diffusion of this kingdom, in us, around us, in depth and in
breadth, in such sort that all things and all men, all things
in all men may be submitted to the divine empire, this is the
purpose of this petition.
Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven: on the earth
subject to change by reason of our restlessness, as in heaven
where mighty laws rule all things; on the earth sinful or
tempted, as in heaven where the elect live in Thee, free from
our wretched caprices.
After this, but only after this, we ask for the necessaries of
this life. And even here we do not forget to include the
spiritual means destined to procure the goods of the soul
asked for in the first place. And in order to state in a single
word all those necessary things which are known to God ; in
order to show that moderation which is fitting when we are

202 xrbe Cburcb
dealing with means and not with the highest ends, we specify
bread. Bread, that modest nourishment which is taken in
sufficiency, not in excess; but which is yet so fundamental
that we speak of it as of life itself : to earn one's living, to
earn one's bread.
And we say : Give us, to signify that we wish to receive it
only from heaven, not from the enemy of God's Kingdom, evil.
And we insist on the words our bread, to indicate that we
do not wish to gain it at the cost of others, by unjust acquisi
tion; but on the other hand we ask for it in common, being
ready to share it.
We add daily, because each day's bread suffices for the
day, and we leave the future to Him who knows the future;
and moreover, because we do not want for one day the bread of
several days, a uselessly encumbering and corruptible treasure.
The opposite evils from which we ask to be delivered are
set out in the same order as the goods; save that there is
nothing contrary to God, and if we have besought His glory
so that we may be united to it, knowing that this glory is
always satisfied in one fashion or another, we dare not call up
the idea of shame with regard to God. But as concerns our
selves, there is something opposed to the Kingdom of God
and to His will : sin. If we have committed it, we ask that
it may be wiped out : Forgive us our sins. And as for the
condition imposed when it is said You will be served in the
same way as you have served others, we add that our heart
consents to it : Forgive us our sins as we forgive.
Lastly, since the future always has its snares, we ask that
temptation, if it must come, may not carry us off with it;
that God will proportion it to our strength; that in any case
He will sustain us in the combat : in short, that He may
triumph in us and that we may be delivered from evil.
In this last term, besides moral evil, are comprised all the
evils which compromise our destiny, that is to say, those
which are not justified by the necessity for putting us to the
proof, and which would accordingly be a gratuitous diminu
tion of our happiness, in this world or the next.
This is what the Master meant to teach us in a few words
suddenly called for and calmly spoken, yet with more effect
than the writing of the Decalogue amid thunders on Sinai.
We may well believe that He Himself prayed thus.
When He went up some hill in the evening, as He used
often to do, after His day's work was over; alone, and far
from noise, even from that of His own life; entering, after
mapping out His time for action, into the eternity of His
work ; forsaking the sower's gesture as he stoops to sow, to
turn once more towards the open fields ; finding Himself again
without effort in the simplicity of the redemptive plan ; God

xrbe ipater IRoster 203
above Him, man beneath, and Himself, their sublime link,
participating in both in order to bring them together; all
this with the star-bejewelled Eastern night in the back
ground, Judaea or Galilee asleep, and His holy breathing
which you could hear in the silence of the night — what was
it that He said, in the ineffable colloquy He then began?
In heart or on lips, in actual words or their equivalent, did
He not utter what He was going to present to His own as
the perfect prayer?
Did not the sublime prayer contain everything for Him as
for each of His children? Must not He, the universal Shep
herd, entrusted with the salvation of all men, charged with
the destiny of all, made sin for all, and also, doubtless, made
aspiration, sorrow, helplessness or energy; and yet, on the
other hand, raised by divine predestination to a degree of
dignity which allowed Him to make Himself heard : must not
He, the Centre of the moral universe, whereof the other
universe is the servant, have murmured, with that voice
which was the voice of all men, addressing Himself to Him
who is All, and whose inward presence, extending even to
identity of person, threw Him into ecstasy : Our Father, Who
art in heaven ! . . .
The Cross would be only the consecration of this sacer
dotal prayer.
With His arms extended wide. His feet lifted above the
ground. His head raised skywards and aureoled with sorrow,
Christ would send forth a new appeal, and if this time the
Pater were compressed almost entirely into only one of its
petitions. Forgive us our trespasses. Father, forgive them,
a formula that the situation marked out as then specially
redemptive, its general intention would none the less be the
same, and these words would not be exclusive.
Later on, on that mystic Calvary which is also the hill of
prayer, on the altar, the same prayer sounds forth. There it
is regarded as so important, so sacramental, in union with
the sacrament par excellence of the Lord, that it occupies the
central place between consecration and communion, and is
never separated from it.
In the time of the Apostles, when persecution threatened
and time was pressing, when every other ceremony might be
omitted, the Pater was always preserved. The Mass, in
those days, consisted of the breaking of bread and the Lord's
Prayer, as if to say : There are two sacraments, the real
sacrament and the verbal sacrament; what Christ has com
manded us to do : Do this in memory of Me; and what He
has commanded us to say : When you pray, say . . .
In the other sacraments, the Pater is not lacking either.
In the initiatory sacrament, baptism, it represents the first

204 xrbe Cburcb
exercise of the right of sonship permitted to him who is
introduced into the Church. In olden times, the catechumen,
who was supposed to have learned it by heart, but was not
yet allowed to recite it in public, pronounced it for the first
time, turned to the east, to the direction of the sunrise, to
celebrate his illumination, as the baptismal renovation was
then caUed.
It is for all these reasons that the Pater, even taken by
itself, apart from the sacraments, is considered by Christian
tradition as a sort of sacrament. That is to say that there
is attributed to it, when it is said with feelings that corre
spond to it, an efficacy of its own, which surpasses that of
our dispositions in themselves, because it is like an institu
tion ; because the action of Christ covers it ; because, being
the perfect prayer, it seems that it should benefit in a special
way from our Saviour's so insistent words : Ask, and you
shall receive, seek and you shall find, knock and it will be
opened unto you; because, formulated in actual terms by our
divine Advocate, in whom are all the treasures of the wisdom
and knowledge of God, we believe that it says all that has to
be said, in the terms wherein it has to be said, to gain our
cause ; because when we say the Pater perfectly and under the
influence of grace, the Holy Spirit also says it in us. He who
cries, says St. Paul, in the depth of our hearts : Father!
Father! That, in short, is why the Pater, Christ's prayer, the
Christian's prayer par excellence, the sacramental prayer, is
also the essential prayer of the Church.
This follows directly, since the Church is Christ made
social, the Christian collectively considered, the sacrament
become a social body to give God and to lead to God.
This prayer, then, the Church not only says, but — better
than that — she realises it.
Her whole liturgy means : Hallowed be Thy Name !
Her mission on earth is nothing but the cry Thy Kingdom
come! translated into action.
Her attitude with regard to men, with regard to her own
difficulties and to the limits imposed upon her efforts, means
Thy will be done!
She asks and seeks to procure for her children all that is
necessary for them in things spiritual and temporal : bread,
and especially that divine Bread whereof she is the distributor.
To relieve our weakness, she asks and procures, through
penance, the benefit of the words Forgive us our trespasses,
suggesting to us by her counsel and example the condition
As we forgive them that trespass against us.
Knowing that our recoveries are always provisional, she
says And leads us not into temptation, and she multiplies safe
guards, preservative influences, around us.

xrbe pater IRoster 205
Lastly, to deliver us from evil is the most frequent, if not,
alas, the principal end of her prayers and her work.
Every member of the Church who applies this prayer to
himself and says it in secret will only keep its spirit by mak
ing his soul belong to a community, by entering as an instru
ment in a concert, into the great social harmony whereof
Christ is the conductor.
Without that, he has sterilised his prayer at the start.
When he says My Father, he has no longer a Father, because
the common Father is ours or is not at all. When he pre
tends to adore all alone, he is without the right to do so ; to
praise all alone, he is voiceless. When he asks only for his
own bread, he cannot obtain it, for the bread is on the com
mon table. When he beseeches pardon, he is obliged to
despair of it, if he does not betake himself in one fashion or
another to the keys that open and set free on earth and in
heaven. And how could he say as we forgive, if he is not in
loving relation with the assembly of his brethren? Mutual
pardon is another aspect of mutual love, of the organised
love that is the Church.
In every way, at all times, in all things, the sacramental
and the social coincide, in the bosom of a society which is
nothing at all, if it is not fundamentally united, since it is
what it is only through its union in God through Christ.

CHAPTER IV
RITUAL ALMS
IN the collection of discourses which St. Matthew
attributes to our Lord in the last days of His public
life, we very often find this vision of the world beyond
commented on : When the Son of Man shall come in
His majesty, and all the angels with Him, then shall He
sit upon the seat of His majesty, and all nations shall be
gathered together before Him; and He shall separate them
one from another, as the shepherd separateth the sheep from
the goats. And He shall set the sheep on His right hand, but
the goats on His left.
Then shall the King say to them that are on His right hand:
Come, ye blessed of My Father, possess you the kingdom
prepared for you before the foundation of the world. For I
was hungry, and you gave Me to eat; I was thirsty, and you
gave Me to drink; I was a stranger, and you took Me in;
naked, and you covered Me; sick, and you visited Me; I was
in prison, and you came to. Me.
Then shall the just answer Him, saying. Lord, when saw
we Thee 'hungry and fed Thee, thirsty and gave Thee to
drink, and when did we see Thee a stranger and took Thee
in, or naked and covered Thee? Or when did we see Thee
sick or in prison and came to Thee ?
And the King answering shall say to them: Amen I say to
yoy., as long as you did it to one of these My least brethren,
you did it to Me. . . .
These solemn declarations and their counterpart, which
follows in the text: all this scene, which might be called the
assizes of love, gives the key of the traditional doctrine which
has made of alms, besides an act of virtue and charity, an act
of religion, and as it were a sort of sacrament.^
What, indeed, is meant by saying Whenever you have done
it to one of these My least brethren, you have done it unto
Me, if not that Jesus institutes the poor man as His repre
sentative, as a living symbol of Him, and a charitable deed
done to the poor man as a sign of union with Him, as a means
of that union, and consequently as a kind of sacrament, if it
be true that every active instituted symbol, in the religious
order, is a sacramental thing?
The institution, besides, might have been taken for granted.
It was not necessary for Christ to say to us That which you
do unto these My least brethren — and your own brethren —
you do unto Me, since the whole foundation of our religion
consists precisely in the unity of the Head with the members,
* It is the rule in theology that every virtuous act can serve as the matter
of a religious act ; but this is especially true of alms,
2 06

IRitual Hlms 207
and if my members are me, so also all the members of Christ
are Christ Himself.
If He says it specially concerning those who are in distress,
it is because in their case it is most necessary; because the
member that is threatened seems all the more for that reason
the only one of interest, the only one which counts, and con
sequently the one which best expresses the whole, as if it
were said that the wounded soldier symbolises the Fatherland
better than the trooper on the march.*
But the foundation of the thought is quite apparent. To
succour one's neighbour and to prove thereby that one loves
him is to love the Christ in him, to love God in Christ, when
it has once been comprehended that faith working by charity
makes one single body of us all, of which His Spirit is the
divine soul.
And if it be true that love of God and in God is our all ; that
religion and virtue are nothing else than this; that in this
consists, as the divine Teacher declared, the sum of the Law
and the Prophets, and that according to the saying of Augus
tine, to love thus is a condition sufficient to justify funda
mentally all that one does — Love, and do what you will — then
we can understand how, at the time of the supreme assizes,
the King estimates after the simple examination of our rela
tions with others the total value of those whom He judges.
We understand why the Bible says (Tob. xii. 9), without
restriction, as if by antonomasis. Alms delivereth from death,
and it is that which atones for sins. This it is, not by its
materiality, not by reason of its body, which is money or ser
vice, but by reason of its soul, which is love.
In order to be delivered from death and from evil, it is suffi
cient to love God, with that love of friendship which is always
reciprocal and which carries with it every good. But to love
God effectively, we must love Him where He is to be found,
in our brethren; we must love Him in the state in which we
are united to our brethren. To wish to divide ourselves, or
to separate God from His own, is to give up wishing God to
be God, and ourselves to be ourselves. It is, then, not to
love Him in Himself, and it is no longer to love Him in our
selves, but to love in His place a heartless idol, and in our
own a phantom, selfish self criminaUy substituted for the
divine ego.
The first disciples understood this so weU, that Christian
and fraternal were the same thing for them, and also for
* Jesus had said : By this shall men know that you are My disciples, if you
have love one to another. But still it is necessary for this sign, in order to be
a sign at all, to be visible. Interior charity is not manifest. Everything can
demonstrate it ; but alms give a palpable, a sacramental sign of it.

2o8 xrbe Cburcb
the pagans who surrounded them. See how they love one
another, men said, and assuredly this attractive impression
had much to do with the rapid diffusion of Christianity.
The institution of deacons at once corresponded to the
ritual or quasi-ritual element in alms^ Charity was thus a
religious service, corresponding to a sacred order.
When St. Paul ordered collections among his people for
the poor of Jerusalem, he bade them pray that their alms
might be received favourably, as if they went directly to the
Lord Himself.
It is with such thoughts that throughout the Christian ages
charitable collections were inserted in the very heart of the
divine office, to signify that the sacrifice afforded to love
forms part of the unbloody sacrifice of the Saviour, and that
each of the faithful is called upon to say with the priest, Accipe
hostiam. Receive, O Lord, this holy offering, that it may be
changed into the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Does it not indeed change into the divine Body and Blood,
this offering which is going to nourish, under one form or
another, those of whom it was said : That which you do unto
one of these little ones, you have done unto Me ?
Our mutual gifts are the offertory of a Mass which con
tinues throughout time, a universal Mass in which Christ,
always present and " interceding " for us, offers together
with Himself, in token of love, all that love gives Him by
giving it to His members.
And therefore it is that outside the temple, beginning from
the porch where the poor man feels himself at hofne, where
Christ is at home in person, as He is at home in the taber
nacle and on the altar ; throughout the annexes of the temple,
in hospitals, in monasteries where life with Jesus can only be
conceived if the brethren of Jesus are admitted there, charity
extends throughout all the institutions which depend on
Christianity. Christian kings acknowledged it by appropriate action
when on days of religious solemnity they invited to the royal
table unfortunates who represented the divine presence there,
so that it might be honoured in its authentic substitute.
In families the principal events of life were sanctified by
free bounties. Communes and towns, which are larger
families and emulators of kings, followed their example from
above and from below. They all had those charitable institu
tions which were generally regarded as manifestations of
religion. From the time of the Apostles, Rome had been divided into
regions, for the purpose of relief, as our cities are divided into
parishes. From the fourth century upwards, after the great
persecutions had ceased, institutions of every kind sprang
into existence everywhere, for every category of unfortunates.

IRitual aims 209
In the course of the ages, they developed, employing immense
resources, occupying the activities of numerous societies
whose name of religious orders shows that they were closely
bound to charity as a form of worship.
The guest-houses, which were so often near the chapels of
the great Orders, welcomed the traveller, who in those days
was almost always a poor man, by force of circumstances,
in times difficult for communication. And did not this
signify : Pass, Lord, from one of Your domains to another,
on this earth whereon love has made You a traveller, whereon
Your brothers by adoption take Your place ! Our love will
be proud to receive You, although we are not worthy that
Thou shouldst enter under our roof!
Look at the fresco of Angelico which stands over a gate of
the cloister at the convent of St. Mark in Florence, showing a
traveller with the face of Christ, and two young monks, one
of whom hastens to relieve Him of His staff, while the other
gently draws Him within, and both exchange looks with Him
which mean " We know the traveller for Thee, Master," and
" Yes, children, and I take what you are doing as done for
Myself." All travellers, including foreigners, reaped the benefit of
these feeUngs, which doubtless the mediocrity or forgetful
ness of individuals might easily spoil or overshadow, but
which at the very least were present in the things, even if
they did not actuate the persons.
Everywhere it is related that miracles have been the reward
of this worship in action; that Christ actually appeared where
hearts had served Him in His living representative; that
Christopher the ferryman one day ferried the Child Jesus,
thinking that he was ferrying a poor child ; that Elizabeth of
Hungary, and afterwards Elizabeth of Portugal had seen
bread or gold change into roses in the folds of their mantle
so that they should not be' discovered in their good works.
Was it not the spiritual perfume of love that these roses
hailed ? Martin the catechumen gave away half his mantle,
and on the following night the Lord appeared to him sur
rounded with angels, draped in the divided cloak, and say
ing : " Martin, who is yet only a catechumen, has clothed Me
with this garment."
Do we wonder that artistic tradition, the faithful mirror,
especially at these epochs, of universal feeling, has persisted
in representing St. Martin, who later on did such great things,
in this first simple act of his respecting the divided mantle?
It is because art, when it remains in contact with the collec
tive soul, which causes its real greatness, says much in a few
words. Here it says : Love is everything. Love deserves
universal celebrity. Love avails for the apostolate, for the
conversion of peoples, for the healing of societies, as this man
14

210 xrbe Cburcb
healed them. Love avails for all and contains all, because it
is the religion of religion, the essence of good and the soul
of exterior works. " Love, and do what you will. "
To-day, as always, those who wish to go to Christ ought not
to forget that the poor man is a road ; that to love Christ
is to be disposed to prove that love in regard of His members ;
that the expectation of thanks from Him is a reason for being
attached to what He substitutes for Himself; to touch,
like the Canaanite woman, from behind. His extension in
humanity, the living garment which He lets float towards
us and from which virtue goes out.
But we must consider an aspect of this doctrine which
might be said to be ignored by many, and sometimes by the
best — the best, I mean, in respect of their good wiU, though
that good will forgets to be far-reaching enough.
If alms be a sacrament, as being a sign of our union between
ourselves and with Christ, and a means of perfecting this
union, let us remember that we have said of the sacraments,
and in particular of the first of them all, the Eucharist, that
their aims are social, and that it is fitting that the unity and
universality of the Church should be found in their effects.
The Eucharist has for its purpose to incorporate all of us
together into Christ, since it is a communion: and all of us
together, not just as a flock, but in accordance with the form
of relations which befits our nature in respect to the super
natural, namely, as constituted in one Church, a Church
which is governed and universal.
If it be indeed true that alms, in its turn, is intended to
unite us to Christ all together, it is also necessary that it
should join us together organically, socially. And it will
follow that alms properly so called, which gives relief pri
vately from man to man or from a man to small associations
of men, is only one part, and the smaUest part, of this lesser
sacrament which we are studying. It will be necessary to
enlarge and organise it, to make it social.
It will be necessary for the kings or heads of the state not
to be content with having the poor at their table, which, more
over, is a fashion of the past; but for them to govern with
an eye to the poor and disinherited as well as to the better
part of their people. It wiU be necessary also for individuals
not to limit their vision to the misery of their neighbours, at
the hospital which assigns them one hour a week ; but to
understand the wider misery, that of the social body, and
that which arises from the fact that the social body is not yet
entirely evolved, or fixed in forms of life which ensure the
best distribution of its blood among its members.
Social work in the modern sense, fruitful, creative, in place
of that stopping of perpetually renewed holes which our good

IRitual Hlms 211
deeds sometimes represent, this will be the natural and final
issue of alms, of the distribution through the deacon, of
house-to-house collections, of the divided mantle and the
building of the hospital, though these forms will always con
tinue to be necessary.
To wish that all the members of Christ, especially those
who are inferior in knowledge, in education, in well-being, in
legitimate independence, in happiness, may obtain what they
lack, and live also, one day, in the great life of humanity : and
that this result from organisation, legislation, the working of
the great wheels which move the whole complicated machine
of human relations; to wish this with one's whole heart and
soul, to aid those who work for it, to bring to them that assist
ance of public opinion which is so necessary for everything
to-day; and after that the assistance of speech, of action, of
resources, that all, in one degree or another, can furnish ; this
is the sacrament of alms in full blossom, rendered more effica
cious, as well as more significant, set on the level of its whole
subject-matter, men, not men considered one by one, set by
set, but in their organic unity, as it is or as it can be con
stituted. In fine, if this spirit, one day, were to spread; if it gained
those cold regions where the love of the Saviour does not
throb; if, in a dream, we supposed the one fold and one shep
herd of the Gospel had arrived, their hands stretched out
towards one another, their hearts united and their minds
eager to utilise the best means of action, ready to fix the
lever, in the name of heaven, on the fulcrum which permits
of moving the world, that would mean that humanity was
saving itself and, as it were, by itself, since it would be
doing so by means of its Incarnate Head.
When it had conquered the evil of the ages; when it had
dressed the wounds of the collective Christ, had thrown aside
the mantle of ignorance which it wore on its shoulders to
hide from it the existence of its blemishes, inferiorities and
miseries, such a humanity could turn to God, and with a
kingly gesture, presenting to Him the result of its effort, say :
Take, Father, for these are Thine own gifts, and if only
because of that, they are less unworthy ; but they are quite
worthy of Thee, because they are united to the living Gift
which Thou hast made to us. Thy Christ, in whose name,
like an army and a family, we have together conquered evils,
slain misery, developed our powers, raised up life, the holy
life which Thou wishest to exalt in Thyself. Take it; it is
the completion of Thy Creation. Now the end of time may
come, for here is Thy eternal plan; All subject to the elect,
and the elect to Christ, and Christ to God.
Funiculus triplex difficile rumpitur ; a threefold cord is not

212 xrbe Cburcb
quickly broken. God, man, and Christ, their intermediary,
ought, in unity, to make up life, the whole of life; individual
life, social life, and what is more, universal life, by incor
porating, through civilisation, matter with spirit, as spirit
with God.
Ritual alms, in its humility, signifies these high things. Il
plaits the threefold cord. And in this is found its religious
as well as its human value.
Those who wish to take away this higher signification from
our relationships are working simply to divide us. By deny
ing Christ, the bond of the human sheaf, they scatter the
stalks in all directions. The soil strewn and the grain
trampled underfoot by the competition which arises from the
struggle for life, this is what tends to succeed to the mass of
ears which mounts in a proud tuft above the sanctified earth.
The great consciousness of all men which the Son of Man has
awakened to love can then do nothing but dissolve into
egoism, and the hallucination of the I must extinguish in man
unconscious of God the outline of the unitary vision.
Leave man to be a brother of Christ and a sacramental
thing for his companions in existence. Do not make him
drunk with foolish pride, or, in place of the brother's cloak
divided in the name of the Lord, throw over his shoulders,
by interested flatteries, the purple of the political praetorium,
and the sceptre of a reed.
The great Christian almsgiving is no more the limited,
though holy, act with which we began; it is social justice,
and that obtained by the love of men, enfolded by Christ in
the love of God.

CHAPTER V
HOLY WATER
SINCE the sacramental rites employed by the Church
are presented to our thought as annexes of the sacra
ments, it is natural that we should see certain of them
approach more or less closely to one sacrament in
particular, and seek to preserve, to bring about, and
in part to renew its effects.
Such is, in regard to baptism, the office of the sanctifying
element which we call holy water.
The symbolism of baptism, and in general the use of water
in religious rites, has appeared to us to be justified by the
most natural and most profound of thoughts.
Water purifies, water fecundates, water quenches thirst.
Water, which is the life of nature, is our life also for a
thousand reasons, some very evident, others more hidden, but
divined by universal instinct before knowledge set its seal
upon them.
It seems true that the bottom of the seas saw the origins
of life. In leaving the watery element, aerial or terrestrial
organisms brought it with them and made of it their " interior
environment " to an extent which it is not easy to define.
Take away the water from our body, and nothing remains
but a heap of ashes, so that the threat Dust thou art and unto
dust shalt thou return appears to have for its antithesis the
promise of the Gospel : He that believeth in Me, out of his
belly shall flow rivers of living water . . . unto eternal life."^
The old theories of Thales, the echo of eastern traditions,
which make all beings come from water, are only the excess
of a natural truth which may be transformed, symbolically,
into a religious truth.
Moreover, all religions have admitted this element to the
honours of worship, whether to adore it, as the Egyptians
their Nile-God, or to introduce it into ceremonies of purifica
tion, as did the greater number of the peoples of antiquity.
Now, ought Christianity to reject a precious symbol
because it has been used before? Is it not rather a reason for
recognising its utility, and that without fear of paganism —
since in such treatment of natural objects and primitive signs,
everyone is a pagan — and for making use of it for the pur
poses of the Christian faith ?
In Judaism, whence Christianity arose, sprinkling with
water was practised, as well as ablutions before worship.
The celebrated receptacle called the sea of brass, placed in the
Temple beside the altar of burnt offerings, was a collective
' John vii. 38, and iv. 14.
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214 xrbe Cburcb
holy-water stoup. The spring of Siloe, from which water
was drawn with vessels of gold on the day of the Feast of
Tabernacles, was called the spring of salvation, because there
was attributed to it symbolically the effusion of the Holy
Spirit when the Messias should come.
Complete ablution, or baptism, had always been practised.
John the Forerunner renews it by giving it a signification of
penance, on the eve of the manifestation of Jesus.
The Saviour Himself, obedient to the customs of His people,
to all that is human, descended religiously into the Jordan
and submitted to the symbolic signs that were to mark His
consecration as Messias.
In the story of the Creation, the sacred writer, apparently
alluding to the ancient cosmogonies, said : And the Spirit of
God moved upon the face of the waters, that is to say, to
make them fruitful. So the Holy Spirit, manifested at the
Baptism of Jesus, moves upon the face of the baptismal water
in order to make it engender life ; not bodily life this time, but
the life of the soul, the symbol used by the Spirit having
power over the spirit; all the waters of the earth, say our
authors, being set apart by the initiative of Christ to fulfil a
new religious i-61e, in conformity with His new and definitive
doctrines. The round world washed with the waters of oceans and
rivers, souls washed with the Holy Spirit and symbolically
bedewed by lustral water, such is the symbol set before us.
After this a Francis of Assisi has twofold reason to praise
" our sister water, who is very useful, humble, precious and
pure." In the first days of the Church, the religious use of water
seemed to be confined to baptism alone. As a reaction
against Pharisaic formalism, it was not desired to multiply
exterior rites. The baptismal water itself was moreover em
ployed as it was, without any special blessing. Neither Jews
nor pagans blessed water. It was purifying, they thought,
by reason of its very nature. The symbol was therefore com
plete since it was not altered by a mixture of impurities.
Sometimes, in order better to mark the spiritual intention
of baptism, to aid its efficacy by the influence of coUective
prayers of which the minister is the mouthpiece, it was thought
good, first of all, at the beginning of the second century, in
Africa, and then little by little everywhere, to pronounce over
the baptismal fonts formulas such as the following, which is
very ancient : I bless thee, creature of water, by the living
God, by the true God, by the holy God, by God Who in the
beginning by the power of His Word separated thee from the
dry element . . . by Jesus Christ His only Son our Lord,
Who by a wonderful sign of His power changed thee into wine

1bols Mater 215
at Cana; Whose feet walked upon thy surface; Who received
by thee in the Jordan the baptism of water; Who made thee
to issue forth together with Blood from His opened Side, and
Who commanded His disciples to baptise in thee those who
should believe.'^
On the other hand, since a thing is preserved by the same
means as have gained it, yet since baptism is not repeated,
the Church was naturally invited to institute, in imitation of
Judaism and pious paganism, what might be called lesser
baptism, that is to say aspersion and the accessory purifica
tions, giving to them as their signification the effusion of the
Holy Ghost no longer in its initial and indispensable character,
that is incorporation with Christ; but because it plunges us
daily into that Life of our life and makes us participate in
it more and more.
Every mother nourishes the children she bears. Since we
are born of water and of the Spirit, of water quickened by the
Spirit, we can be helped by it, at the request of that Mother
in whom the Spirit is socialised and who is the channel of its
action — the Church.
There is this difference then between the secondary rite and
the sacrament, that the one gives the state of grace, while the
other presupposes it, or is in any case subordinate to it.
In taking holy water, we do not expect to obtain the divine
friendship ; but if we have it not, the interior good will which
accompanies this pious act can dispose us towards it. If we
have it, it helps it to grow, and all this with the peculiar
efficacy which arises from the institution, from the prayer pro
nounced with authority over this element when it is conse
crated to our use, and also, for the benefit of each of our
acts, from their connection with other acts proceeding from
the same spirit, in the unity of the Church.
The sound-chamber improves the tone of the stringed instru
ment. Our religious group has also a sounding-apparatus,
thanks to its organisation. When a rite unites us, in the
name of an approved tradition, to this collective soul, our feel
ings acquire a value which comes to them from the com
munion of saints, that is to say from our brotherhood in
Christ, a value which increases all our individual values, as
association always does.
We ought not, then, to be astonished at hearing a great
bishop of antiquity call holy water ' ' a sacrosanct thing, a
thing worthy of veneration, a thing full of mystery."
It is sacrosanct because it proceeds from the Spirit of sanc
tity diffused in the Church, the Spirit which seeks by all
means, small and great, to manifest Itself in our hearts in
order to conquer evil, to nourish good, to prepare eternal life
in them. 1 Preface for the Blessing of the Font,

2i6 xrbe Cburcb
It is a thing worthy of veneration by reason of its antiquity
and its universal connections, seeing that as it is present in
all systems of worship, it is bound to the human heart at its
deepest; seeing that it is moreover a thing specially Judeo-
Christian, and finally quite Christian, and from long ago
connected with the institution and personal practice of the
Saviour. It is a thing full of mystery by reason of the numerous
symbols which it evokes. We have mentioned several of
them, but it is necessary to add those which arise from the
new elements which are introduced into it, in the ceremonies
of its consecration.
Indeed, the holy water of the Christians is not used in a
pure form, as it often was in antiquity. For ordinary use,
salt is added, as if to compose a serum which preserves,
stimulates, guards at the same time against both weakness
and corruption, gives to our life the savour which edifies our
neighbour and pleases God, and unites us to our brothers by
that sign of hospitality which salt was in old time. When
we enter a church and offer each other holy water, we renew
the old act of offering bread and salt to our guests.
When baptismal water is being prepared, the oil of
catechumens is added to it ; the symbol of the combats which
the Christian must sustain for Christ's sake, of the light
which he receives and ought to pass on, of the sweetness
which is shown to him and which he ought to show, of the
recovery or preservation of health that grace procures.
When the catechumens of the first ages, meeting in the
catacombs, prepared themselves simultaneously for baptism
and for martyrdom, such a symbol had a very special raison
d'itre; but the daily martyrdom of a holy Ufe is a sufficient
justification for it.
The holy chrism is joined to it also, recalling the Magda
lene's perfume, to signify the good odour of virtues.
For the consecration of churches, one of the most imposing
ceremonies that exists, the holy water used is mixed with
ashes, as in ancient Egypt, or as at Jerusalem at the time of
the sacrifices. This is done to recall to man the humility of
his condition and the shortness of his life, to make him bend
before the Majesty which is willing to enter into religous
relations with him, to cause him to think with love of Him
who for his sake was made for him and with him ashes and
dust, to remove from him, by these thoughts, the sole interior
obstacle to his moral life — pride. I mean pride in its radical
sense, man's refusal to submit to God's law, his will to keep
himself for himself, thus exalting himself above everything.
That pride, with its two main branches, voluptuousness or
pride of the flesh and haughtiness, pride of the mind, is the

Ibols Ximater 217
whole tree of evil which has to be uprooted. In the emptiness
of self presupposed by humility, nothingness disappears and
makes way for the Infinite, whose grace gives all to everyone
who recognises that of himself he has nothing.
But because extremes lie always in wait for man's mind,
unbalanced as it is by original sin; because pride changes, by
reaction, into gloomy discouragement, fatal to energetic
effort; to ashes, the symbol of humility, the Church joins a
symbol of moral vigour, courage and joy. It pours wine into
the water of consecration. The wine which rejoiceth the
heart of man, as the Scriptures say, which has been given to
earth, as some old authors assured us, to replace the tree of
life ; vinum a vi dictum, said Varro, as if its etymology were
strength, is a symbol useful to upraise the mind after it has
bowed to the ashes.
Pascal saw one of the proofs of the divinity of religion in
this, that it only abases man so as to raise him up the better,
that it only raises him up after having taken care to abase
him, thus avoiding both stoic pride and sceptic discourage
ment. Let us congratulate the Church, then, because her
liturgy recalls her teaching.
Besides, she does not forget that her divine Master com
pared Himself to a vine, whereof we are the branches. Thus
He uses the modest and drooping vine, through which runs
a generous and exquisite sap, to represent the outpouring of
divinity into humanity.
All these symbols, were we better penetrated with their
Uturgical significance, better acquainted with the texts where
they are commented on, would produce in us an impression
of sublimity which would repel very completely that human
respect with which some people are seized at the moment of
putting their fingers in a stoup or sprinkling a tomb, as if
they were performing a mummery.
Read, in the Liturgical Prayer of Dom Cabrol, some of the
prayers relating to the blessing of water or its use ; and you
will see that they are penetrated with the most magnificent
and moving poetry, rich in nature and humanity, rich in
reflected divinity ; and you will derive from them the taste for
these rites which seem dull to dullards, superstitious to those
who have not understood their ends, but are admirable in the
spirit of their institution, that is to say in themselves.
In each of its uses, holy water particularises and adapts
its general signification.
On going into the church, it invites the user to purify him
self from profane thoughts and to become recollected.
In the house, it suggests the sanctification of our intimate
life, of the daily actions in which more than in the world or

2i8 xrbe Cburcb
in politics our life really consists. It brings to it the hope of
daily help, and this in addition to the periodic helps offered to
the Christian life by the sacraments.
When sprinkled on our houses, our goods, objects we use,
it signifies, " Lord, grant that we may use these temporal
things in such wise that we do not forget those that are
eternal." Used as an accessory in the administration of the sacra
ments properly so called, it plays a preparatory part, unless
it belong to the matter, as in solemn baptism.
Among the Easterns, the faithful drink a few drops of it at
their meal on the day of the Epiphany, whereon among them
the blessing of the water takes place, and in what is thus
taken life itself is meant to be symbolically spiritualised.
When given to one who is sick, holy water applies to him
the collective prayer that is made for him, and if he is con
scious impresses the thought of it before him to help him use
his sufferings for a Christian purpose, and to mitigate them,
if it be God's will.
To sprinkle a dead person is to wish him refreshment and
light. It is to say to him : God bless thee, brother who hast
left us; may He purify thy soul from the filthiness of earth;
may He make eternal life flower in thee in place of the days
of thy weakness ; may He assure thee of our brotherly love
and bring us together again.
Holy water thus returns in every fashion to the sacra
mental idea. In making use of material elements, we wish to
help them to fulfil their purpose, which is to stimulate the
mind; to second, instead of impeding, the ascent of the soul;
to bear us up to God, who is no less their Creator than ours,
and who created the hierarchy of beings in His universe to
help them to ascend, having regard to the destiny of the elect.
All can be summed up in this prayer, for the benefits of
which every Christian ought earnestly to hope :
" O God, who in the wonderful ordering of Thy scheme
hast willed by means of things insensible to show forth the
scheme of our salvation; grant, we beseech Thee, to the
devout hearts of Thy faithful people a saving understanding
of the mystical meaning of this act. Amen."^
1 Preface for the Blessing of Palms.

CHAPTER VI
BLESSINGS
<A LL the objects of which we make use, all things
/^L animate or inanimate which are brought by provi-
/ ^^ dence into relation with our life, are intended to
/ ^ make way for the rule of creative ends in our case,
"^ -^^ that is to say, to collaborate for our happiness, in
this world and the next.
We ourselves, through all the activities of our inward and
outward life, have the same purpose : we must help towards
our own happiness. And assuredly, we have an irresistible
will to do so; but how often do our aberrations, whether cul
pable or unconscious, make us our own enemies, just as things
directed against us by chance or by hostile wills, human or
superhuman, become opposed to us, vex us or tempt us, act
as a screen to prevent us from seeing God instead of reflect
ing Him; play the part of obstacles and cast us down instead
of ladders for us to ascend.
This reversal of life's values is at the bottom of all our
misfortunes, temporal and spiritual. It would be necessary
to redress everything, to save everything from accidents, to
set everything free from unhappy or perverse influences, so
as to make it again enter into the creative plan and, as is
fitting, to direct matter towards mind, mind towards intellec
tual progress, and all towards God, whose will it is to receive
all after He has launched all on the perilous, but meritorious
and fruitful adventure of existence.
This is clearly the end of all religious effort, and in par
ticular of the sacraments, the chain stretched between us
and Christ who draws us towards God by a progressive
redemption. But since, once more, the sacraments have things annexed
to them which prolong and particularise their action, we
ought not to be astonished at discovering that there are rites
intended to set things as well as persons towards the good
and towards happiness, by minting, so to say, the benefit of
the Incarnation for them under the administration of the
Church. Such is the role of blessings.
The word blessing, or benediction, comes from bene dicere,
to speak good, to say favourable things, to invoke or to
acknowledge benefits.
In the religious and sacramental order,, to bless signifies to
invoke upon us, directly or by means of things, that which
Christ has merited for us, that which has been prepared for
us in the measure of our dispositions and of the providence
which guides us, that which it has been decided to give us
219

220 xrbe Cburcb
through those natural mediators, the members of our hier
archy, representing at the same time both Christ who hearkens
and ourselves who implore, whose hands are uplifted, since
they are human and fraternal, and turned downwards, inas
much as they are divine through institution, and instruments
consecrated in the name of Christ, to be the channels of His
graces. On God's side, blessings are themselves actual benefits.
What God says is what He does. What He says favourably
{bene dicere) is what He does in our favour.
The word of God, which is in no way exterior to Him,
which is His very thought. His creative and governing
thought, and consequently ^Iso His action, since thought and
action in God are not distinguished ; the word of God becomes
then, in its realisation, the form which events and the actual
arrangement of things will take.
All things exist because God said them. Dixit et facta sunt;
He Himself exists so far as He says Himself, since His word
is His proper reality.
The Word of God is a substantial benediction in God. He
communicates it to us through Christ. He imparts its
benefits to us, in correlation with our life, by means of those
partial benedictions. His daily benefits. And if He subordi
nates them in part to our action, our prayers and the religious
hierarchy, it is in the first case in order that we may be the
children of our works; in the second, that we may draw near
to Him through this ascension of the soul; in the third, that
the hierarchy hold us all together, that is to say keep us in
association, like brothers united in His name.
The celebrated fresco called the Dispute of the Blessed
Sacrament, wherein the Heavenly Father, blessing with a
priestly and tender gesture, occupies the summit of the com
position, having beneath Him Christ, with His assessors;
lower again, the Spirit communicated, with His reflection in
the Gospels ; lower still, the hierarchy representing the Church
and disputing about the Real Presence so as to determine its
use, is a very complete graphic representation of the descent
and diffusion of the divine blessings.
It is not necessary to repeat that every benediction must
invoke Christ. If this is not done in words it will be in act,
and the object or the person will be signed with the sign of
the cross, recalling Jesus the Redeemer.
Sometimes incense is used, to mark the intensity and the
solemnity of the prayer; to give it the exquisite odour which
the merits of the Saviour communicate.
The first objects of benediction, if we are considering
inanimate things, will be things consecrated to worship.
These are destined to our good in a special sense, and they

JSlessings 221
may well be appropriated thereto by a religious act to set
them apart from profane use. They will be sanctified in the
etymological sense of the word, that is to say they will be
separated for sacramental uses, the capability of fulfiUing
which they will receive from a deputed authority, which pro
ceeds always from Christ through His true representative.
Thus are churches and their foundation-stones blessed, in
anticipation of the Real Presence.
Thus sacred vessels and altar-stones are blessed with a
benediction which prepares them for the better blessing of
contact with what is divine.
In the same way are blessed symbolic ornaments, each of
which speaks of an aspect of religion, recalls a duty and
speaks to a soul of its hopes.
We bless the matter of unction, with a view to its use in
the administration of baptism, of confirmation, of the last
sacraments. We bless lustral water, palms, the Paschal
candle, organs.
Cemeteries, reUgious images in public places, objects of
personal devotion are blessed. And all these blessings are
caUed consecratory.
Since the eighth century — and it is indeed surprising that
it was not thought of sooner^ — ^bells have been blessed in the
same manner. The humble metal which has to play the
part of a voice of the Church, to call the dispersed faithful to
prayer, to announce the preaching of the Gospel, to act as
prelude to the Holy Sacrifice, to intone the common canticle
of our adoration, and at the same time of a voice of God, to
utter appeals from on high, the inward necessity of thanks
giving, the violence of remorse, the sweet invitation of hope;
this humble thing, so mighty in its utUisation, must be
assigned to its function in a solemn manner. So for this pur
pose there has been arranged a sort of baptism, as if for a
living being with a glorious destiny. It is decorated and
symbolically anointed ; we wish that its accents may share the
sweetness of the silver trumpets spoken of in the Book of
Numbers, or, if necessary, the loudness of the trumpets of
Jericho, to cast down the ramparts of our hearts.
Beside these things consecrated for pious uses, all those
met with in common life are blessed, houses and beds, fields,
seedtime and harvest, domestic animals, bread and other
foods, all the products of industry; ships, railways, tele
graphs, telephones, aeroplanes, works of art, public foun
tains, monuments, factories, schools, hospitals, mines and
workshops, etc. ; all patriotic emblems ; flags, banners,
swords or uniforms ; and also the earth, the sea, roads, rivers,
canals, all the places in which man moves, seeking his liveli--
hood and fearing dangers. Lastly, the ritual contains bene-
* The use of bells in the East dates at least from the sixth century.

222 xrbe Cburcb
dictions ad omnia, for all things, so as to include even the
things which are forgotten, and to suffer nothing in fact to
lack religious consecration.
Persons, who, by reason of their moral consciousness, are
things to be governed ; who have to be drawn towards God
by a sort of pressure to which they consent, since we have in
us both a fear and a need of the divine; persons are also the
subject of blessings.
Infants are blessed at their birth and on various feasts, as
well as their mothers at churching. Betrothed and newly-
married persons are blessed, travellers on setting out and
coming home, missionaries and pilgrims, the sick and the
dying, assemblies as well as isolated individuals ; in a word,
all those who find it well to unite themselves, by an expres
sive and active sign, to the source of those spiritual goods
which bring in their train sooner or later all others ; namely,
to Incarnate God, God taking flesh in man and in his pro
longation, nature, in order that nature and man may take hold
of God.
As for the minister of blessings, he is, most often, any
priest ordained by the Church; but the blessing of a Bishop
and that of a priest at the end of Mass have always been con
sidered by tradition as enjoying special prerogatives, and it is
these in particular which it is customary to call sacramentals.
The reason, as far as the Bishop is concerned, is clear. It
is that the successor of the Apostles possesses, like the Twelve,
the fulness of the sacerdotal office conferred by Jesus.
The power of the simple priest is of wonderful efficacy and
magnitude, but it is limited. The Bishop's power is fuU.
The Pope himself is from this point of view only the first of
his brethren. If the jurisdiction of the first shepherd and
that of the pastor of a diocese are very unequal, their power
of order is identical. Whence it follows that their benedic
tion is placed on the same footing from the sacramental point
of view, although the papal benediction is received with
greater honour.
Both, in any case, have always been in the Church the
object of a reverence that is justified, because the full priest
hood participates at the maximum in that power of interces
sion which St. Paul attributes to Christ when he says : We
have a high priest who is able to save perfectly those who
come to God by Him (Heb. vii. 25).
Is it not indeed ordinarily the case in every organisation
that the goods which are properly social are obtained through
the social authorities, and this all the more the higher the
power involved ? Our spiritual treasures are not exceptional.
They come to us through intermediaries; Christ always, His
ministers usually. God dispenses them and makes them

Blessings 223
trickle down like those perfumes of Aaron, whereof the Psalm
speaks, which covered his head and ran down his venerable
beard, even to the skirts of his clothing.
When the pastor faces his flock, standing on the steps of
the altar, with mitre and staff, with wide golden cope, recall
ing those pictures of the early artists in which our Lady
envelops a whole religious order or the whole Church in the
folds of her azure mantle ; his breast adorned with the cross,
his body veiled in white linen, mysteriously hiding its
materiality, the stole hanging down in sign of humility and
power; everyone bending down before the majesty of the pro
pitiatory action ; then the saying of Jesus, Where two or three
are gathered together in My name, there am I in the midst
of you, acquires an almost dramatic meaning.
Is it not the Saviour Himself, whose eternal priesthood is
here represented not only by the consecrated person, but by
the whole scene round about him ; by this costume. Eastern,
Roman, modern, which belongs to all times as does Christ
to all ages ; drawing himself up to his full height in his lofty
head-dress, displaying riches which will soon melt away in the
magnificent humility of what he says?
Look at him, this representative of Christ, now speaking.
Is he going to perform an act of personal pride, of corporate
pride, glorying, in his own name or in that of the hierarchy,
in an almost miraculous power on which the salvation of the
multitude depends?
Adjutorium nostrum in nomine Domini. Our help is in the
Name of the Lord, he says.
And the people reply. Who made heaven and earth, adding
to these lofty words a new dimension. It is the breadth com
ing down from on high. The mystic pyramid is set up : prayer
has only to ascend it.
Blessed be the Name of the Lord, continues the pontiff. It
is the desire that He from whom the divine good things pro
ceed may first of all receive them. It is the lesson of the
Pater noster repeated : Hallowed be Thy name ! before the
demand for bread, even the bread of the soul.
Then, raising his hand which bears the symbolic gem, the
ring of the mystical marriage he has contracted with his
Church, with two fingers down, leaving three to express the
Trinity, making three great crosses over all the people, as if
using the name of the Trinity to insist on sending forth the
person of Him who saves as the forerunner of his own
humility, he says, not I bless you, which he might do as a
real representative, but The Blessing of God Almighty,
Father, Son and Holy Ghost, be with you.
At the Mass, this last wish is reaUsed almost to the letter,
and the intermediary is effaced more and more. The priest in

224 xrbe Cburcb
act of sacrificing is almost another Christ. Does he not say,
as he bends over the sacramental species, voluntarily mingling
history with the eternal mystic reaUty, This is My body ?
When afterwards he turns round, and blesses the assembly
with that hand still impregnated with mysteries, may not one
think that somewhat of the beneficent virtue which went forth
from the divine Master must now be outpoured to heal, con
sole and sanctify us, if we are prepared for it?
This is especially true when the blessing is given with the
Blessed Sacrament itself. In this case, the minister is hidden,
and no longer counts at all. Speech, however humble, is no
longer in place. The liturgy demands silence, both on the
part of the congregation and on that of the priest. Let all
flesh, says the prophet, be silent before the face of the Lord
(Zach. ii. 13).
The Christian ought then to remember that we also must
bless God for blessing us, who blesses us every day by giving
us all that we have, who blesses us directly, who blesses us
sacramentally by His hierarchy, who speaks through it and
by Himself, and His gifts come to us.
Blessed be God and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
cries St. Paul, who has blessed us with every spiritual bene
diction, in heavenly places ! (Eph. i. 3).
In this last phrase we find the lesson with which we began.
It is with a view to heaven that every spiritual or temporal
blessing is bestowed upon us.
When we bow down for the blessings of the Church, we
must remember that life is nothing but this — for God, an
enterprise of glory and love ; for us, an enterprise of salva
tion; and that to bless God by asking that He may bless us
through Christ, is to wish before all things for the realisation
of an eternal plan in which our temporal desires take their
place, but according to an order of subordination demanded
first of all from our hearts by Him who wills to fill them to
the fuU.

CHAPTER VII
THE SIGN OF THE CROSS
ONE of the sacramental signs which is most mingled
with religious life, most frequent in the liturgy, and
for that reason most habitual to the Christian, who
likes to turn his daily life itself into a sort of liturgy,
as though a divine service, js assuredly the sign of
the cross.
Met with in practice at every turn, this simple and famiUar
but dramatic sign seems intended to carry out the bidding of
the Apostle : Whatsoever you do, in word or in work, do all
in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ (Col. iii. 17).
For this reason, we like to think that the sign of the cross
goes back to the Apostles themselves. History is not far
from proving this, since it traces this symbol as far back as
the second century, and already at that epoch it was considered
as the sign of the Christian, the seal which in the Apocalypse
marks the foreheads of the servants of God, and this invites us
to go back even further, to the very first start of the Christian
era. The manner of making the sign of the cross has undergone
variations the course of which is very obscure. Things which
are very popular easily follow divergent roads, and the sym
bolism of this sign, when the attempt was made to define it,
was interpreted in various ways.
The making of the sign of the cross on the forehead seems
to have been the common practice until the fourth century,
and it signified the seal, the visible mark, the label shown by
the Christian to prove that he was not ashamed or afraid.
In a hostile environment such as the pagan surroundings of
the first centuries, when the cross was an object of derision
or hatred, such a gesture had a lofty significance, since it
might lead to martyrdom. Towards the end of the fourth
century, we see the custom spread which we still practise at
Mass at the beginning of the Gospel, the signing of oneself
on the forehead, lips and heart, for the sanctification of
thoughts, words and desires.
It is only in the eighth century that we meet with the sign
of the cross made over all of the body, for the sanctification
of the whole man.
In Spain, in the thirteenth century, a curtailed form of
crossing oneself was adopted. It consisted in signing the face
from forehead to chin, no doubt to mark the five senses.
As for making the sign of the cross over things, it seems as
old as the earliest use; and this can easily be understood,
since things for our use are a continuation, an instrumental
adjunct of the person, and on the other hand, through making
225 15

226 xrbe Cburcb
the sign of the cross on himself, a man was naturally invited,
when he exercised any authority, to make it on others, and by
extension on their property.
In all these cases the Christian sign was traced in primitive
times with one finger alone. Later, it was made with two or
three, to recall the Trinity or to protest against the heresy of
the Monothelites. Lastly, the custom of employing the whole
hand arose.
The direction of the hand also varied. Upward and down
ward movement was unavoidable, but then one could go either
from right to left or from left to right. Some preferred to
end with the right side, in memory of Christ seated at the
right hand of the Father. Others chose the left, the better
to recall the Crucifixion, for they supposed that the right
hand was first nailed, then the left.
Our forefathers very readily became attached to such
details, because symbolism had a real value for them in their
lives. We are inclined rather to a dry rationalism, and see
in this nothing but an archaeological curiosity.
However this may be, the general signification of the act is
always the same. It serves to mark our possessions and our
selves for the service of the Cross, that is, to declare by an
expressive sign that we remember our Saviour, His rule over
us. His teaching and example, and above aU His Passion.
Thus it gives our life a Christian significance, by insisting
on one aspect of that life which, though essentially transitory,
is none the less the most difficult part of it to accept without
murmuring — ^pain.
The cross freely made upon oneself means the acceptance
of life and its daily or exceptional sufferings, including death,
in the name of Christ ; it is a prayer for and an anticipation of
the victory of the spirit over the flesh, of eternity over time,
since the moral life is our taking possession of the eternal in
intention, as the life beyond is taking possession of it in fact.
Christ gave Himself to be crucified — for it is He Himself
who climbed the ladder of pain, ascendit crucem — Christ,
the universal Man, took on Himself all human suffering in
order to give it to God in expiation and in merit, to make it
attain its goal, the right hand of the Father, which means
self-conquest and dominion over all things, regained though we
are left the slaves of all things, slaves, in the first place, of
our own erring and scattered ego, abandoned to the law of the
members. Whoever piously makes the sign of the Cross in order to
unite himself to his Redeemer ought to remember that to
unite himself, an individual human being, to the Universal
Man as the Man of Sorrows, is to accept sorrow for himself
also. How many things, in life, are in the form of the Cross 1

xrbe Sign of tbe Cross 227
One might say that it is present in all things, and that the
world is a globe through which runs a sword with Cross-like
hilt. Is not man himself made in the form of a cross, with arms
outstretched towards all things, never attaining the full object
of his search, his feet riveted to an ungrateful soil, ever
attempting to lift his head beneath its bundle of thorns ? The
cross was modelled on man's body, and he feels it fastened to
his shoulders whenever he writhes with pain.
But when the Christian wishes to enter into the redemptive
plan by working out his own salvation, to unite to his divine
Brother, he braces himself like Christ to a generous accept
ance. He rests on his cross, standing, bidden thereto by that
upright bed of heroes and martyrs.
After all, man only has members in order to be crucified on
earth. The flesh exists for the spirit, and the flesh only works
for the spirit by suffering. The wax must melt in order that
the candle may burn. To suffer or to die — that phrase of
St. Teresa which is thought of as a mystical utterance, taken
broadly, is only the Christian philosophy of life.
In acts of public worship, the sign of the Cross has naturally
a more special signification. It means : All salvation comes
through the Cross; for from the Cross flows the stream of
grace into which the liturgy is meant to make us enter ; the
road which runs, as Pascal would say, and leads us whither
we want to go.
When by this sign we explicitly recall the source of sacra
mental graces, our intention is to strengthen them; we
piously desire to stamp the idea of them in our minds so that
we may be ready to receive them; we know that the institu
tion is in itself efficacious, through the application of the col
lective prayers and common merits of which we partake.
In ordinary life, which is not destitute of the sacramental
principle, seeing that it is the Church, in its essence, which
is sacramental, and so in all its functions and all its life,
which are ours — in daily life, I say, the sign of the Cross
indicates precisely that everything in the life of the Christian
is itself Christian, and attempts to secure that it may be truly
so with the efficacy which admittedly belongs to it.
The rising and setting, birth and death of that life which
each day is in miniature; food, which is the support of that
life and must therefore take its meaning; work, which seeks
its advancement, and so is also qualified by its end and ruled
by its motives; relationships, which mean its diffusion in a
mental and moral atmosphere from which it neither can nor
ought to be isolated, and which also it is very necessary to
put in unison at the moment of our having to do with them ;
the sign of the Cross supernaturalises all these. It is made

228 xrbe Cburcb
over a bed, as the Christians did in the time of Tertullian ;
over the bread which is eaten or over the table at which we
sit down, a custom which is unhappily disappearing; over
the earth which is being tilled, as the peasants did for so long
in the lands of faith;, at the beginning of any act done in
common; contract, oath, discussion, fights, games, travels,
enterprises and the rest.
All this starts from one inspiring idea and tends to the
same end. We hope God will be so good as to accept this
sign of our adhesion to Christ and His Cross, to communi
cate its blessings to us, to guard us, help us, unite us, urge
us to our end through the bitter ¦experiences of life.
The Christian approaches the universal reality Cross in
hand, like Christ, and like Christ he hopes to overcome it.
In hoc signo vinces ; through this Sign thou shalt conquer.
Thou shalt conquer nature, which providence, through the
Cross, urges in the direction of creative ends ; thou shalt con
quer thyself, who art nature also, often shipwrecked and in
storm ; thou shalt conquer time which devours thee and compel
it to run into eternity, the ocean into which the watejr-clock
causes the minutes to fall drop by drop; thou shalt conquer
God Himself, by the violence of love which the love of His
Son who died for us inflicts upon Him.
Thou, O conquering sign, hast only to find the formula
which binds thee to thine original Source of efficacy; that
fulfils the meaning of the Creed by recalling the order of the
mysteries to which thou art nearest, the Redemption proceed
ing from the Incarnation, and the Incarnation connected
with the Trinity : Father, Son and Holy Ghost.
The traditional words are not always added explicitly to
the sign of the Cross ; they may be understood, but they are
always implied, and when one crosses oneself with some
solemnity, though it be in private, the sign carries the words
with it, so as to be completed by marking the connection of
the Cross with the heights from which graces come down,
as well as with the plains on which they are to be poured out.
In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy
Ghost. This now means, we approach the Trinity by the
Cross; the Trinity comes to us through the Cross; it is the
bridge across the abyss dug by nothingness and sin. And
that the Trinity may thus come to us, that It may draw us
to Itself, mingling with our nothingness the fulness of the
divine compensation, this is the entire satisfaction of aU
religious effort, since religion consists solely in this, in saving
our little lives from their nothingness and from their native
malice, extending to the absolute all their closely measured
values, in giving to each of the steps of our whole career
the noble meaning demanded by our aspirations.

Zbc Sign of tbe Cross 229
So that the sign of the Cross fully understood is the whole
of the religious life in a striking epitome.
In the Name of the Father, from whom all proceeds, in
God and outside God ; in the Name of the Son, His equal,
of one substance with Him, but through Whom He is fruitful
and a Saviour; in the Name of the Holy Spirit, their living
Bond, their breath and their common pulse,^ through whom
God communicates His virtue and makes Himself the Sancti
fier ; In the Name of the ineffable and sacred Trinity, I unite
myself to the Cross which is the channel of graces, the light
ning-conductor of evils, as lashed to the mast of the tossing
ship which carries my eternal fortune.
And I say : O inward closeness of my God united to the
humble inwardness of my life, be propitious to me ! O earth
and heaven mingled through the wood of the Cross, make of
me the shoot which only draws from its roots that it may
rise to the Ught and there spread out aloft as high as pos
sible !
God who art present, God, who art loving, beside me, for
getful and weak man that I am, arouse me in spirit, in heart,
in action to Thine invisible and active presence !
Unity of all things, manifested through Christ, Man and
God, and ruled by a government so sublime that it can make
itself present to the inmost heart without laying aside any
thing of its transcendence, that can come into contact with
all humiUties without its grandeur being diminished, that can
become affectionate even to the point of foolishness in seem
ing while keeping its immensity, make me a sense of
bewildering enfoldment, in which my nothingness finds some
what that makes it divine !
Father and Son and Holy Ghost, mark me ! Make Your
sign upon me !
Let me. Father, be with Thee, the fruitful principle of my
own destiny !
Let me, O Son, be in Thee, an outflow from the divine,
recognising its source and its end; a river, begotten of the
ocean, and returning thereto across the plains.
Let me be, O Spirit, like Thee, a sanctifying breath, a holy
throb diffusing outwardly the inward overflow, and acquiring
new strength for myself, since
With the fire it sends forth is every soul consumed.
Let my head, my heart, my Umbs work for thought, desire
and action in accordance with Your model and Your influence,
O Three, Three in One, as are thought, desire and action in
myself. Let my aims, my relationships, my material and spiritual
attachments unite me to Thee and make of me a life divinised,
and in consequence fundamentally humanised, since Thou, O

230 xrbe Cburcb
Creator, dost not absorb, but give to himself him who has
known how to give himself to Thee in order to live the
better. Let my entire self, including all that my personality covers,
whether living or lifeless, live, advance and die, pass, arrive
and settle down, work, suffer and be for ever established in
joy in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy
Ghost.

CHAPTER VIII
THE WORD OF GOD
IN the beginning was the Word. And the Word was
with God, and the Word was God. The same was in
the beginning with God. All things were made by
Him, and without Him was nothing made that was
made. In Him was Life, and the Life was the Light
of men.
As we want to treat of the Word of God in the liturgical
sense, we cannot do better than go back thus to its source.
The liturgy, and in general all the sacramental life of the
Church, has for its only end to bring us into connection with
God through Christ. It uses diverse means to that end.
One of them is the Word, the special function of which is to
unite us to God according as He is Himself the Word, that
is to say the Truth, in order that His truth may become in
us what it is in Him, Life; and that this Life may be the
Light of men.
This inspiring expression, the word of God, is used for
preaching, at once suggesting the sacramental — that is, the
symbolic and effective — meaning attributed to it by Catholic
thought. We say Word of God {parole de Dieu) as in French we call
a hospital a House of God {Hdtel-Dieu). We erect hospitals
in God's name as we preach the Gospel in God's name; both
are sanctified operations. And in the same way as we have
attributed to Christian charity a sacramental character which
connects it with the very centre of the Catholic liturgy, the
Mass, by means of the Offering, so we must accord to the
Christian preaching of the Word a sacramental meaning
which makes it a continuation of that section of the Mass
named instruction, comprising lections taken from Prophet,
Epistle and Gospel, and their commentary, the sermon.
It is by reason of this connection that makers of sermons
traditionally give a text at the beginning of their discourse,
and end with amen, as in the prayers of the Mass.
To call this to mind, a crucifix is in most churches placed
either in or opposite to the pulpit; over it the symbol of the
Holy Spirit; under it the Apostles and the figures of the four
evangelists to support it. Sometimes, notably at Paris,
candles are lighted during the sermon to signify the light
of men.
Though a man speaks outside the Church, apparently apart
from all Uturgical functions, since he is still a man of God,
speaking the language of religion, he is stiU linked with the
sacraments and is doing sacerdotal work.
231

232 xrbe Cburcb
If any priest speaks of science, sociology or literature,
leaving these studies to themselves, without bringing them
into the religious stream, without, at least indirectly, raising
them up to Christ who is his end, he forgets the word of the
Apostle : / have not thought to know anything among you
but Jesus Christ, and Him crucified.
To know Jesus Christ only does not mean ignorance of
everything else ! The letter killeth. One ought to know
everything. But one's final aim in tackling science or any
other sort of knowledge should be to bind oneself to Jesus
crucified, that is to Jesus as Redeemer, the saving Mediator
between all that is of man, that it may succeed at last, and
God, who alone procures its success.
To restore all things in Christ — that is the end of the
priesthood with regard to the Word, and everything else.
When the Apostles heard the command Go and teach all
nations they did not set out like itinerant schoolmasters or
savants or philosophers on a lecturing tour. They were mes
sengers of a Divine Master. They declared what they had
heard, not what they had discovered. They are represented
as holding a book, a book shown sometimes, in miniatures,
as under a veil, like a monstrance. Their words seemed to
themselves utterances of the Spirit of God, an echo of His
living Word. When they appealed to reason or to nature,
it was because reason and nature also proceed from God and
reveal His Word.
So when the preacher speaks in the Church, and particu
larly during the Mass — interrupting his sacred office as if
Christ were waiting for him to make the hearts of men
ready for His coming into them — clothed in the white vest
ments which attach him to the altar; the preacher, I say,
speaks not as an orator, even if he is one ; not as a philosopher
or savant, though he may be one; not even as a private
theologian; he speaks as one sent. A mission; that is the
r61e he fulfils. His voice is not his own, it belongs to another,
it belongs in the end to that divine Other, and the thought of
its passing through human lips dismays the sinner who feels
his insufficiency for such things.
" O crowd of hearers ! What do you ask of me?" cried
Lacordaire. Indeed, who are we, to climb steps, to rise up
in our pulpits above everyone else, to claim the devout atten
tion of which we are sometimes conscious? Have we, as
men, anything to say which is worthy of this silence, when
so many of our audience, it may be, could break it with far
better right and more brilliant effect than ourselves ?
Silence, the thrill of hearts which stiU their beatings, the
crowds of thoughts and feelings that bend like ears of corn
beneath the wind while the Word is passing; when the
Christian orator asks himself why he should be the one to

xrbe XKHorb of ©ob 233
stir that silence for a moment, and to keep it in awe in its
humility so full of life, he can only reply with the Twelve :
/ cannot refrain from speaking ! with Paul : Woe is me if I
preach not the Gospel !
But to justify himself, the hearer must say : Christian in
fact or Christian in hope, I propose to draw nigh to God,
and for that purpose, seizing this thin and trembling thread
which runs towards me, I use it for my spirit and conscience
to mount upwards.
The human preacher is a weak bond, but yet a bond between
his auditory and God, through that other sublime Bond, the
Man-God, and through the institution which is His extension
to us, penetrated with His Spirit and charged with His mis
sion throughout the ages, the Church.
Once more we see manifested the sacramental thread along
which the religious goods that reach us regularly pass. The
particular case of the Word merely specifies its method of
operation in as far as the Word is concerned.
In the beginning was the Word: the creative Word, the
origin of things, and so of the truth of things, since truth is
only the relation between things as they are and our intelli
gence. All that is true, in theory or in practice, is true then
because God is, and God is true; because He is the living
Word. Whoever expresses truth expresses God, the Word, and
utters therefore a word of God.
Religious truth is a particularly strong case of this, and
must benefit by an antonomasis, in that it utters God not
only as He is expressed by things and by the relations of
things, that is to say by reflecting Him : but to the extent
to which God is pleased to permit it, according also to what
He is mysteriously in Himself.
Whoever expresses the mysterious truths of the Faith, or
even others in so far as they are connected with these, who
ever makes them clear, defends them, persuades men of them,
and puts them into action, utters by so doing, in excellent
fashion and in a spiritual sense, a word of God.
But in order that this office may be fulfilled with authority,
it is necessary that those who perform it should be com
missioned to do so, and that there should be a witness of the
truth. Our first witness is Christ, who is a witness in the fullest
sense, as concerns the mystery, since, as He said to Nico
demus, No man hath ascended into heaven save He that came
down from heaven, the Son of Man, who is in heaven
(John ui. 13).
Our Christ, even on earth, is in heaven, having in Himself

234 xrbe Cburcb
God and the Spirit of God. He is Himself the substantial
Word which His Humanity reflects for us, in such wise that
He has the right to say, even as man, knowing that the divine
Missionary is in Him united to Him who sent Him : / am the
Light of the world.
The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, affirms the
sublime evangelist.
But then, throughout the ages, and over the whole extent
of the world, it is necessary that the witnessing should be
transmitted, that the Christ-God should be represented. This
is what is to be done by an institution to which it is said : It
is you who will give testimony of Me. Whoso heareth you
heareth Me, and whoso despiseth you despiseth Me.
The Church, united to Christ by that Holy Spirit which He
has communicated to her and which is their common soul;
the Church, the spiritual body whereof the Man-God is the
head, the bride of whom He is the Bridegroom in the unity
of one sole flesh, duo in came una; she it is who is the per
manent intermediary — I was going to say between Christ and
us, but that is not enough, since Christ is in her and is
inseparable from her. So we must say : she, the Church, is
the intermediary, through Christ, between God and us.
That is why St. Augustine, after recalling the mystic unity
in the Church of the Head and the members, the Bridegroom
and the bride, cries out : " If they are two in one sole flesh,
how should they not be two in one sole voice? Thus, then,
the Church speaks when Christ speaks, and Christ speaks
when the Church speaks. Allow Christ, then, to speak"
{in Ps. xl.).
Lastly, the Church, which has her mission from Christ and
from God, gives a mission to her ministers by that ordination
which makes them consecrated subordinates, in as much as,
among other sacramental r6les, they are put in charge of the
sacrament of the Word.
Thus St. Paul, referring to the declaration of the Master,
Whoso heareth you heareth Me, and whoso despiseth you
despiseth Me, concludes : Whoso despiseth the word of the
apostle despiseth not man, but God Himself.
Let us understand this clearly. We have to do with the
apostle as an apostle, as a representative, and not in his own
person. As a private person, an ambassador may be more
or less esteemed; but to despise him as an ambassador, in
the matter of his message, is to despise the government and
the people he represents. So he who despises an apostle, by
not receiving as from God what he communicates as from
God, despises God and His holy people; he despises the
Church whereof the Holy Spirit is the soul, whereof Christ is
the Head. He sins then against Christ and against the

xrbe XKHorb of 6ob 235
Spirit : in so far, we must hasten to add, as it is indeed they
who are expressed by his mouth.
Indeed, we have no more to venerate the man in place of
the preacher, than to venerate every word that falls from the
preacher's lips.
The Word of God which in its origin is one, simple, perfect,
identical with God Himself, is degraded in coming to us, and
the more so the longer the chain becomes.
Christ is infallible still, although in Him the divine Word is
humanised, so as to be reduced to our level. His earthly
representative, the Pope, and the Church united to the Pope,
are infallible in regard to certain things and under certain con
ditions, but outside these conditions and these subjects, they
relapse into humanity and possible errors. The priest, their
envoy, is deficient to a much greater extent, and at all times.
He can err, he can fail to express his meaning, he may
deserve disavowal by authority, just as authority itself, out
side its definite domain and the conditions under which it par
ticipates in the divine absolute, may deserve to be disavowed
by Christ.
But defect is not nothingness, and this relativity of the
bond which, through the priest, the mouthpiece of an institu
tion, attaches the faithful to eternal life, does not prevent the
bond from subsisting.
In the right conditions and to the extent that knowledge
and practical wisdom determine, a correspondence takes place
for the good of all between what is spoken on high in eternity
and what is spoken in each heart; and this gets fixed therein
as a rule of life in case of fidelity ; and it is reflected in action ;
and is poured out on others ; and in each one and in others it
becomes truth lived and manifested, and then happiness
enjoyed and shared, leading back to God one day, through
the paths of moral action, that which began with Him.
The character of a sacrament, then, that is of a sensible
and effective sign in the order of grace, may well be attributed
to the ritual word.
There will follow from this certain duties towards him who
speaks, and towards those who hear.
If the Word is imperfect, so much the worse for him who
lessens its value ; but the hearer, instead of indulging in
keen criticism, ought to repeat in a supernatural sense the
saying of Leibnitz : " There is no book so bad that I cannot
obtain something from it."
If it happens to be good, so much the better for him who
has been first favoured by it; let not the hearer pour out
such fulsome praise as would make of a worshipful thing a
purely human verbal exercise.
There are found in the Church, by the blessing of God,

236 xrbe Cburcb
orators of the first rank, such as St. John Chrysostom and
St. Augustine, St. Bernard, St. Vincent Ferrer, St. Bernar-
dine, Bossuet, Bourdaloue and Lacordaire. These may be
studied as masters when one is at college or at the Univer
sity; but their hearers and their pious readers had and have
to consider them as obedient to the heavenly voice, and not
to do them wrong by an entirely profane admiration.
We may well recall how one day Lacordaire replied to the
applause drawn from the emotion of his auditory : " Do not
applaud the word of God," said he : " Love it, practise it,
that is the only applause which ascends to God and is worthy
of Him."
To sum up, the Christian preacher of the Word, the hearer
of the Word are both in a current of truth and life from which
both ought to profit, so as to recover the spirit of its institu
tion and do sacramental work.
Good will and progress; these are the two terms of action.
To go to a sermon as to a baptism, in order to be purged
from one's errors; as to a confirmation, to be fortified for the
fight; as to confession, to repent of falling so far below the
demands of Christian doctrine; as to the holy table, to
receive the alms of truth as one receives the white morsel of
the Host; that is the ideal.
Love, through which the faith that is preached becomes
living and active, will be the fruit of this manifold sacrament,
and we must remember the word of St. Paul : Though I speak
with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity,
I am as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal.
But if I have charity, the Apostle might have added, then
whether I am brazen cymbal, sounding trumpet or horn or
heavenly flute, whether deep-voiced bassoon, martial fife or
wailing violin, rustic hautboy or blaring trombone, checked
only by the score, I shall be an instrument of God. And all
together, in the temple where we succeed one another, diverse
voices, humble or great, across the ages, we are the organ
with a thousand notes, the superhuman orchestra for a con
cert where Christ beats time, the Holy Ghost supplies the
theme and the inspiration, and the spiritual Temple, the
Church, composed of living stones, thrills in its endeavour to
urge all its sound-waves into her, in unison with the opening
Word, the Word, which upholds all spirits.

CHAPTER IX
INDULGENCES
THIS is the place to append something that was
first of all a scandal to Protestants, but which even
some Catholics find a difficulty, as if it were a dark
corner, a shabby little room in our mother's
house.
Spiritual favours for the remission of all or part of the
temporal penalty due to already pardoned sin are granted on
certain conditions by the authority of the Church ; these are
caUed Indulgences.
Indulgence, etymologically, signifies liberation, setting
free, condonation, and implicitly, kindness.
Among the pagans, an indulgence was a partial or total
amnesty granted on certain days as an expression of public
rejoicing. The Jews, too, had days of pardon and indulgence, and
" jubilee " years. Here is a natural tendency, manifestations
of which are to be found ever)rwhere, and there is no doubt
that in this case the Church has borrowed her mode of action
and speech from both the Jewish and pagan surroundings in
which she was born and spent her wonderful infancy.
Her actual practice hardly became fixed until the thirteenth
century; but the way in which it developed through the ages
is the best commentary upon it.
The first Christians, baptised as adults, in full knowledge,
and separated by their baptism from an environment more or
less abandoned to vice and superstition, were invited to an
altogether holy life. You were aforetime darkness, said
St. Paul to them, but now are you light in the Lord.
Men being what they are, it sometimes happened that they
fell away into great faults. The primitive fervour was then
manifested by generous reparations. They thought it natural
to submit to public confession, and then to public penance,
which was called canonical penance, because it was regulated.
The sinner clothed himself in a black and coarse garment.
If a woman, her hair was cut. On the first day of Lent ashes
were put on the penitent's head in the midst of the assembly,
whence our Ash Wednesday. The penance was longer or
shorter according to the sin ; forty days, three years, seven
years, ten years, or for the whole life in cases of atrocious
crimes. And during this time all outward rejoicing was for
bidden, rigorous fasts were prescribed, the penitent could only
assist at the religious offices at the door, or later on in
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238 xrbe Cburcb
a special part of the holy place, with the penitents of his
class; from certain parts of the mysteries he was always
excluded. In spite of these severities, or because of them, there was
often room for mitigation. Reasons of health brought about
the commutation of punishments, an extraordinary fervour
their remission. The danger of death or the approach of a
persecution caused the public sinners to be readmitted to
communion with their brethren. Lastly, the intercession of
persons of high merit, and in particular the recommendation
of the martyrs, who for this purpose sent from their prisons
what was called a ticket of peace {libellus pacis), gained more
or less extensive remission, on the express condition of fitting
dispositions on the part of the penitent.
Rightly considered, and especially if we interpret this early
outward discipline by the doctrine initially implied or ex
pounded everywhere, we clearly realise that indulgences form
an integral part of Christianity in all its stages. The only
difference is in the applications and contingencies, and we can
only see in this development the adaptive suppleness of a
religious organism full of life, and not a mass of fixed
machinery. Our faults have a twofold effect. They divide us from
God, breaking or weakening the friendship between Him and
us; such is the fault {culpa) of theologians, which implies
deterioration of the soul {macula peccati).
On the other hand, by disturbing the moral environment,
like a stone cast into the water, like every inordinate explosion
of force, sin must produce a reaction called the penalty,
whether it be direct, by means of an immediate retribution
exacted by providence, or, if immanent justice fails — which
is usual, since its mechanism is inadequate to the exigencies
of the moral order — ^by means of interventions, terrestrial or
superterrestrial, personal or divine.
Satisfaction, as it is called in the language of theology, is
part of the reparation for our faults in the same way as con
fession, which is an avowal of them, and as contrition, which
is regret for them, and as absolution, which, though it un
doubtedly effaces them in themselves, yet lets the effects of
disorder run on.
It is not sufficient to change our way, we must abolish the
old path by which we went astray; because this path inter
feres with the plan of the mystic garden, and in foUowing it
we have trampled down the flowers of good.
Christ, the good gardener, comes to help us. His Cross is
the spade with which we must perform the reparatory labour
of sowing and planting. But we must work along with Him,
for if Christ is our Christ, we are also, with Him, our own

Jn&ulgences 239
Christs. He does not treat us as irresponsible beings, as
Luther pretended, affirming that the penalty due to sin has
been paid once for all, and that we are therefore, in spiritual
things, simply heirs — of course with every opportunity of
becoming destroyers.
We for our part say — and is not the Reformers' doctrine in
greater need of reform than ours?-— that the redemption of
Christ restores our moral fortimes, causes us to be spiritually
reborn, and puts us in a position to lead our destinies as we
direct them; but that we are the actors in this drama, in
union with the fraternal company to which we belong, with
the Choregus who presides over us, with God, the author of
the play which is being performed by mankind.
We have said, in regard to the sacrament of penance, that
the sinner regains the friendship of God by a threefold power ;
God Himself, who absolves; the Church, the spiritual body
united to God, who heals one of its members by replacing it
with its own consent under the empire of the vital idea; the
sinner himself, without whom nothing is done, any more than
a member is healed if its own reactions will not assist the
organic action and influence of the soul.
When we consider the punishment due to sin, the doctrine
must be the same. It concerns the sinner, so far as he is
solvent; it concerns the united group, to which he is attached
by chains of solidarity; it concerns God, who is the Father of
each and of all, whose readiness to condone exceeds even His
love of Justice.
The doctrine of indulgences finds its place in this com
bination, the three constituents of which it has to look after
with care.
Our autonomy will be well cared for by the fitting disposi
tions being demanded of us, and these are, firstly, the state of
grace, since there is question of a remittance of friendship,
and this presupposes friendship to be reigning ; secondly, the
intention to free ourselves, at least in this mitigated form ;
thirdly a personal contribution, which will consist in some
voluntary and useful work, determined by authority ; prayer,
alms, a pilgrimage, the use of a pious object, missionary
service, works of mercy and so on, things which have already
a redemptive value themselves, which will be increased by
means of social contribution.
God's part will be admitted, since reservation is made for
His wisdom and His benevolent acceptation.
Lastly our solidarity in God and in Christ is solemnly sanc
tioned when we profess that on certain conditions the super
abundant satisfactions of some have a value for others; that
their sum-total is a family treasure which can be disposed
of indefinitely, since the merits of Christ are like the bottom
of an infinite purse, and since our group is not an anarchy.

240 xrbe Cburcb
but a social organisation, authority has power to distribute
spiritual goods on the conditions just now expressed.
AIL the theology of indulgences is thus summed up in a few
words, and for my own part I only see in it a new manifesta
tion of the essential nature of the Church.
We are a band united in God by Christ in the form of a
society. This condition of Catholic life occurs everywhere.
If we are truly united, that is members of a single body, in
Jesus, how could the pains and virtues of the Man-God, those
of our Lady of the Seven Dolours, those of the many known
or unknown heroes and martyrs of all times, who have heaped
up spiritual treasures which the rust doth not devour — how
could all this count for nothing in the case of brethren of
goodwill, but lacking in other wealth?
The sacrifice of the Cross was the first of the indulgences
gained for us, and to it all others are attached. By visiting
Calvary as a pious and sympathetic pilgrim, by telling the
beads of the Rosary of sorrow, by wearing the scapular of
the Cross, by saying the prayer of the Five Wounds, and by
giving the famished earth the alms of blood which must aid
it to live, Christ has gained for us a plenary indulgence, and
the imitators of Christ, by uniting themselves to it freely,
have further increased the treasure, making up, as St. Paul
says, what was lacking of the sufferings of Christ, namely,
our active adhesion for the sake of our own and of the general
good. In family life a son will sometimes say : Father, if you love
me, overlook what my brother has done; he is sorry, and if
you will let me, I will pay the debt.
In our civil societies, are not amnesties granted in favour
of good citizens, and are there not always burghers of Calais
ready to die for thei salvation of their people?
In the Church, the like ought to be found for a much
stronger reason, since love is our first law of association, and
love shares its good things.
Could it be that social exchanges are valuable only in the
temporal sphere? Ought we not to show solidarity, ought
we only to be brothers for the sake of living for temporal
advantages, whereas a deeper, brotherhood should carry us
beyond time, just as far as religious feeling bears us, that is
to say close to our divine source?
No one can avail for me, be for me what I am not, lift me
higher than myself by substitution. Contrariwise, no one can
keep me from having committed the evil which I have com
mitted, prevent me from being depreciated by it spiritually,
and before God there is no remedy but repentance. But after
I have repented, to pay on my behalf by a friendly substitu
tion accepted in a friendly spirit, all can do that, and the

5n&ul0ences 241
society can do it all the better when authority sets it to
work. ^
Bear ye one another's burdens, wrote St. Paul.
All for each, each for all, that beautiful device of Positivism,
which Positivism did not invent, which Switzerland has made
its own, is simply Christian thought.
The merit of the holy souls ascends to the heaven of the
Church like vapours that heap up their treasures in the sky.
The rain falls upon us in virtue of physical laws; merits are
poured upon us according to moral, and what is more, social
laws, and this is why authority intervenes; but substantially
it is the same thing. It is a question of accumulation and
distribution in a domain where exchanges are a matter of
right, because it is governed by brotherhood. ^
Let us add that these exchanges, provided they are founded
on the unity of men in God, in the Church of God, must have
all the fulness of what we call in mystical language the com
munion of saints ; that is to say that, crossing the barriers of
this world, they must carry their lofty greetings even beyond
the mysteries of the other world.
Are we to be narrower than Comte, who said : " Society is
composed of the dead as much as and more than of the
living" ?
Love, stronger than death, when it is united to the Love
that does not die, joins us to those who have disappeared in
a society that is real, although mysterious. If they have not
paid their debt, that debt which, though a debt of friendship,
cannot be escaped, and which makes them prisoners of happi
ness, victims of hope deferred, martyrs who superabound with
joy in the midst of their tribulations, but who are none the
less martyrs, we can pay it for them, we can in any case offer
to do so, anticipating the divine acceptance, united to the
religious authority which offers it with us, though it cannot
' Let us say in more theological terms : Satisfaction as such can be trans
ferred, not merit or culpability, not repentance or obduracy.
We say satisfaction as such because satisfaction is also a remedy, as Socrates
insisted. Now, considered as a remedy, satisfaction is evidently a personal
thing. It is not exclusively personal, regarded as discharge of a debt.
2 Satisfactions can be communicated from one individual to another, as
when the Saints promised their penitents to satisfy for them, imposing on
them only a standard penance, a Veni Creator or a rosary. They can also
be communicated among associations of persons who come together for this
exchange, as in religious orders. But that is not an indulgence, because it is
not truly socialised, for it does not pass through the law of the Society.
Authority does not intervene in it, or it is not invested with ordinary juris
diction. It is an infiltration from stone to stone in the whole building ; it is
not the water-shoot provided for by the architect. Hence there is a reduction
of influence, and even more, insecurity of effect, which does not occur when
the whole body intervenes through its heads, when we are in the properly
social sphere, paying canmtically 3. "canonical debt," and when they act to
whom it was said : Whatsoever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.
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242 xrbe Cburcb
order it in a sphere in which it has no longer authority. This
is what we call the suffrages.'^
In his sublime poem, Dante, after having made his Pur
gatory resound with the eternal Pater noster, concludes : " If
so many prayers are uttered there for our good, what ought
not the hearts wherein goodwill is deep-rooted to do and say
here for these souls?"
As for the method of measuring these favours, forty days,
a hundred days, a year, seven years and seven quarantines,
etc. , that is a historic survival.
The measures of the world to come are inaccessible to us.
The rotation of our planets and the periods which they mark
in the duration in which our life appears have nothing to do
with the mysterious states into which we enter on leaving this
world. Yet we must speak of them, since we are in spiritual
relations with the Beyond. We may well speak of duration
in regard of God, because we, in relation with Him, conceive
Him as in relation with us and with our days. We say He
was yesterday. He is to-day, and He wiU be through aU the
ages. However, God has no duration.
Thus the events of the life beyond the world, in the spiritual
sphere where those who survive us are, these happenings,
without transcending all duration, like the life of God, yet
transcend our life, and that is enough to prevent us from
being able to speak of them except by using a permanent
transposition, of which the first term is known to us, but
not the second.
We do not know what, in that world, a hundred days of
indulgence signifies. It certainly does not mean doing away
with a hundred days of purgatory. What are a hundred days
of purgatory? But so far as we are concerned I know it
signifies a benevolence corresponding to that which the primi
tive Church displayed in remitting a hundred days of public
penance. That is enough for me.
The spirit of the Church has not changed, nor has the value
of her works. The help which she wishes to obtain for our
efforts, when we offer to pay for ourselves or for others, she
measures by standards within our and her own range; she
judges according to this life. In the higher life, which we
know is related to this life, without knowing in what the
relationship consists, she leaves the commutation to God.
' It was only in the fourteenth century that indulgences were officially
applied by the Church to the departed ; but the principle consisted in the
approved practice of offering good works, prayers and sacrifices for them.
The approbation was an implicit participation by authority, which was
sufficient. Particularly so as authority does not perform in their regard, as it
does here, an act of authority. Indeed the other world is undoubtedly bound
to this by charity, but is not subject to it. The application of suffrages is then
left to the divine judgement, and not settled with authority by the Church.

5nbulgences 243
Moreover, this manner of reckoning has the advantage of
binding us to the past, and proving that if the Church has,
by reason of new circumstances, materially relaxed her for
midable demands, she has not renounced any principle, and
is ready to restore the voluntary penalties called public
penances when our own fervour and the times are ready for
them. And now I do not think that there can be any serious objec
tion to the doctrine of indulgences.
Abuses there are and will be. We do not take up their
defence. What is there which does not admit of abuses?
The famous quarrel of the lapsi (the fallen) in the time of
St. Cyprian proves that abuses in the matter of indulgences
had been heard of before Luther. They existed in Luther's
time, and he reformed them by perverting all religion, and
even morals, since he found fault with free will. We are not
reformers of that sort. And our support of indulgences will
be no more troubled by the lowliness herein required — a lowli
ness which has much to do with some folks' repugnance —
than by the abuses.
A scapular, a medal piously worn, a prayer recited, a visit
to a church, a participation in a good work, all humble con
ditions, for the opening to us of a treasure-house of satisfac
tions for the payment of our souls' debts, these may make
the rationalist shout, but before he shouts, we ought ourselves
to cry out to him to hearken; we ought to beg him, on his
honour, not to start by misrepresenting what he is going to
criticise, not to speak of "prayer-machines" and "blank
signatures " just where moral dispositions without which
nothing is done are formally required; not to charge us with
disproportion just where proportion is secured by means of
that great thing which he himself cries up so loudly — soli
darity. An insurance in which the interested party and the
society participate ought not to astonish anybody in these
days. And in addition, we would beg the unbeliever not to talk
about excrescences, because he himself gets nothing out of
the spiritual order, if it be well established that the lure of
indulgences, quite a mother's lure for such spiritual children
as we are, arouses the fervent to interior and exterior efforts,
as every honest man wiU testify, if he lays aside a bUnd pride.
Cardinal Wiseman, returning from Rome after the Jubilee
of Leo XII., brought to his compatriots the moving testimony
of his admiration for what he had experienced in the midst of
the Roman crowds. He proclaimed in an eloquent address
the eminently moral, charitable and joyous character of such
a solemnity. We must also say as much of our private jubilees, concen-

244 xrbe Cburcb
trated into quite humble practices. A rosary, each bead of
which is charged with collective prayers, prayers which I
gather when I add mine to them, in the secrecy of our union
in God, is a moral treasure of which I will aUow no one to
speak ill.
My prayer is only a drop : when it is joined to others,
thanks to an institution, when it is united to the tears of the
Cross, when it goes, timid tributary that it is, to meet the
flow of tears and blood and streaming sweat which have
drained the earth, when it makes its way with them towards
Thy sea, O God, where all meet together again, it gets the
right to say : I, too, am of the ocean.
Even the innocent tricks at which some people scoff, when
they see pious persons go out through one door and in through
another in order to gain the Portiuncula indulgence a greater
number of times — I confess that I should hardly think of
being amused at them. I am touched by them, without
being blind to what the indifferent may make out of them.
I know that stupidity and superstition can find more doors
than the church possesses ; but what humility and faith are
squandered upon these tedious wanderings round and round !
I am much inclined to say to rationalists in Hamlet's words :
There are more things in heaven and earth, more things, I
would add, between heaven and earth, than are dreamt of in
your philosophy.
Heaven is great, and for that reason bends down. The
earth is small, and for that reason, when it becomes conscious
of itself, it is crushed down with humility ; but this is in order
to grow. You who think yourselves great, and who are for
that very reason less than all men, draw yourselves up as
high as you will, you will not touch the stars ! But even to
the stars holy humility can ascend, because love with infinite
wings picks it up, because it has as its helpful brother Him
whom the stars adored on the night of Bethlehem, and recog
nises Him by having seen Him descend, and awaits His
reascension, with His harvest of Uving stars, towards the
immensities of the divine.

BOOK IV
THE CHURCH'S ATTITUDE IN
REGARD TO THIS WORLD
CHAPTER I
THE CHURCH'S ATTITUDE TO THE
RELIGIONS THAT PRECEDED HER
IF the essence of a being explains its characters, it
explains also its reactions and its attitudes. The
Church's attitude in regard to this world, in which she
is called upon to live in order that she may be of service
to it, will then afford us a new occasion of making a
better judgement of her, and moreover of judging the world,
so far as the soul of the Church controls it and concerns it.
The most immediate contact of the Church with the world
that is adjacent to her must occur through what is most
closely connected with her : namely, other religions. Let us
see then what is the attitude which the Church took or takes
up in regard to those religious systems which preceded her,
which were contemporary with her or which are her daughters.
The truth of this matter — though few apologists and fewer
opponents remember it — does not show all its terms in the same
light at various epochs or in different circumstances. Nothing
should be misunderstood ; but to leave in the background is
not to misunderstand, and there are many reasons why the
Church, at different periods, or amid changing events, should
take up very varying positions in regard to the religious asso
ciations that have been her predecessors, her contemporaries,
or branches torn from her.
It is normal for a living thing to modify its adjustments.
As there is an evolution of life, so is there also an evolution of
the manners of life, because, since life must be differentiated
and defended, must progress, it must take up one by one,
either alternatively, or simultaneously in different respects, a
position of separation, of opposition, or of inclusion, sym
pathetic or useful.
These three aspects of a single programme of life may be
observed in the life of our Church. At her beginning, we
see her concentrating and setting herself in opposition,
haughtily declaring what she is not, laying down what she is,
rectifying her frontiers with a care that astonishes the his
torian of to-day, when he forgets at what point a newborn
organism needs to confine itself to the task of self-fabrication
which absorbs it, and to ensure its future by a very clear-cut
245

246 xrbe Cburcb
differentiation which causes it to be what it is, and not a
formless thing that is the involuntary result of pure chance;
an abortion instead of the definite germ that makes the
species. We already obtain this impression on reading the Gospel.
In spite of its immense scope, expressing the universal char
acter of salvation, we find the little flock, as the Saviour calls
it, entirely keeping to itself, entirely separate. It is not of
this world, though meant to conquer the world. It seems to
agree with nothing, though it has connections with every
thing. It breaks away, seeming to slight even the ties of
blood, even the duties of birth. Father, mother, brothers, or
fellow-countrymen only continue to be so if they can be fitted
in with the spiritual work, anxiety for which is absorbing
even to the point of abolishing everything, until everything
once more recovers its rights, becoming bound to that One
Thing Necessary whose exclusive pre-eminence shows itself
eminently comprehensive in use.
A fortiori does the Gospel free itself from out of date or
false reUgions.
After the death of the Master and at the start of His
organisation, the Church only accentuates this separation, for
this reason, that the Gospel, in putting itself forward, had at
least to proclaim its universal signification with all clearness,
while the Gospel at the beginning of its task had above all to
live, and not to philosophise.
The religions to which the Church succeeded presented
themselves, then, at the start, as the country which had to be
left behind, as the matter from which it was necessary to be
freed, as the other one, or the opposing factor : for the other
one, when differentiation is in question, is really an adversary.
So the Apostles and our fathers the first Christians show them
selves as severe as possible to the pagan religions. You were
aforetime darkness, says St. Paul to the Ephesians, but now
are you light in Christ. Light and darkness ; nothing can
better mark the opposition between the religious state of the
world apart from Christ and the state that Christ inaugurated.
We are not speaking at the moment of the lights which
might have shone through the night, of the stars or mysterious
moons which pierced the clouds or sparkled while waiting for
the morning. The moment for these distinctions has not yet
come. There is darkness; here is light. Here is the Church;
there is what is not the Church. Formerly the search was
vain, there was ignorance of the true bonds between man and
God, wandering and corruption in all the walks of life that
border on religion. Afterwards, the true religious life, truth,
hoUness, and the lure of progress.
Nothing can be clearer. Those who like clearly defined
situations may be fully satisfied. There is no compromise.

Iber attitube to tbe IReligions tbat iprecebeb lber 247
He who is not with Me is against Me is the formula, given by
Christ Himself, of the differentiation which has to be assured
for the Church to establish her specific reality, ready for a
characterised work, in place of postponements and muddles.
Even more, Judaism, which is not night, but the dawn,
since it is the road to the day, is treated as a relative night.
From that the Church is specially separated. She separates
after a crisis which, small as it may appear, is the most
formidable and most decisive of Christian history.
The Church would doubtless be more careful to mark the
real r61e of Israel in the preparation for Christianity than the
useful, although indirect, part of the other old religions; but
this difference of treatment in its favour is entirely relative.
In St. Paul, the Law, Grace, axe in permanent opposition,
and for a long period this opposition did nothing but increase.
So the dawn, if it rejects the light, is as much against the
light as is the darkness itself. Since by definition it is transi
tory, it abuses its purpose if it tarries, it turns back towards
what went before it, it becomes darkness, and may rightfuUy
be treated as darkness.
When a thick fog prevents the sun's rays from reaching
the earth, do we not say that it is dark? And we Uke such
darkness as this less than the other kind.
That is why the hardened Judaisers, the first heretics,
separated by anticipation, if we may say so, in that they
refused to join themselves to the body, are considered by the
Fathers as men of darkness, as pagans worse almost than
the pagans themselves, because they offer less ground for
hope, since darkness at least tends towards the light, whereas
the darkened dawn, thinking that it possesses light enough
already, runs the risk of despising it altogether.
This point of view was truth itself. The divinity of the
Old Testament, far from being denied or neglected, was
included in it ; but the emphasis was laid on the differences,
because, from the other side, their opponents belonging to the
Synagogue did so too.
And as the Church, in her beginnings, was differentiated
from and opposed to Judaism, as of necessity; so does she
oppose in combat, or as an offensive army, the enemies of her
life. All life is a struggle, because all life is surrounded by
enemies who wish to take from it what enables it to be itself.
But at the beginning of its evolution a life is forced to fight
much more strenuously. Everything can be hostUe to it,
because it is weak. On the other hand, as it disturbs the
environment in which it comes to light, it provokes reactions
against which it must itself react.
When we first strike a light, we shelter it with our hand,
because the least puff will blow it out. When we plant a
young shoot, we protect it with prickles. Nature, in order to

248 xrbe Cburcb
protect any higher life against surroundings that threaten its
fragility, keeps it long in the womb of its mother, whose love
defends it from without, while itself, by its own reactions,
defends itself inwardly against a crowd of harmful influences.
When birth has supervened, defence, still as always neces
sary, takes the special form of that egoism found in children,
which normally is just a manifestation of the will to live.
For the newborn Church, the moral struggle, the only
struggle suited to her, the only one also which was possible
for her, was also a necessity. She conducted it energetically,
judging what judged her, condemning what condemned her,
declaring Satanic and treating as such those religious mani
festations which yet were not all Satanic; but which were so"
far as they were not only misleading about the good, but
still more so about a host of things, and crowned all this by
opposing the birth and growth of the Church in the ways we
all know.
The struggle went on therefore with a bitterness which in
other circumstances might have seemed to have forgotten all
measure. When it is a question of living what Nietzsche
calls a life of danger, there is no time for philosophising
about pros and cons. In such a case we fight; necessity,
and therefore virtue, too, demand it.
Later on, when doctrine was safe, and Christian social life
had taken on a vigour that was able to ensure its future, things
were not the same. There were still crises which gave rise to
some of the same needs ; there were mixed situations which
demanded modified postures, which is why we said just now
that the three actions of the living being in relation to its
environment, differentiation, opposition, inclusion, are in part
successive, in so far as they mark various stages in its evolu
tion ; in part alternative, in order to answer to accidental cir
cumstances ; in part simultaneous in various respects, so as
to adapt themselves to varying complexities.
In any case, in the natural order of things, the horizon must
become clearer. One can turn back to the condemned past,
to those branded religions, those institutions and doctrines
which had been called wicked, and, gathering up all the true
wheat still standing amidst the hosts of tares, rising with
greater freedom of mind towards the providential designs
manifested through the whole of history, one can satisfy all
the aspects of the eternal problem, and put together the
elements of a complete religious philosophy.
The Fathers of the fourth century gave themselves up to
this work, the theology of the Middle Ages continued it ; our
own times have enriched it with their great effort of criticism.
The result of this elaboration might be summed up thus :
The true and universal religion is Judeo-Christianity. It
goes back through God and through the Christ He promised

Iber Httitube to tbe IReligious tbat ipreceDeb 1ber 249
to the beginning of history. The germ of its social form is
found in the Synagogue. It expands in its integrity into the
Apostolic and Roman Church.
Outside this there is per se only deviation, in the case of
the religions of pagan antiquity, as we say that there is
resistance in the case of the religions that border on Chris
tianity, and infidelity in the case of heresies and Christian
schisms. But when we say per se, we leave room for chance, and
chance holds a place in life that cannot easily be measured.
In an immense degree the old pagan religions were cor
ruptions of religious life; but in part they were also prepara
tions for, and in certain respects anticipations of, the Gospel.
Truth, practical morals, worship — they had something of
all these, an abundance of bad, but some good too, and there
fore Tertullian calls the soul naturally Christian.
The search of so many centuries in the endeavour to reach
after God, as St. Paul said in the Areopagus, cannot have
been entirely in vain. There were religious geniuses; there
were pious men; there were saints after a fashion, at least
men who by reason of an interior grace whose paths are
mysterious wished to serve the good with all their heart, as
a Christian can do with greater resources, but not neces
sarily with more zeal. Their dogmatic, moral and ritual
endeavours, if we may use these epithets in a sense so debased,
set up values some of which were precious. To these we
might apply the words which the Saviour used of the Jewish
law : I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil, that is partly to
confirm it, and also to purify it and carry it farther.
Here then there had to be preparation. All the work of
general civilisation, which took the religious form in antiquity,
had to take part in it, and this became for Christ's work as
it were the soil wherein the divine seed would grow into a
tree. Many authors describe this evolution, while others under
take to note the differences. These two kinds of work com
plete, and do not contradict each other. The soil is not the
plant, and to whoever confounds them we have to say that
the plant is a living thing, the soil is but putrefaction. But
it is a fruitful putrefaction. The most instructive studies are
those which unite the two points of view; such is one of the
most recent, which shows at what point pagan syncretism was
unable to produce Christianity by itself, even less to take its
place, and yet at what point it served it. ^
As for saying in what sense the Church can see anticipa
tions of herself in the ancient religions, the idea of her
^ Bernard Alio, O.P., L'£vangile en face du syncritisme pdien. Paris :
Bloud et Gay.

25° xrbe Cburcb
Catholicity through time allows of this without difficulty. We
have seen in our Church the universal society of souls, from
the fact that they are united in God through Christ. We
have said of Christ that He is of all times ; that His historical
life is only the centre of His influence; that if He, the Saviour
of aU, tarried, it was for providential and beneficial reasons,
not because He was given to us and refused to others. Now
this delay, determined by the work He was to perform, does
not prevent, but requires that the very expectation of Christ
should form part of His work, should contribute to integrate
His kingdom and should justify historically what Paul said :
Christ was yesterday, to-day and for ever.
But this phrase, the expectation of Christ, must not be
understood too narrowly. The expectation of Christ is firstly
and directly the Jewish faith in a future Messias ; but it is also,
secondarily and not so directly, the whole of past facts, inas
much as they are ruled by God with an eye to His final work.
Before the animal kingdom, could expect man, or apart from
this expectation, there was expectation of life, culminating
in man, and the expectation of all nature, the end of which
was to serve and to anticipate our future humanity, God's
image, as far as it could do so by offering traces of God.
It is the same with the religious life. At bottom all is
religious, that is, in the creative intention, since all is for the
elect. And all that is religious is Christian and Catholic in
the same sense, for the same reason.
When we speak of a soul of the Church, including in it the
elect of aU times, we mean that the eternal God has always
united to Himself, through the sempiternal Christ, the souls
who are called and confirmed in good by His grace. We see
in it those dispersed children of God of whom St. John speaks,
and whom Christ, in His historic mission, came to gather
together into one.
St. Augustine saw in Job the Edomite " a citizen of the
spiritual Jerusalem." This is an interesting and enlightening
case. It shows how grace seeks upright souls in all quarters
in order to unite them to their common Principle by the
solidarity which unites us across the ages through Christ.
But Job is not an isolated case ; he has his religion, as he has
his family, his country, a whole environment in which his
interior life finds hindrances no doubt, but helps too. Can
we say that in his case these helps are not willed by God, and
providentially prepared for interior grace to show and to main
tain itself, to be preserved and grow, even as it was able to
come into existence, if not through their efficacy yet perchance
with their assistance? God makes use of all things, even
of evil ; and much more of what is defective or uncovenanted.
We may generalise this symbolic case, and say that in the

Iber Httitube to tbe "{Religions tbat prece&eb lber 251
ancient world there were, beside the Synagogue, the authentic
organisation of salvation for those times, other religious
organisations which, though in themselves foreign to the
scheme of salvation, and therefore always in themselves
antagonistic, were yet in certain respects providential means
of assistance for elect souls. To the extent that these organi
sations favoured, not vices and errors, as they often did, but
virtues and real religious feeUng, as they also did to a greater
or less extent, they were helps to salvation in the name of
God and of Christ ; they afforded protection which was never
theless salutary; they were as it were occasional uncovenanted
stays of the universal soul of the Church.
In this connection we see the Saviour's teaching adopt
apparently different positions. He that is not with Me is
against Me, He said. He that is not against you is with
you. He said to His disciples in another sense. These two
truths are complementary. They express two moments, two
aspects of the whole truth.
Jews or Gentiles, considered as persons or as groups; in
so far as they had aught that was useful or indispensable to
the reaUsation of the designs of Providence that through all
time were Christian; in so far as they formed part, each in
his own rank and degree, of the religious plan of the world;
to us all are oldtime friends, fathers, brethren, children of the
Church eternal, even though in other respects they might have
been causes of her prevention or ruin.
We must be on our guard against unqualified judgements.
Life sometimes demands summary executions, for the reasons
we have stated ; but when we are not thinking of moments,
but have to present a general view, we ought to remember that
religious justice is the highest kind of aU.
Our Church agrees with this. In her wide Catholicity as
her doctors understand it, the past and the present become
united; the future has its roots in the remotest threads of
religious life, in the dark soil of human nature, taking the
Cross as its trunk, whereon, as on a tree with measureless
branches, all the souls of men, like birds, are henceforward
invited to rest.

CHAPTER II
THE CHURCH'S ATTITUDE TO
CONTEMPORARY RELIGIONS
THE feelings of the Church with regard to the
religious past of the world cannot fail to apply to
the present in due degree. Past, present, future
are differences of time which entail partial conse
quences; but their unity involves consequences
also ; the one can no more be sacrificed than the other.
Since the office of the past is to pour itself out through the
present into the future, the past which offers resistance to
progress, though it be antecedently good, becomes bad from
the fatt of its resistance ; what was bad becomes worse. The
ancient religions which have survived the coming of Chris
tianity into the world, therefore, have aggravated the badness
of whatever in them was bad ; and what was good in them,
what has caused us to call them anticipations of and prepara
tions for Christianity, has to-day become an impediment to it.
The duty of the old religions was to correct themselves in
so far as they were deviations ; in so far as they were prepara
tions, to arrive at what they prepared, and at last to abdicate,
since when the perfect had come, the provisional, and much
more the accessory, an accessory of so mixed a character, had
nothing to do but disappear in the perfect. The light of the
world ought to dispel the darkness and with its own cloudless
light drive away the twilight, and those flashes few and far
between which give charm to the early morning, but disgrace
the lingering noonday.
The sacrifice was not accepted, nor is it yet. For very com
plex historic reasons; questions of race, of aversion, of age
long habit, of inveterate ignorance or of pride that excluded
all that came from others, of unconquered passions or of mis
directed goodwill, the dissident religions have' been per
petuated as dissident civilisations are perpetuated.
It is striking to notice how far these two cases throw light
on each other. How few have gained by the great progress
of the latter ages, a progress contemporary with Christianity
and plainly covering the same countries on the map 1 How
tiny is the little spot of healing oil, which we call civilisation,
spreading over the world from Christian lands !
One can understand this, but not approve of it. Relativist
or dilettante thinkers who here see nothing but interesting
variants have always been subjected to the Church's con
demnation. Variety is precious when it expresses nature
more richly by developing various aspects of it; but the
variety that consists in producing cripples and abortions
252

Iber Httitube to Contemporary IReligious 253
instead of normal human beings has nothing to commend it
to the lover of mankind. Jacques Callot chuckles over it,
and Velasquez, with his amazing serenity, treats it with cold
pessimism ; but the practical man and not the painter, the man
who would control life will cutdown Antonio el Ingles and the
Infant de Vallecas to an average height.
We have to heal what is abnormal or pathological. If it is
wilfully so we must condemn it. If it is approved by some,
as is the tendency to dilettantism or indifferentism in religion,
it is our duty to denounce their error, which is the result of
cowardice. Our Church does not shrink from doing this. To-day as
at the time of her birth, with regard to the religions which
she found in possession, and which persecuted her, or to the
religions which obstinately lived on beside her, isolated or
aggressive — partial truths mixed with gross errors, infamous
practices or pernicious tendencies, whereas she for her part is,
through Christ and through God which He imparts to her,
the whole truth in all its elements if not in its development,
fruitful practice and active holiness in the individual and
social order — always and everywhere, we repeat, the Church
never forgets to exercise that sublime inflexibility which truth
owes to error, of good to evil, and the better whose hour has
come to the opposition of what is imperfect.
Do not fear — or do not hope, according to your point of
view — that the Church will ever take up the attitude of grant
ing dogmatic toleration to religious systems as they are, by
paying compliments to the truth that there may be in them
and making concessions to their errors. That is not like the
Church. Our Church says the thing that is. She claims her rights.
Since she is charged with the guidance of humanity, because
she continues the Son of Man through time, she offers to all
her r6le of mediator. She does not force herself on men ; but
she adjudicates upon their refusal of her and classifies them in
accordance with its nature. She can aUow no one to say
Salvation is here or there, unless this be where she is.
" O false Messiahs," she cries, " behold the true Messias'!
It is I who am the candle-bearer — nay, the very wax of the
living candle that calls Himself the Light of the World.
" I am the building not made with hands in which is the door
of the sheep, the door through which all the sheep of
humanity's flock must pass in order to reach the divine pas
tures. "I am the Way, the Truth and the Life, since He is this
whom I continue ; since God is this, whom I bear in myself.
" Outside my Truth there are truths, but none that can stand
alone. Outside my law there are laws; but none that have
full autonomy. Outside my designs there are destinies that

254 xrbe Cburcb
allure : but there are none that reach fulfilment, no directions
that can bring men final success."
Outside the Church no Salvation : that is the thing our
Church says at the very outset.
But she herself acknowledges that this is only a partial
truth. It must be completed.
As we have said : The newborn Church opposed the old
religious systems, and yet they helped her; so we must also
say : The living and permanent Church opposes the religious
systems that dissent from her, and yet, in the name of God
and His Christ, her wide embrace enfolds them and makes
use of them. What was good at the beginning is good also
on the journey. The being answers to the becoming.
As, then, our Church contains the whole of civilisation in
her universality which has totality through Christ and God ; so
she contains also nature, which is the Kingdom of God ; which
is put in submission to the elect, as are the elect to Christ,
and Christ to God; so the Church includes the dissentient
religious systems in all they contain of good and useful, and
absorbs them into her own unity.
The subordination in so far as general civilisation is con
cerned consists in this, that since human life is a unity, and
religion proposes to cause man to attain to his real and final
destiny, all that works for man works also for religion. The
Church can say with more right than the poet of old : I am
man (since she is a human-divine society) and nothing that is
human is strange to me. That which it offers us, grace, rests
on what Providence furnishes to us. Nature, and what we add
by our own effort, civilisation. The whole effort of civilisa
tion, then, Uke the work of nature, is surrounded by the re
ligious movement which urges us towards the end of
humanity. If the Church takes a view wide enough to recognise the
true and good elements of the religions that preceded her,
she cannot deny it in those which she meets in the course of
her existence, and which are for the most part the historic
continuation of the former.
But in the true and the gpod elements of the dissident
religions the Church recognises not alone the true and the
good; she recognises herself, since she recognises man and
God, whose synthesis she is, whose combined work is
her own.
The good that there is in the dissentient religions does not
belong to them ; it belongs to humanity, whose instincts have
suggested it; to God, who at aU times and in aU places has
permitted rays of His light to filter through; and therefore to
the true religion, which brings forward in the name of God
and through the mediation of Christ the true and complete

Iber Httitube to Contemporary IReligious 255
formula of mankind, the true and perfect law of man, the
good and efficacious means of man.
The Catholic Church, as she includes in her soul all the
souls that are children of God, wherever they may be, so does
her body include as extrinsically depending on her body all
the religious forms that in themselves are antagonistic to her,
but are her helpers in part and in the ways just mentioned.
Diabolic, as we said, are these non-Catholic religions; but
they are none the less providential, though secondarily and as
it were accidentally. They do not give grace; but they may
occasion it, guard it or aid it to grow, by means of outward
helps which God, the guest of every heart which does not
refuse Him, renders efficacious. Chance refuges they might
be caUed to-day as before Christ, just as we have called the
Synagogue a real provisional refuge.
For the Chinese of noble heart, an unconscious Christian,
his Confucius is better than nothing, his pagoda than the
street, his rites than the unsustained inspiration of his inner
life, his societies indifferently organised than a withering
individualism. Better the Mahometan's Allah, the Hindu's
Indra or Fire-god, even the Roman's " sacred chickens,"
than the mocker's sceptic smile.
And every religion, every Church, whatever it be, claims
this praise while incurring the same reproaches. They resist
and yet help. They refuse their allegiance, and yet in spite
of all they promote allegiance to the unknown God who works
in them, to whom they sometimes give themselves without
knowing it, the Christ, the Brother of all men, even of those
who know Him not, who stands at their closed door and takes
as Yes the absence of a guilty No accompanied by a Yes to
duty. Though Christ be unrecognised, though outwardly He be
outraged. He is present aU the same. He dweUs in the desert
and He blesses the city. No denials discourage Him if they
be blameless. Even persecutions do not compel Him to flee
from the persecutor's soul. He gives His Blood to those who
shed the blood of His noble sons without knowing that it is
His. He gives life to those who slay Him. He gathers to
Himself by mysterious ways those who blaspheme Him only
with their lips. He promises His eternal life to the man that
denies Him, provided it be not from his heart. He beareth
all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all
things, because He is Charity. He says : Forgive them, for
THEY KNOW NOT WHAT THEY DO.

CHAPTER III
THE CHURCH'S ATTITUDE TO SEPARATED
RELIGIOUS BODIES
IT remains to consider the case of the religions which
were once part of our own, but have become detached
from it and now form those rents in the seamless gar
ment of Christ which we call heresies or schisms.
And to these, since their case is the same, we may add
that total heresy which we caU unbelief; that schism, gravest
of all schisms, which consists in refusing every religious con
fession, in cutting the bonds that attach it to Christianity, to
throw itself back into purely temporal associations, without
sacramental life, without Christ, and in most cases without
God. What attitude can the Catholic Church take — what
attitude does it take, towards these separated religions and
this non-religious separatism?
Clearly, since she claims to be the true Church, she only
shows her confidence in that claim when she calls heresies and
schisms infidelities, even as she called the old religions devia
tions and their continuation up to our own times oppositions.
When we look at these things in themselves, we must judge
with the Church that heresy or schism are not only misfor
tunes, but great associated crimes.
To break that unity which is the foundation of religion, since
all human beings have only one God to whom they may unite
themselves, one Christ, one universal Man to give them to
God, one authentic tradition connecting them with their
Christ and one social functioning which communicates the
good things which come to us from the Source through the
human-divine channel; to refuse this organisation, and to
say : No ! it is in another fashion that we are going to fix
our religious destinies ; we will have God for ourselves, with
out being united to our brethren, also God's sons; we wiU
¦have Christ for ourselves, at the risk of diminishing Him,
changing His doctrine because we have not been willing to
receive it from its authorised tradition, restraining His action
by narrowing the social life it inspires, amputating ceremonial
worship, even decapitating it, as Protestantism has done by
refusing the Eucharist which we have seen to be the centre
of everything, the pivot of the sacramental life and thereby of
religion itself, wherein sacramentalism plays a fundamental
part; to speak and act thus is to commit religious homicide,
since it is to dislocate and as it were quarter man from the
religious point of view.
And if we consider it, it is also to commit deicide, since by
256

Iber Httitube to Separateb IReligious JBobies 257
pulling to pieces the human-divine organism the God who is
given is killed no less than the man who lives by Him. He
is discarnated, if one may so say, separated from a part of the
universal flesh to which He was united and which He saved ;
the vessels are severed which allow the blood of the Cross to
flow in the veins of humankind united in one body ; the nerve-
current is interrupted which is communicated by this divine
brain and directed to all parts by means of an hierarchy of
functions which henceforth is broken.
That they mutilate Christ, renew His Passion, cast lots for
the seamless robe, divine in outrageous fashion what ought
to remain invariably one, in order that Christ may live therein,
in order that His life at once human and divine may procure
for ours the same unity of riches ; this is the continual accusa
tion which our Church makes against the groups separated
from her, and so separated from the centre of life estab
lished by Christ.
When these groups attempt to justify themselves by plead
ing such and such a historical juncture, a nationality to be
preserved, opinions to be saved, special sentiments to be satis
fied, she replies to them: Catholicism is wide enough to be
open to all races, all nationalities, all legitimate opinions, all
methods of thought which are not opposed to the collective
sentiment of Christians, and this without asking of them any
sacrifice of themselves, but on the contrary reinforcing them,
as unity always reinforces those multiplicities of which it
allows, as the pivot of a watch is the cause of the freedom of
the movement poised well on its inexhaustible stability, as in a
temporal society legitimate authority is the cause of the noble
liberty of the citizen.
To set a nationality, a belief, a feeling, an aspiration in
opposition to the unitive religion is to set life in opposition to
life. Even more, in the case of erroneous opinions and un
justifiable feelings, it may be to set up in opposition to the
true life a factitious and fallacious life which might more fitly
be called death.
What has the Greek Schism gained by raising its head
against the filioque? or rather — ^for the dogmatic quarrels
counted for little — ^by shutting itself up in a spirit of terror
which cut off the connection of its followers with humanity
united in God; which has made them lingerers in the march
of Christianity, as it has in certain respects in that of civilisa
tion ; which has crowned with the tiara, to their great pride
in the first place, but later on in spite of them, warriors who
were nothing but warriors, administrators who would have
been more at home in organising a police than in holding a
council, and who to-day are greatly embarrassed by their
power. Poor Czar ! who in the days of his power had to cut the
17

258 xrbe Cburcb
knots of doctrinal or sacramental questions, and say : Such
is my unchangeable will, in matters of which he was pro
foundly ignorant, and for which, as he well knew, he had no
commission. The Bulgarian exarchists, the Serbs, the Rumanians and
the Greeks are in the same case. In disputing about ques
tions of race and politics that have nothing to do with re
ligious life they spend time and moral strength which ought
to be given to our unity in God ; which would have there
fore to be subordinated to the central action represented by
the Apostolic see, the visible place in which Christ, now
invisible, reveals Himself as acting; as of old and always,
though far off, Christ was and remains the living Place in
which the Godhead reveals Itself and communicates Itself to
the human race.
As for Protestantism, I do not ask what that has gained;
I fear to be thought ironical. Not that it has lost more than
the Easterns ; but it knew better what it was doing, and so
reveals a superiority which has turned out a misfortune.
It started from the criticism of abuses. And instead of
helping to correct them, it committed itself the supreme abuse,
the abuse of the branch discontented with its tree and which,
instead of living mightily to resist the contagion and to re
generate the old sap, detached itself in anger and became a
dead branch, useless to the tree and powerless to do with
out it.
The principle of free examination, which it admitted at the
start in order to free itself from the unity which it repudiated
as embarrassing, has borne its fruits little by Uttle. It has
broken up the primitive society, reducing it to numberless
bodies each of which follows its own path. Even more, one
might say that in spite of these chance and highly arbitrary
associations, there have been and there are to-day as many
sorts of Protestantism as there are thinking Protestants.
It was bound to be thus. And it was also bound to come
to pass that in a matter in which the individual mind has so
much need of the collective mind and of the divine guarantee
which it procures, the letting loose of individualism should
end in nothingness. Is not Protestantism running into
nothingness to-day? Will it not be wrecked thereon
to-morrow? I speak of the liberal Protestantism that is
losing faith in Christ as Redeemer, and in the case of some is
taking refuge in that vulgar belief in God as a name for the
Ideal, that is in the true, the beautful and the good, a slight
thing from the religious point of view, the perfume of the
broken vase, exposed to all the winds that now blow over pure
abstractions. By this descending road, which it has pursued from stage

Iber attitube to Separateb IReligious 3Bobies 259
to stafge, followed in vain by appeals, prophetic in the first
place, and later simply clear-sighted, from the voice of
Catholicism, Protestantism has come to be confounded in a
mass of its members with that lay and laicising group of which
we can no longer ask what it has gained, since it has lost
everything ; since from a religious point of view it is reduced
to nothing, having realised absolute heresy and complete
schism ; thinking, that it can be satisfied with the earthly life,
when nothing is satisfying; banishing Christ, wishing to be
its own Christ, saviour of itself and of those of whom it has
charge, when the real Christ said Without Me you can do
nothing; refusing to pray with its brethren, when invocation
is the resource of every man who feels himself really wretched,
suffering, tempted, mortal; with appetites for living, and for
living well, and for living always, which remain invincible, in
spite of all denials.
Our Church looks at all this with sadness and severity.
Putting aside for the moment every consideration of per
sons, she says of these things, schisms, heresies, unbelief,
that they are horrible; that they cannot be deplored and con
demned enough; that they must be combated with all the
power of the truths they slight, of the goods that they wish
to destroy, and of the humanity that ought to live by these
truths and these goods.
It is the duty of Catholicism to struggle, to fight to the
death against all these lessenings of God as given to men.
Catholicism does not fail to do it. They may be astonished
at this to whom truth is nothing, the religious good of man
kind nothing, Christ and God Himself nothing. We are not
on their side and we cannot flatter their principles.
But if we consider the subject from another side, and
instead of looking at things in themselves look at souls,
at the sincere thoughts which heresies have led astray, the
good intentions drawn into schism without any responsibiUty
on their part, the upright hearts, which are legion, I hope,
even among those who call themselves unbelievers; un
believers by chance, not by wiU, in the midst of a society
which has lost its bearings ; then we can no longer speak in
the same fashion ; we cannot maintain our attitude of severity,
we should be in danger of offending consciences. Here
brotherhood becomes the rule.
The Church knows this ; she consents to it, and, without
insisting on it indiscreetly, charged as she is with the official
and the social aspects of the faith, and fearing pernicious
equivocations, she none the less allows her doctors, when they
touch on the personal aspect of affairs, to speak of her charity
to all, to deal justice to aU ; and she recognises surely, with
regard to the bodies separated from her embrace as with

25o zbc Cburcb
regard to the non-Christian religions and the non-religious
groups, whatever good they have, not only human, but even
religious good, in the sense explained above.
It remains to give satisfaction, in our feelings and our con
duct, to these two aspects of truth ; condemnation and praise,
in appearance contradictory, in reality complementary.
We must blame the dissent and" appreciate what is good or
even excellent in those who have dissented from us. We
must hate the separatist spirit, and yet love and succour our
separated brethren.
We must say and maintain, in the name of dogmatic truth.
Outside the Church no salvation. But we must clearly under
stand that if by this word Church we mean the visible group
that we enrolled Catholics form, the' formula Outside the
Church no salvation is no more than an official truth, which
life outruns in every direction, and by which the Spirit, which
bloweth where it willeth, will not agree to be bound.
And on the other hand, if by the Church we mean the
universal society of souls united to God through Christ under
the influence of grace, then Outside the Church no salvation
signifies merely Outside God, no salvation ; outside solidarity
with Christ the Saviour and Mediator, no salvation; outside
that good will which unites to God as Father and Christ as
Brother every man who does not refuse grace with a positive
and pertinacious refusal, no salvation. In a word : Outside
the good, no salvation, and that is a thing obvious in itself. '^
From this point of view, which is the only one that counts
in the long run, there are no dissidents other than men of
evil will or unconquered passion, enchained by these things
to voluntary and blameworthy error. There are no heretics
and schismatics, there are no unbelievers in reality other
than those whom Pfere Gratry calls ' ' heretics against human
kind," that is the wicked.
Thus, by another road, we come back to the truth we
ascertained at first, merely taken in a more subtle sense, but
also one that is more and more inward and religious ; namely,
that the Church, at bottom, coincides with humanity itself,
^ Pius IX., in the celebrated allocution of December 9, 1854, fixed on this
point of doctrine : "The faith," he said, " compels us to believe that no one
can be saved outside the Apostolic and Roman Church, which is the single ark
of salvation, outside which all who do not enter will perish. Yet it is equally
necessary to hold as certain that those who not through their own fault are
ignorant of the true religion cannot bear in the Saviour's sight the responsi
bility for their situation. Now, who will have the presumption to fix the
limits of this ignorance, in accordance with the nature and variety of peoples,
countries, minds, and so many other and varying circumstances ? When we
are delivered from the fetters of the body, and see God as He is, we shall
understand in what close and magnificent union the divine mercy and justice
are bound. . . . But the gifts of heavenly grace will never fail those who
with a sincere heart wish and ask to be regenerated by this light. "

i:iber Httitube to Separateb IReligious JBobies 261
if by humanity we mean, in the moral sense, the society of
those who are governed by the law of mankind. From the
Church, indeed, in its interior reality, only the wicked are
excluded, and the wicked, as such, are they not excluded
from humanity as well?
O Church of souls, greater, I would fain hope, than the
little flock enrolled in what we call the Church; more abun
dant than the tiny heap of sand gathered together with diffi
culty by the Apostles on the Mediterranean shores, while the
immensity of the far-off beaches escapes us ; richer in grace
than we might believe from the smallness of the space watered
by the sacramental stream; it is thou who canst save the
men of all peoples and of all the sects outside the narrower
Church, as thou hast been able to save the men of all the
ages. The grace of God is not tied to the sacraments, say the
theologians; and so it is not tied to thee, visible Church, col
lective Sacrament; but only to thee, O mystic Church, inward
Church, soul of the Church, which formest our union, implicit
or explicit, with the Saviour, through Him to God and
through God to all that is God ; truth and eternity of happiness.
These wide thoughts cannot detach us from the visible and
sanctifying body of our Church, since it remains well under
stood that for the man who knows it or can know it, for him
who is born and is able to persevere in its communion, it is
this Church and it alone which represents salvation.

CHAPTER IV
THE CHURCH'S ATTITUDE TO RELIGIOUS
AND LAY MORALS
HAVING once settled the question of religions, we
shaU not find that of morals offer many diffi
culties; for it is in part identical.
All religions have imposed a system of morals,
as they have inspired a dogma, as they have
suggested a form of worship, seeing that morals are nothing
more than an application of our respective beliefs to the end
of life, beliefs which all religions intend to formulate with
more or less success.
We must then expect the Church to speak of morals, in
so far as morals are only corollary of religious systems, in
the same way as she has spoken of the religions themselves.
Pagan morals were depraved in a number of important
particulars. A system of individual morals which authorised
suicide, drunkenness, debauchery, even worse (read only
Plato's Symposium, if the Epistle to the Romans is not a
sufficient authority); a system of family morals which sanc
tioned the oppression of woman, and debased marriage in its
most fundamental laws; a system of social morals which
proclaimed the interest of the State superior to everything,
even to conscience; which admitted absolute slavery, that
is to say the subordination of one destiny to another destiny,
in regard to which the slave, though a person, was no more
than a thing; such, to cite only these examples, are the
deviations with which the Church can reproach the moral
doctrines anterior to her.
Jewish morals, incomparably superior to pagan morals in
that, firstly, they excluded the greatest excesses of wicked
ness; and secondly, in that they laid the foundations of the
good, seemed to the Church, like Jewish dogma or ritual, a
first beginning of her own practice. I came not to destroy
the law, but to fulfil it, said the Saviour; to carry it to a
higher perfection.
Perfection, the complete basis for a definite starting forth
of humanity, was lacking in Judaism. Judaism was a cor
rect path ; it was to lead to the high road and after that
to make room for it. So the divine Legislator said : Moses
ordained that for you ; but I say this, thus indicating the ful
filment that He meant to obtain for the Jewish law.
The morals of the post-Christian period, in so far as they
are bound up with the still-persisting religions of antiquity,
must suffer the same condemnation. Some are horrible; as
our missionaries and colonists know all too well Others
262

Iber Httitube to IReligious anb OLa^ /iborals 263
offered higher or lower values; all are lagging behind,
because they have resisted the progress of the Gospel, refused
the fulness of the times, so that for them Christ has not yet
come with His law of direction and emancipation for man
kind. As for the moral systems of heretics and schismatics, to
judge them equitably we must see how far they are inspired
by the true Gospel truly interpreted; how far they are biassed,
contradicting the letter or not knowing how to develop the
spirit. The Church makes these distinctions, and does not
confound the Manichaeans or the Cathari with Tolstoi or
Gladstone. Yet she always marks a moral relapse by the
sole fact that she testifies to a dogmatic relapse in all the
dissenting bodies. It would be very easy to demonstrate this
in the case of the Greek schisms, and not less so for the
Lutherans, who have altered the notion of marriage for the
worse, failed to recognise the rights of the woman and child,
etc. If we do not dwell further on this, it is because it is
not for us the essential thing.
The most serious case is not that of the dissenting sects
and the moral systems they incorporate; but that of the
abolition of religion, of unbelief and the moral system that
it proposes to construct.
To construct is its claim ! As if its precepts, whatever is
sufficient or acceptable in them, were not simply a reflection
of Christian surroundings, a perfume of the Gospel after the
vase of the Gospel has been broken and cast aside !
There was a time when such derivation was recognised.
They used to teach that doctrine dies out, but morals remain.
The moral system of Christianity appeared to be the intan
gible part of its work, of which all else was the transitory
vehicle. Man tore aside the veils and entered into the sanc
tuary. We are very far from such a state of mind to-day. They
talk to us about the demands of the modern conscience in a
tone and with comments that leave us under no illusion. We
are stragglers in morals as in all else. To-day man is
reduced to Guyau, to Nietzsche, to the sociological school;
to whatever he likes; he looks about him. The charm of
the Gospel is broken, and the Wandering Jew, despising the
loud call of the Cross, starts on his interminable journey once
more. The Church's attitude to this posture is soon defined.
Three things strike her, in this moral apostasy which our
age has witnessed.
Firstly, the pretence of freeing morals from all connection
with revealed religion seems to her an immense practical
mistake. If man is not left to himself to establish his life;

254 xrbe Cburcb
if there is a word of God in the world ; if revelation is a fact,
then to establish a system of morals, even as a science, with
out taking account of this fact would be like attempting to
establish an astronomical system to-day without taking into
account the earth's rotation.
And even more, if it is not only a word, but a life in com
mon, that God sets before us; Behold, I am with you always,
even unto the consummation of the world. If any man love
Me, My Father also will love him, and We will come unto
him, and make Our abode with him: can it be thought that
human morality can evade this sublime intention of God, and
proclaim itself as correct without being loving, without
filially adoring That which dwells in our temples and our
hearts ?
True morals must start from man's true destiny, which is
supernatural; must regulate all his relations, including, and
particularly, his relations with God. So that if, from the
point of view that we remarked just now, morals are a part
of religion, its practical part; from another point of view,
religion, with all that it involves, forms part of morals,
inasmuch as it is included, under certain conditions which are
in fact realised, under the law of mankind.
Secondly, the Church remarks that the detachment of
morals from the doctrines of which she is the keeper results
in the most distressing intellectual anarchy. All the notions
on which it was justifiably thought that morality rested :
good, and then duty, through which good plays its regulative
part ; obligation, by means whereof it binds us ; conscience,
which is the prophet of its power in us ; virtue, through which
it bends us to bring about lasting effects ; sanction, which
finishes the work and procures for it its result of happiness ;
all these notions are contested, scouted, judged immoral by
some, banned, I do not say by quacks and revellers, but by
the gravest of University professors, graduated teachers and
illustrious thinkers of independent standing.
We have come to maintain anything and everything;
morals and the absence of morals; the morality of the weak,
as some have called the notions more or less related to the
Gospel, and the morality of the strong, which allows every
thing and permits everything to be ruined for the sake of the
superman. Some say : Let us draw up the rules ; others
say : There are no rules, there are only facts, like those of
nature and ruled by the like determinism. Some say : Con
science before all — especially before the Church ; others say :
The law, that is the majority, is the rule of conscience.
In discussing particular doctrines, and personal, family,
and social morals, the most appalling divergencies come to
light. Some advocate suicide, some homicide in the name
of the passions, debauchery disguised under the sacred name

Iber Httitube to IReligious anb Xai5 /iborals 265
of love, adultery as " a heart's right," divorce or free union
in the name of the " right to happiness," class-war instead
of class-concord, national egoism or international egoism
which brings us back to the isolated individual disguised as
humanitarianism. We hear all sorts of things; we see every
sort of thing systematised. Very learned books and very
weighty articles express opinions of every kind on matters in
which unanimity is the condition, if not of higher success, at
any rate of making a first start in human life.
The Church looks on, and this, if it were not so sad, would
be her triumph. Throughout the centuries she has made
moral unity. She has not always secured a perfect practice
of it; mankind is very frail, and because it is frail, it resists,
it is pulled in all directions by formidable forces of interior
and exterior anarchy, a poor divided thing which seems to
be withstanding good influences and which is yet only a
victim of evil. But at least the direction was marked out;
it was accepted; persons and groups marched, some with a
sublime gait, most with a lagging tread, all with convinced
mind, on the eternal journey. The "great pair of wings,"
as Taine said in speaking of the faith, made the human race
feel the wind of the open air, even when toiling on the earth.
The bird's mere gait betrays his wings.
Now we are deprived of this help. Now we have reached
complete disintegration. There is no longer any moral
unity. From time to time there is an attempt to constitute
something that may be one, and this effort is a confession;
but the result is that by dint of hammering the beams, some
times one, sometimes another, with the pretence of strengthen
ing the woodwork, nothing can be seen but broken arches,
gaping joints, and in the damaged rooms, one may think,
certain folk are still dreaming of sawing logs, if not of
breaking matches.
This result was to be expected, considering the immensity
of the problems to which the principles of the moral life are
seen to be attached as soon as they come under discussion.
The world, man, the meaning of his destinies, all things and
the all of things are here involved.
The faith is a short cut ; it throws a bridge over the abysses ;
it joins God, and man, and the world in a harmonious whole
whose laws are quite simple, in spite of partial complexities ;
it puts in a few pages the whole code of Ufe as the Man-God
preached it. But philosophies, and much more science,
which is no good in this connection, whatever some people
may think of it, have not this resource. They have struggled
hard, but they have done nothing. That which they have
appeared to do was at bottom only a disguised loan, and what
they thus had done in appearance they have persistently

256 Ube Cburcb
undone, until there has supervened that incredible chaos
which every sincere and instructed man witnesses to-day.
Our Church notes this, and declares that it is necessary to
reverse the engine ; that she alone, with her Christ, has the
words of life which can reassure men's consciences. Her
moral code is moraUty itself even as her God is God Him
self. The others are either borrowings without unity or
deviations of which some are of incalculable scope.
Thirdly, the Church claims that, even were they assured of
their teaching, the moral systems detached from her action
are powerless to rule life in practice. Our nature is too disas
trously weak. It needs to be stimulated, guarded, helped,
relieved. Stimulated, by bringing into play all its resources,
which religion knows and satisfies, whereas pure reason
addresses only the abstract part of our soul. Pure reason
flies in an aeroplane past the windows of humanity and utters
its word in passing; but who is there that lives with it?
Guarded — man's nature wants to be guarded by the influ
ence of an environment which is a society of the good,
regularly working to call forth what is good, instead of that
individualism in which some wish to enclose the moral life.
It must be helped by means which are adapted to man
kind, but which surpass mankind, since universal tradition
makes it plain that without a higher aid the moral life neither
endures, nor uplifts itself, nor extends in a manner that
satisfies Us. There is need of that inward God, of whom
Socrates' Daimon was the symbol, and who for us is the
Holy Spirit, the Worker of grace. He who crieth in us:
Father! Father! and who will not let us leave Him, that
superhuman Focus to which we are all directed by Christ,
all we children of the Infinite made finite, in us, by a con
descension of love, all we coheirs of the eternal heritage.
Lastly, our nature needs to be relieved in all cases, even
if a relative fidelity preserves us from great disasters. It
is only so, humanly, by the helps of which religious psychology
holds the secrets ; divinely, by the institutions which apply to
us the redemptive effort.
To let the Blood of the Cross flow by permitting the Church
to pour it forth, in order that we may all be that which we
ought to be, that is human beings not merely human, in a
world made new by the Spirit, nor any more human beings
weakened individually by vices, in our families by disorders
and divisions, socially by anarchy or despotism in all their
forms; but Christians, that is human beings complete in God
and in association together; such is the programme for our
Church. And there is the whole of it.
All moral systems which exclude her morality are then
self-condemned in her eyes by this very fact. Those which

Iber Httitube to IReligious anb Xas nborals 267
wish to correct it are abuses; those which wish to surpass
it enter upon a doctrinal emptiness which is the prelude of
their practical powerlessness.
This is no reason for the Church refusing to see the Good
wherever it is. She is all the more disposed to it in this
case for having, as we have just seen, recognised her own
good in the Churches adverse but useful to her.
But it is her ardent prayer that these scattered gleams may
some day be united into one blaze, because that is a vital
necessity. Let us never forget that she is the rock on which
the noble flame of human life must ascend.

CHAPTER V
THE CHURCH'S ATTITUDE^TO
CIVILISATION IN GENERAL
IF our Church's nature, and therefore her office, explain
her attitude to dissenting religious bodies, to the
systems of morality which depend on these religions or
claim to be free from all religion, they also explain the
Church's attitude to civilisation and its various mani
festations. Before we begin to consider this matter in detail, it will
not be inopportune to cast a glance at it as a whole, and to
say how civilisation in general and the Church as she is can
have relations with each other; what agreement is possible
between them, and what antagonisms are to be foreseen.
The question is an interesting one, and important to a
degree that it is unnecessary to emphasise.
Civilisation, in the highest sense of the word, may be
defined as a sufficiently advanced state of humanity, under
standing this word humanity, while expressing a positive
reality, to call up also an ideal, namely what man ought to
endeavour to become in order to answer to his destiny in
this world.
To enlarge the sense of the word thus may appear to
some critics a defiance of the dictionary. But in any case
everyone takes civilisation to connote a sufficient political
organisation; a somewhat advanced state of science, art,
industry, commerce, finance; a store of literature and philo
sophy ; and an established dlite which sets progress in motion.
And we are asking what the Church's attitude is and
should be with regard to these things.
Such a question, in truth, might seem to be solved in
advance. We have only to bring our memory into play.
We have defined the Church as a synthesis of man and of
God, through Christ and the Spirit of Christ, to secure
supernatural ends. Now a synthesis of man and God must
include all that man is, as it includes all that God is. We
have insisted many times already that nothing that belongs
to man is outside the scope either in law or in fact of genuine
religion. We are not discarnate; but God is incarnate. We
have not to give up our interest, but God readily deigns to
interest Himself in human life. Since He thought well to
create this life. He thinks well also to set it in motion and
to urge it on to the utmost; for with God to make is to
finish; what is not finished is not really done, and so not
divinely done.
The difference between the start and the continuance or
268

1ber Httitube to Civilisation in General 269
the end of this work is that God, who made us without our
co-operation, does not complete us without our co-operation.
He has made us not only beings but causes; not only
creatures but creators. He does not make civiUsation but
wiUs that we should. He does so with us inasmuch as He
is bound to our life by means of His universal presence and
by the bond of religion. The Church, which is the society
resulting from this bond, can then only be favourable to this
work in the persons of those who truly represent her.
Whence should arise, then — or rather whence do arise,
for there are such things — difficulties between the Church
and certain claims supposed to further civilisation?
They may arise from two causes. Either the elements of
the proposed civilisation are out of order, or this human
order is cut off from all connection with the divine, which
ought to be its law and its last end, since it is its source.
Hence we divine all the conflicts likely to ensue.
Human life is a harmony. Each element, though as
precious as you like in itself, is only precious in relation to
the whole if it keeps in its place, governing what it ought
to govern, but also remaining in subordination to what is
superior to it, and not making the serpent crawl with its
head behind or its tail in front.
Material civilisations which neglect spiritual culture are not
approved by high-minded men, and they cannot aspire to the
approval of the Church. Scientific, literary, artistic civilisa
tions which neglect morality can hope for it even less ; for
such civilisations, which claim to progress and do in fact
progress, though not in the right road, diverge even more
from her, and are better equipped for evil.
Better, in the Church's eyes, the Bedouin, without culture,
but loyal and of good morals, than the coarse industrial
exploiter or the lettered pirate. She is no fonder of romantic
Bohemianism, nor of shameless naturalism, nor that subtle
sensualism which can use as a title for its books the words
that someone once told me he had seen on a letter-heading :
Misconduct and discretion.
In a speech one day at the French Academy^ it was said
that the Church, though it should seem Boeotian in conse
quence, does not approve that pure dilettante literature whose
purity signifies dangerous sentimentalism in the first degree
and corruption in the second. The third, not long in follow
ing, means deliquescence, enervation of the mind of the
public, social weakness, and a retrograde movement along
one or other of the paths which open immediately to corrupt
societies; in a word, barbarism, which justifies the opposition
manifested at the start with a truly maternal fofesight.
1 Speech of M. le Comte de Mun, in reply to M. de Regnier's speech at
his reception.

270 xrbe Cburcb
Lastly and especially — we say especially, because to this,
though by hidden cords, all the rest is attached — our Church
is not willing that human civilisation, however perfect it may
be to-day, should compromise itself to-morrow, and render
itself useless even for to-day, with regard to the one thing
necessary, by loosening its ties with the divine.
For her, to neglect God is to confine herself to what is
notoriously insufficient; to return to that nothingness of
humanity which it was her desire to heal, by setting our little
life, through Christ, who has taken it all upon Himself, in
harmony once more with Him, who is Himself great, and
can greaten it; who can strengthen it, because He is Master
of what oppresses and slays us; sanctify it, being Himself
the Spirit of sanctity; deliver it, because He is the Liberty
which we, who are slaves of all things, emulate and invoke;
make it eternal, because He is Himself eternal, and fill it
with all that is lacking to that unsatiated being which is
His child, because He is Fulness, infinite and infinitely
loving. To flee in this manner the divine salvation that is offered to
our wretched and mortal life ; to refuse redemption ; to become
hypnotised by the transitory, to wall oneself up in it and to
close on oneself, as it were, the stone of the tomb, in order
to pursue a so-called development in the space of time which
the delay of death leaves to the still-living corpse in which it
works is a kind of civilisation which leaves the thinker in
great melancholy when he leans on the stele where human
ambitions are written but to die; when he considers from a
higher level the exhausted haste of this race to the abyss in
which the competitors, with their numbers on their backs
in the form of their titles and records, succeed each other
with lamentable and noisy theories.
Our Church, which is not held back by melancholy, eager
as she is to act and to save, is not only saddened, but irri
tated by this attitude. She sees there, no longer as she
did just now the relative retrogression which makes the
summits of temporal life be left for its lower levels ; but the
absolute retrogression which draws back into nothingness
the creature that was borne up by divine adoption into the
Infinite. That, let us note weU, is what is meant in the famous
declaration of the Syllabus opposing the proposition that the
Church can fall in with modern civilisation.
We know well what this phrase modern civilisation meant
under Pius IX., and we know well what some mean by it
to-day. Modern civilisation is what others call lay society,
and in the case of the worst of them it means war on the
Church, and consequently impossibility on the part of the
latter to enter into agreement with it; but for the best of

Iber Httitube to Civilisation in General 271
them, i.e., of the class above-mentioned, it is still the denial
of the work of the Church ; for in the first place it is hostile
to those individual, domestic or social regulations of which
she claims to be the guardian, believing them indispensable
to the salvation of mankind; and in the second place, it is
hostile, just because it denies or despises the higher direction
of life.
It would like to get along without God; to organise itself
without Him; to be at ease among interests and objects in
which He counts for nothing; to govern the lives of indi
viduals, families, corporations, cities and international groups
by means of principles opposed to His or ignorant of His,
and afterwards, with a disdainful condescension for the sake
of peace and good relations with those who believe in Him,
it would be quite willing to let Him sit at its board, always
provided, of course, that He is given His place, i.e., the
lowest of all.
A politician would be asked to take the chair; on his right
a banker, on his left a journalist, all around actors, chemists,
generals, novelists, manufacturers, painters, and at the
bottom, if indeed He did not stand napkin in hand to help
the waiters, they would put God, who would thus show good
feeling and conciliate modern civilisation.
No ! Neither God, nor the Church on God's behalf, will
be content with such a conciliation as this. God means to
be what He is; the Church means Him to be so. And God,
being what He is, has a right not only to the first place, but
even in a way to the whole place, and God Himself is the
Host of humanity.
We need not see in this a transcendent pride. God is not
proud : God who in the person of His Christ rubbed shoulders
with the slum-dwellers of Jerusalem and accepted the death-
sentence of a slave ! But this humble Infinity desires a place
that will allow Him to play His part. Not that He needs
it ; it is we that need it, we who are nothing unless He is all.
When God gets the second place, and above all the last
place. He becomes no good to us. To make Him subordinate
to anything is to get rid of Him by blaspheming Him, for
God does good to man by giving Him a law, as He has given
him existence, thus procuring man's final attainment. What
good can I^e be, if man's life ever came to be organised
without Him, driven on to aims entirely terrestrial, if not
indeed infernal, committed to paths altogether carnal, which
lead through illusion to end in death?
He could only follow in the wake of this mad career. And
can we conceive the Creator assisting His creation to
destroy itself? When the creature has shut up its life in
the nothingness that all reality is apart from God, can we
imagine God appearing to say : It is well ; in the nothing-

272 xrbe Cburcb
ness that you have accepted, I, I am, will be your accom
plice and servant?
This is a satanic conception if we reflect on it. It is the
sin of Lucifer, who wished to put himself in the place of the
Eternal, and not content with saying / will not serve, wished
to add : Let God serve !
Graver stiU wiU be the conflict, we need hardly add, if to
this false liberalism, which is already a revolt, declared hos
tility be added, and if the civilisation with which we are
faced be in great part an attack on what the Church stands
for. Ii " science" be presented as an antithesis to dogma,
" philosophy " as a contempt of aU our doctrinal positions,
" positive " morality as ignorance of the good, " business "
as injustice and systematised usury, " politics " as anti-
clericalism, and "literature" as a continual slander of aU
that concerns religion, what shall we Christians say of such
a civilisation as this?
We shall say of it what our fathers said of the rage or
mockery of paganism; we shall caU it diabolical. And we
shall add, as did Lactantius, Basil, Augustine, that the
devil may be of service, since God is stronger than he, and
can force him to draw the carriage even with the bit between
his teeth. But inasmuch as this civilisation in itself con
temns God and persecutes His work, let us be its barbarians,
as St. Paul was ready to be, if so he might embrace the
foolishness of the Cross.
It is always true that what is thus condemned is not really
civilisation, but its counterfeit or its cessation. Counterfeit
if it combats truth and good by means of error and vice;
cessation if it brings forward partial truths as able to satisfy,
perishable goods as productive of contentment.
Civilised barbarism : that is how the Church names these
two things. When we have once understood what the
Church is, such an attitude on her part ought to seem quite
natural. Still more natural, on the positive side, seems the help
which she affords to every kind of civilisation in the true sense,
while refraining from making such civilisation her proper end.
Bringing into the world God and all the influences of God ;
applying His action to the very centre of our creative activity ;
to our mind, in order to prevent it from straying; to our wiU,
to maintain the equilibrium between the perverse laxity and
a meddlesome temperance; to our sanctified senses, to keep
them from the exhausting pleasures into which, as we know
so well, the most evident effort of civilisation is put; thus
acting, together with God, upon man, the Church shows
herself to be a power for civilisation comparable to no other.

Iber Httitube to Civilisation in General 273
In the measure in which she herself penetrates more deeply
the secret of her being — for she progresses, as we have said,
increasing in age and wisdom, like her Christ, before God
and men; in the measure in which she brings to the surface
in an ever-increasing number of intellects the truths that
she possesses, and in an ever-increasing number of hearts
the mighty desires that she conceives, she grows and will
grow as a factor in the work of civilisation.
The Gospel has hardly begun its work ; but it has time
before it, and the Church which wields it is neither shaken by
feverish haste nor stopped by discouragement. She has
espoused the Eternal, and this divine Spouse has revealed to
her the secret of the sublime gestations that have produced
the heavenly spaces and their nebulae, the suns and their
planets, the flora and fauna of the earth, the beginnings of
humanity, continuing and to be perfected, if they wiU, that
is to say if they do not abuse the terrible privileges which
their liberty confers upon them.
The progress of humanity for its own sake alone requires
our faithfulness to God, union with His Christ, all of us
together, and consequently the admitted co-operation of our
Church. God does not abandon man; man must not abandon God,
by releasing his hold on the Hand of flesh which God uses
to make the chain.
United to the Church, to Christ, to God, it is the same
thing. Through this co-operation civilisation does its work;
without it it slays us; this is the truth which must be recog
nised, before we see in detail how this affirmation is verified
in the various domains in which the genius of civilisation
operates.

18

CHAPTER VI
MATERIAL CIVILISATION
IT would be possible to doubt whether material civilisa
tion is to be allowed to benefit by our general proposi
tion, in such wise that the Church, in theory and in
fact, should show itself friendly to it; for it is very
certain that the Church has no desire to make us be
come attached to this world. We cleave closely enough to it
already by natural gravitation. At each moment she recalls
to us the vanitas vanitatum of Ecclesiastes. She predicts
the end of all things, and the end of ourselves. She agrees
with science in telling us : Heaven and earth will pass away,
and with that gaze which she fixes on eternity she sees already
realised that towards which all things are proceeding. The
way of all flesh is marked out by her with inscriptions wherein
she says : What doth it profit a man to gain the whole world,
and suffer the loss of his own soul?
It may be said that this is not very encouraging for
industry, navigation, commerce, agriculture, mines or trans
port. Perhaps not ! But nevertheless I see that the Church
has a hand, either herself or through the best of her children,
in all that is great and beneficial in the world. I see that it
is her monks who cleared Europe ; that she has rehabilitated
work, when pagan dilettantism had abandoned it to slaves;
that her liturgy, which is the rule of her faith, as the axiom
Lex orandi lex credendi expresses it, provides petitions and
blessings for everything, we might say, that bears any rela
tion to our life, even the most material aspects of it— to our
interests, even those most exclusively temporal — for our
houses, our fountains, our fields, our farms with their
domestic animals, our granaries with their wheat, our fac
tories, our limekilns, our railways, our bridges, our tele
graphs and telephones, our ships, and, in these days, our
aeroplanes. And fearing lest she should forget anything that was of
interest to us, desiring to foresee even that which could not be
foreseen, she has blessings ad omnia, ad qucecumque volueris;
a blessing of all things, which are in her thought a benedic
tion of life, of aU life, provided that life consent to find its
value by attaching itself to what alone has a value per se;
provided that in the prayer that she provides to supply the
need it is agreed that she may express this thought, which is
the Church's thought concerning material civilisation : that,
O Lord, we may so pass through things temporal that finally
we lose not those which are eternal (Collect for the third
Sunday after Pentecost). 274

jflbaterial Civilisation 275
The temporal in our life is that which passes; the eternal,
that which remains. But we must thoroughly understand
that what passes, if it be united to that which remains, may
also acquire an eternal value; for it is our whole life, the
material as well as the rest, which is moved by the great
current of divinity.
We must repeat what we have already said concerning
civilisation in general ; you cannot make us discarnate, but
God becomes incarnate, God, who through His Christ takes
upon Himself the reality of our flesh. Now our flesh is in
continuity with its natural environment and needs to conquer
it. Life is a borrowing. By means of food we borrow
from our environment in order to support life ; by material
civilisation, we borrow from our environment to enrich life.
Our discoveries and their exploitation are as it were an
enterprise to extend our members, to develop their forces,
to second their effort by multiplying it, to make of the whole
something that may be used as a lever, the lever of
Archimedes, destined to raise the world.
Religion, then, by divinising man, by divinising his flesh,
of which it makes a temple of the Holy Ghost, must divinise
the continuations of his flesh, the riches with which it is
increased, its successive assimilations.
God becoming incarnate in man, individually in Christ,
socially in the Church, takes for His integral Body, if we
may so say, all the realisations incorporated with human life,
unless they themselves are detached from it and become
corrupt. Civilisation, if it consents to be Christian — I mean material
civilisation — is an incarnation extended further, expanding
into nature, which thus participates in the supernatural; a
humble body of God, into which the soul, which is the Holy
Spirit, pushes its way.
St. Paul said that by accepting our sufferings and wishing
them to be redemptive, we fill up what is lacking of the
sufferings of Christ ; but in this case it is a question of filling
up what is lacking in the Incarnation, by incorporating with
it tamed nature, and our natural surroundings conquered for
human Ufe sanctified by grace and divinised by its human-
divine Head.
Our Church, which is Catholic — and we know that this
means universal in the widest sense— cannot then stand aloof.
It has no more right to dematerialise itself, in this sense, than
it has to disincarnate itself, seeing that it rests on the Incarna
tion. The truth is that our Church, though connected with all
things, yet does not find in everything a point to work on. The
scholar is no engineer, nor is the engineer an artisan, the
artisan is no labourer, nor the labourer a tool. But in the

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chain of action that is thus formed, the work of the scholar,
apparently seeking no interests, is beneficial to the engineer,
the artisan, the labourer and the tool. He even benefits
them the more the more he is disinterested, that is the more
he is absorbed in fruitful thoughts, far from immediate appli
cation, far from the public and their expectations.
The pubUc does not know this. It is reaUsations that
appeal to the man in the street. The aeroplane has more
success than Newton's calculations, and Pasteur owes his
renown rather to his treatment for hydrophobia than to his
general theories the application of which will come to light
throughout the ages. But it is so none the less. The ivory
tower of the thinker is like the calm and white summit of
the snow-topped mountains from which the streams of life
and fertility rush down in waterfalls or constantly filter
through. So the Church, giving herself up solely to her work of
sanctification, does more for material civiUsation in the
measure that she disdains it, so to speak ; that is to say puts
it in its place among her interests, and refuses to be involved
in it at the cost of deserting the high peaks of the spiritual
life. St. Augustine, in his work On the greatness of the Soid
{De Quantitate Animce) assigns seven degrees to the develop
ment of Ufe. The first is common to us and the plants
{animatio), the second with the animals {sensus) ; the third,
which is the capacity for civilisation taken in the material
sense {ars) is already confined to us, but it is the lowest rung
of the human ladder ; there are four more above it, and those
who wish to put it at the head take a place already reserved,
and moreover, make the ladder overturn, as the result of
being top-heavy.
Moral forces are the support and safeguard of material
forces. It is the soul which by definition animates the body
and preserves it from the decomposition of the corpse.
Mounting higher, we may say : The supernatural guards the
natural, of which it is the soul.
Those who claim that our preaching of the nothingness of
all things, that is of the nothingness of all things without
God, and of the relative nothingness of the material life in
regard to the spiritual life, is a kind of stupefactive influence
which discourages progress, ignore or forget the most funda
mental conditions of life. The best friend of material civili
sation is not the impassioned illuminism which wishes to
make of it an all, a thing in itself; it is a considered appre
ciation, which puts everything in its place and aUows nothing
to leave it. He who thinks that material life is everything,
or that it is the principal thing, sacrifices to it that which is
really the best, but also, and this fooUshly and blameworthily,

Material Civilisation 277
sacrifices to it the very thing which in the final analysis is
what produces it all, namely, moral values, and he uses
means which begin by depreciating it and finally kill it,
namely, vices.
Matter does not stand by itself alone; it is the energy of
souls which causes it to rise to mighty and lasting realisa
tions. And the energy of souls itself needs to be held in,
harmonised, preserved against deviations. And what can do
this better than that Christian virtue, which, putting in rela
tion with God all that belongs to humanity, sets us in har
mony, making our law of action the creative thought itself,
whereof the reflection in the reason, in nature, in our labours,
wherein reason and nature are mingled, is this very thing
that is called civilisation.
The Church, by consecrating herself to the interior virtues
and seeming to despise all the rest, works for all the rest in
this way more than anyone. By adopting as her speciality
the exclusive or almost exclusive contemplation of the King
dom of Heaven, she prepares the best triumphs for all the
kingdoms of time. " A strange thing it is, this religion,"
wrote Montesquieu in an oft-quoted phrase, " which, although
it means to occupy itself only with the interests of the other
life, yet succeeds better than aught else in safeguarding those
of this."
Those who use this world as those who use it not are
those who use it well, and who husband its future, because
they treat it with respect, instead of only pushing it on
feverishly to realisations in order to devour it immediately in
selfish ends.
A so-called civilised man of Arkansas eats up a forest in
a year to make bad paper on which to print bad books, and
he cares nothing about replanting, because he can make his
fortune in ten years, and after then, the deluge ! The old
monks planted and respected the young trees, the hope of
the soil and of its sources. It is a parable. All life is thus.
When we are told that our Church dwells in another
world, that is true; but the world in which she dwells is the
guardian of this world and gives it all that it possesses.
Heaven radiant with light and fruitful heat; the hidden or
visible source of all the beneficial activities of this world ;
the remedy of everything in it that breeds death or sets
traps for life; that is what the Church insists on making us
see. After that she has no need to put her shoulder to the
wheel of our conveyances. She does so sometimes ; but
more often it is her duty to put on the brake, not to pull
up — she forbids us to pull up, and makes a rule of work — but
to kefep us from falling, when we recklessly begin going down
hill. Instinct is there to stimulate us under the name of ambi-

278 xrbe Cburcb
tion; to bring us to a standstiU, under the name of sloth;
to turn aside and use up our strength, under the name of
devouring sensuality, destructive anger, engrossing pride,
avarice, alcoholism, absurd and sterilising overwork. The
Church is there to stop us when necessary, to stimulate us
when necessary and always to put us right.
And what she does for individuals she does for the ages.
In the barbaric ages she applied her hands to cultivating the
earth ; it is she who began the exploitation, no small task, of
France, which is now ready to accuse her of barbarism.
To-day, when the work is well started and our own times
possess and abuse it, it is not for her to urge it on. Neither
does She hold it back; but she regularises it, and seeks to
increase the benefits of progress without doing wrong to its
ultimate end, but rather helping that end, and under it, all
others as well.
Harmony, harmony is the name of our Church. Individual
wisdom and agelong wisdom : such, if she were heard, would
be the high results of her action.
For the material alone she has no use. She knows too
well what is its cost both to the poor hallucinated souls that
it seduces, and to the work of God on earth. Her Christ,
who sums up in Himself man and God, has suffered too much
from this hindrance both to His Divinity and His sanctifying
Humanity. WaS not the divine Worm of the earth crushed under this
weight; did He not dolorously withstand the weight of this
rock with all His strength? To raise the material and set
the spirit free was an immense part of His lot. He toiled at
this so long and in such wise, with so much devoted but
inflexible provocation that the material at last revolted. It
was the material that pursued Him in the hate of the finan
ciers of the Temple; it was the material that became an
accomplice in the indifference of the Roman inclined to carnal
greatness, and it was the material too which urged the
people to enthusiasm before a miracle of multiplied bread,
but scattered them again, making them a symbol of the
general forsaking of their spiritual Christ.
To conquer this power of oppression for the benefit of all
that would follow Him, Christ was obliged to burden it with
His Cross, like the log brandished by a giant ; like the gates
of Gaza which Samson took up to his hiU.
Having come to Golgotha,' exhausted. He laid down His
flesh there. He melted it like the precious metal in the aUoy,
in order to change its essence. He raised it; He uttered in
it the hosanna of victory along with the anguish of sacrifice,
and dying, through His wounds gaping towards heaven. He
caused it to break forth transmuted into soul. His death
was the triumph of the spirit* and for the flesh itself, for

/Ibaterial Civilisation 279
the material which continues it, there was the hope of resur
rection and final apotheosis.
If it was necessary thus to crucify the material to wash it
from its stains, it is not for us to take it out of the current of
redemption to exploit it anew as pagans, without reflecting
on the conditions of its usefulness, the danger of abusing it,
the omnipotence for evil which it may reveal and the merely
relative power it exercises for good.
Let us leave it in the current. Let the divine Blood bathe
it and the Holy Spirit penetrate it. Itself may be divine too ;
but at the cost of how great a moral effort ! Humanity
hardly supplies this effort. Let us leave the Church, then,
defiant and maternal, scolding and yet blessing, comprehend
ing all tasks, and at need undertaking them, wishing to see
them accomplished, but also to see them surpassed by the
spiritual and Christian 6lan of all souls.
She who has made specially her own the One Thing Neces
sary must fill our eyes with it as well as her own, like the
placid beast of the poem, which, gently ruminating on the
grass, not revolting against the laws of life, content with the
field, resting on the ground, but with gaze raised higher than
the level of the sheaves, reflected all heaven in its eyes, and
thus taught man how to uplift his eyes to God.

CHAPTER VII
INTELLECTUAL CULTURE
IN considering intellectual culture, the forced restric
tions lately mentioned will apparently break down, and
attachment to knowledge will be one of the Church's
characteristics. Many apologists, indeed, stop short there. They
show the Church as the candle-bearer who maintains indis
pensable truths in the world. She protects others, they say,
by appointing herself from the very start of her successful
career the admirer of the ancient civilisations, the preserver
and propagator of their labours, the first centre of the
sciences, the founder of Universities and popular schools, the
inspirer of the most remarkable works of philosophy, letters
and poetry in every age to which her empire has extended.
What they say is pure truth. And it is an excellent reply
to those scornful, spiteful and consequently short-sighted
arguments which accuse the Church of systematic obscur
antism, of retrograde tendencies in the name of immutability,
of fanaticism with an eye to the perpetuation of her authority,
as if only under cover of darkness could her dogmas live and
her influence reign over the stupid.
But yet this is not the whole truth. We must go beyond
these two arguments pro and con, of which one is untrue
and injurious, the other true, but incomplete and incapable
of affording by itself an interpretation of all the facts.
Once more then, as always, we ask : What is the Church ?
It is the organisation of life with a view to its supernatural
ends. And what are its supernatural ends? The perfecting
of man by his expansion into the divine. But how can the
divine thus break into the paltry Ufe of man in order to
transfigure it? Evidently, through the higher window of
our soul. The spirit, united to God who is Spirit, will live
intelligibly in the infinite riches of the Ineffable, and it is
only as a consequence that there will bud in the unity of our
being the happiness for which we thirst, and to which we
have a right, manifold complexities that we are.
With regard to the last end, then, intellect is in the
foreground. It is the tool of destiny, since it is the instru
ment by which we can effect that laying hold of God from
which result for us all the good things summed up in the
word beatitude. This is eternal life, that they may know
Thee, 0 Father.
Hence arises the Church's preference, astonishing to some
people, for the contemplative life as opposed to the active
life. It is man's philosophy that desires it; it was an Aris
totelian thesis before it was a theological one. In any case,
280

intellectual Culture 281
it is the clearly affirmed thought of the Church, and this leads
us to suppose that the Church, since it thus makes its one
thing necessary consist in light, is not after all an enemy
of the light.
But we must add immediately that this light,, in which the
last end consists, is not to be attained by any average human
effort. It surpasses man. For our understanding, armed
with every kind of knowledge though it be, it is what the
sun is for the owl. The learned man, the man who rises
even to genius, gets no nearer to it than if he were to use
a pebble as a stepping-stone towards the stars ; a sterile and
even a childish effort, although by thus stepping on a pebble
one really does get nearer the stars.
It is not knowledge, then, qua knowledge, which is going
to help us attain the goal. The smallest atom of charity
would be of more use; for it is being made ready for our
effort of virtue. It is to be hoped for, then, not by the
student as student; not by him who tries to empty the ocean
of eternal truth with his thimble; but by the man who,
whether student or shepherd, rises to the level of his object
by loving God, and so takes possession of the divine Truth
which is Himself for to-morrow, when the veils are taken
away. The science of Pasteur, the culture of Goethe or Leibnitz,
the philosophy of Aristotle or Plato, all this, left to itself, is
farther, indeed, from the real conquest of the truth than the
simplicity of a Christian child or the charity of the nun in
her humble head-dress.
Charity in the widest sense of the word, that is the love of
the divine Good and of all that reflects it, especially in our
selves and our brethren; such is, for our Church, the path of
knowledge, inasmuch as it is the goal of life.
Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels . . .
though I have understanding of all mysteries and all know
ledge . . . if I have not charity, I am become as sounding
brass or a tinkling cymbal.
These texts tell us whether the Church is going to put
knowledge first ! She esteems it; she declares that in theory,
considered absolutely, knowledge is superior to virtue itself,
because it is the goal of virtue. We are virtuous in order to
be made perfect in value, in God, and this perfection is sub
stantially knowledge. But while we are still wayfarers, these
values are reversed. Virtue takes the first place. For the
traveller, who expects a fortune at the end of his journey, his
essential business is not to gather twigs on the way, though
they may have their value. His essential business is to get
there. We are travellers. What speeds our journey is for
us true riches. If it be knowledge, as it is for the Christian
teacher, for the professional scholar, the professional or the

282 xrbe Cburcb
amateur who does his work thoroughly; then, hurrah for
knowledge ! We can never rate it too highly.
But if knowledge is an obstacle, if it is a reflection instead
of the sun; if duty demands that it be abandoned, or sug
gests prudence concerning it, or defers its delights till later,
in this world or the world to come ; then up with duty ! It
is better, says the Gospel, to enter into life with one eye,
rather than having two eyes to be cast into the fire of hell.
It is better to open the eye of the spirit, even if one must
shut or only half open the other, than to be shut out from the
kingdom of those that see.
Thus, the Church's point of view is clearly indicated. If
some be scandalised, she gives no heed to the muddled
Pharisaism of the mandarins of mind. If to honour know
ledge means putting it above all else, she will not do it.
Neither blindly pro, nor basely con, nor yet indifferent; such,
in three words, is the Church's attitude.
But if, with all this, we think of the various circumstances
amid which the Church has developed, and still leads her life
to-day, we shall have an explanation of all the facts.
At the beginning, the Church had to form herself, to indi
cate her ttanscendent end, to declare her position above all
that is transient, to oppose in order to preserve and differ
entiate herself from all that might hurt her as from all tliat
might claim to absorb her. The culture of those times was
hostile. When it penetrated within, it was very often with
the claim to impose itself, by substituting an arbitrary teach
ing for true dogma, a gnosis, as it did so often, making void
the Cross of Christ, as St. Paul said, and calling for those
famous warnings : Be wise soberly, God has chosen the foolish
things of the world to confound the wise; We have not re
ceived the spirit of the world, but the spirit that comes from
God, that we may know the things God has given us by His
grace (i Cor. ii.).
To make our minds thus captives of Christ, in whom are
hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, this is the
work that must be done. We have to get into tune with God
through Christ. Thus we shall have all that wisdom seeks,
though we be deprived of the means of wisdom. Otherwise
we shall have nothing, though we be the wisest of the wise.
The knowledge which takes this away is man's enemy; we
repudiate it, we condemn it ; not in itself, but in its deviation,
because it sets itself up as an obstacle to that supreme know
ledge which communion with the life of God outlines in every
Christian and will one day impart to every Christian.
Later, the surroundings change. From the third century,
the Church has conquered or almost conquered all that matters
from the intellectual point of view. Her doctrine is fixed.
She still has to strive against deviations; but she has no

intellectual Culture 283
longer to make herself known; she can look round her and
make use — as the Fathers of the fourth century did exten
sively enough, God knows — of all the culture that surrounds
her. It is at this period that " the infant Church, like her
Christ, is seated in the midst of the doctors, hearing them
and asking them questions, making her own the truths they
put forward, correcting their errors, supplying their insuffi
ciencies, correcting their rough outlines, developing their
intuitions, and thus, little by little and thanks to them, giving
her teaching more and more breadth and precision."
These words are Newman's, and they will explain the feel
ing of our Church. The great thinkers of Christianity, men
like Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Bossuet — I mention only
the very greatest — endeavoured to understand everything,
reflected all the knowledge of their times, and without giving
themselves up to knowledge, serving Christ alone, they pas
sionately loved it and bore it even higher because they did
not accept its shackles.
By their side, a crowd of specialists of all kinds have built
up knowledge, the Church applauding them. When she
found fault with them apart from mistakes — for a human-
divine society is not free from the possibility of human mis
takes — it was because they opposed or seemed to oppose
what it was her office to defend. Then she has been of iron,
and respect has not been able to make her prize in man's field
of enquiry what resists God. But that is not rejecting cul
ture; it is purifying it, and therefore sanctifying it and striv
ing to make it entirely divine.
Look at what the Church opposes and approves to-day, and
you will prove the same thing.
That pride, that intoxication of which the whole of the last
century was the victim and which risked misleading thought,
throwing it into the most serious aberrations; the exclusive
use of certain methods, which pushed aside as iUusions the
noblest truths that were above such methods ; perverting
errors ; denials which throw us back, far from the high dignity
of the Christian, into the lowest depths of materiaUsm deified
in words, but left for us in fact to its wretchedness and
nothingness; these things, but only these, are what the
Church has condemned and does condemn.
These condemnations she wiU not recall. She wiU not
bow down to knowledge at such a cost. She will lift her
eyes yet higher. And if it be said that she is the enemy of
atheist, materialist or agnostic science, it is the truth. Who
can wonder?
If it be said even that she is the enemy of independent
science, science independent systematically, not in its
methods, which are rightly so, but in the human use of its
endeavour and its whole attitude, pretending to ignore divine

284 xrbe Cburcb
facts and their revelation by Christ, and thus running the risk
of trampling them under foot, while its teachers profess to
bow before the smallest experimental fact and to sacrifice all
systems to it; if it be said that the Church is the enemy of all
that, it is still true, because the independence of human
thought in relatioh to the divine is a refusal of unity which
she is obliged to call a revolt. He who is not with me is
against me, she must still say, although it be also true to
add : He that is not against you is with you.
Let us repeat : Science taken in itself and as to its methods,
if it keeps in its place and does not leave it, is friendly to the
Church, just because it is independent. But the dualism of
oratory and laboratory which is so pleasant to some people
is not admitted by the Church. Dualism is a heresy in every
thing. Unity must reign, without either confusion or scatter
ing, because the one God, the bond of that universal sheaf
whose ears are gathered together by Christ, wUl let nothing
fall. Through Him all reaches its end ; without Him nothing
has a value for the morrow, nor even subsists in full stabiUty
to-day. Truth then is the subordination, not of science, we repeat,
taken in itself, but of science in relation to its ends and the
results, be they good or evil, of its work.
Lastly, let us add that the Church, if she loves culture, and
yet accords it a relative, not an absolute value, must guard
against the impatience in which from time to time we would
like to see her share.
The Church does not love intellectual fashions, because
they are carried to excess, like other fashions. She approves
no more of hats a yard wide, from the doctrinal point of view,
than of hats that consist of a single flower. She likes to see
heads covered, and she likes them to be able to pass through
doors. Man does not pass through the door of truth when
he insists on a point of view at the expense of what completes
it, corrects it, and makes it true.
So, theoretically, gross realism and Utopian idealism,
materialism and extra-scientific spiritualism ; practically,
anarchic liberalism and oppressive authoritarianism, pes
simism and pagan optimism, etc., all these deviations to the
right or the left which successively, always with pretensions
to eternity and infallibility, succeed each other in the his
tory, so glorious and yet so sad, of human thought, are
equally her adversaries.
This is the principal reason why she appears retrograde.
It is indeed true that she is slow in adapting herself, even
to the truth; a great army does not advance like a soldier's
child, and moreover there is in the religious principle itself a
tendency to fixity which has to be set at defiance where it is

intellectual Culture 285
not relevant. But the cause of men's irritation against the
Church does not lie here. The cause of irritation is that,
careful of the truth that remains, she does not adapt her
self at all to childish mistakes, to exaggerations, to fads.
But it is to such things as we have enumerated that men
hold, because such things are themselves, are their truth,
though it be only imperfectly, or very Uttle, or not at all the
truth.' Then, the Church is accused of inveterate routine. Men
leave her, they say, so that they may progress. When they
are but one step from her they turn to strike her. And the
Church, venerable though outraged, takes up the attitude of
Angelico' s Christ, whose calm gaze pierces the veil of
derision with which His eyes have been covered that He may
be taxed with ignorance ; and, assailed with blows, befouled
with spittle, holds none the less between her ever firmly
clasped hands the ball of the world.
Let the Church of Christ be divinely uncompromising, too
great to commit herself, although she is benevolent to all
men and all things, respectful of every portion of truth arid
favourable to whoever discovers it, provided that it be left
in the great current of human-divine life, that it be submitted
to God who is the Father of lights and to His Incarnate Word
who enlightens every man who cometh into the world.
It is by making no pacts with time that the Church can be
of service to time, because, while she guards the eternal
truths which are compromised by our presumptuous infatua
tions, she is quite ready for new acquisitions. Scouted to-day,
she relies on the morrow, which will in truth bring with it
other crises, but will be able to untie the knots of yesterday.
In spite of her apparent retreats, which are only regular
stepping-stones for an advance from stage to stage; always
to all appearance behindhand, but never really falling back,
a stranger equally to boldness and stagnation, our Church
fulfils her course, while her systems, in just the things that
most affect life, are weaving Penelope's web.
God's Eternity is in the Church. Through the Spirit which
animates her she is above phases of thought. Our partial
views cannot dazzle her; but neither can they offend her.
Everyone in his station and everything in its place; this is
always her motto and her prayer, in every matter, and she
needs no other protection.
1 In the fourth century the Church was called retrograde because she did
not square with Homer ; later, because she only half accepted Roman law ;
at the Renascence, because she did not swear by Platonism. In the eighteenth
century she did not value English physics sufficiently highly. At the begin
ning of the nineteenth she was not liberal enough. To-day she is not
socialist enough.

CHAPTER VIII
ART
INTELLECTUAL culture includes one special branch
which it is well to consider separately, by reason of its
particular character and of certain possible misunder
standing. This is art. Art, we mean, considered gen-
eraUy, in all its forms.
The relations between the Church and art are particularly
dependent on their respective definitions.
Is not the Church life itself, with its subjects and objects
incorporated into God through Christ? And is not art the
mirror of life?
In this mirror, whose quicksilvering is the soul of man,
things are reflected both in accordance with their own nature
and with ours. " Man added to nature;" nature reflected in
man ; the harmonious synthesis of what we observe of the
real and what we experience of the real ; that is art.
Now all this is God added to God, if it be true that both
in external reality and in man God is revealed. Everything,
says St. Augustine, has been created twice; once in itself,
and once in the thought of the reasoning creature. The end
of art is to form the unity of reality and thought in a work
which expresses their common divine Ufe.
Hence there is no mystery about the place of art in the
working of the Church herself, and the relations of the
Church with the art that is exterior to her. There will be
art in the working of the Church because the spiritual, which
is the speciality of the Church, requires the temporal, in which
is found the use of art, as its support and its means of action.
Have we not attributed to the Church sacramentality, that
is, the character in her which demands the union of matter
with spirit, of the visible with the invisible, God coming to
us and we ascending to Him by the ladder of Jacob, the
symbol of the sanctified material reaUty which binds together
earth and heaven ?
When the Church, then, seeks to impart God to us, to
give us to God, whether it be by means of the sacraments
properly so called, or whether it be in a general fashion by
worship, by the holy ministry of the word, by external
solemnity, art will always find place in these things. If it
can, it will give finish to the visible in beauty, otherwise the
visible will be only a rough outline. It will speak more per
fectly of man and God, and thus aid their union.
The richer the art which is incorporated with the Church,
the more will the working of the Church, other things being
equal, be what it ought to be, developed to its full efficacy.
286

Hrt 287
Is it not evident that the Mass, for example — the Mass, which
we choose, not at hazard, but as the source and centre of all
worship — tends of itself to become a liturgy, that is, a work
of art?
Instead of the rite of the catacombs, reduced to essentials,
to its soul, although in fact a modicum of visibility and art
is always found included in it, the Mass, by reason of its very
nature and its signification, seeks to expand, to use all the
means of expression which can move man, and in return, to
honour God, to captivate man with all its resources, our
essential capacity for adoration exercising itself to the full
and drawing with it the nature that is conjoint with it, while
our feelings express themselves in words, in music, in our
positions, in a place which is itself a position, a permanent
posture of the collective effort of the men who were respon
sible for its building.
Think of the ideal Mass, which would be the eternal sacri
fice of Christ commemorated and reproduced in the presence
of the whole of humanity, on that mighty altar whereon the
visionary of Patmos placed the throne of the Lamb, in a
building vast enough to contain, with God, the human beings
of all ages; high enough to indicate at the same time both
God who dwells on high and the aspirations which rise to
Him ; splendid enough to represent, by its lines, reliefs,
colours and forms, living or dead, nature and man dwelling
with God ; full enough of light for the mystic Dove to hover
there in the heavenly blue, for the elect and the angels to
meet there as they fly in circles round, inviting all men to the
more measured movements of liturgic choreography ; sonorous
enough for the highest hosannas, and lower down, for the
sounds, the cries, the chants that express the universal life,
the voices of the solitary or the common soul oppressed with
feelings or with needs to mingle without confusion, accepting
the government of rhythm, entering into the border-lines of
melody and into the wave of harmony, the mother of unity
ever expanding into richness; think of this, and say if this
dream-ceremony, transcending space and time, including
space and time, would not be a manifestation of religion at
the maximum precisely because it would be a work of art,
because it would lend the divine a means of expression in
accordance with the universal reality seen in beauty, to
absorb it afterwards by a reflex action which would itself be
the more reUgious as the harmonies were richer.
Such a vision would be the Church herself around her cen
tral reality, the Eucharist ; exercising by God fully manifested
and for man fully manifested her role of active and passive
sanctification. In it we should see the Church push to its
limits that sacramentality which is her essence. She would
experience it to the greatest possible extent, since the beau-

288 TOe Cburcb
tiful is also a sacrament, a sensible and operative sign. So
that in this apotheosis, we should in a certain manner see the
Church in her integral reality identified with the integration
of beauty.
Let us now study art that is outside the Church, art that
does not enter into her proper work. What are the relations
between them? How does she feel about it?
In the first place she says : It has a value in itself. Like
science, whose brother it is, since here as there intellectual
effort is mistress, although in different respects, it forms a
part of the end of life. In itself then, to speak absolutely, it
does not want an end. The contemplation of beauty, Uke
the conception of truth, is a self-sufficient occupation. What
is called useful art, if it be not useful in the end for that, is
only useless, seeing that our last end is the contemplation of
the Divine, which is Beauty as it is Truth and Goodness.
Art for art's sake, in this sense, is therefore a higher truth.
But we must immediately add, as we added in reference
to knowledge : the last end, at least in the main, is not of this
world. We have only anticipations of it, anticipations
assuredly precious, but which ought not to cause us to tarry
on the road, nor act as an obstacle either to those who enjoy
them or to others.
The art which does not take account of this condition,
which, on the pretext of its misunderstood independence, con
founding the independence of the premisses with the indepen
dence of ends, gives itself up to its own will without caring
for human progress, without deigning to co-operate in it,
allowing itself on occasion to shackle it, producing works
which, deliberately or through culpable negligence, by con
tempt for the common herd, by proud sensual audacity, by
venality, by assumed superiority, offend Christian feeling and
urge to evil; such art as this is a deviation, and the Church
condemns it.
No kind of beauty has a right to interpose between the soul
and the eternal Beauty which calls to it. All are reflections of
this eternal Beauty; but the reflection which forgets its pur
pose, and instead of directing the gaze towards the object,
seeks to monopolise it for itself or to lower it to false objects,
is an imposture, a deceptive mirage which lures the way
farer from his path or makes him stand still.
Without demanding that the artist should adopt the preach
ing of the good as his special task, seeing that art has its
own relation to the good, the Church means that he should
rule his thought and his work in accordance with the common
end of all humanity; that he should remember to conduct
himself not only as an artist, which would only do for an
abstraction, but as a man, a Christian, a brother to his

Hrt 289
brethren, a brother to himself, responsible for his own salva
tion, and in a certain measure for the salvation of all.
But if, not of obligation, but through a positive good will,
art consents to collaborate under a direct form with the work
of salvation which is the Church's enterprise, we see why
the Church must praise it. Christian art is that which
acknowledges this vocation; which takes it as its task to
express, to arouse, religious sentiment ; to relate the facts of
religion in order to help in rendering them efficacious; to
make us see nature, mankind, history, from the religious
angle which dogma determines, speaking of God in order to
attract man to Him ; speaking of man in his need of God and
his fellowship with God.
We know well enough how much our Church has been
glorified and helped by this consecration of aesthetic effort to
the interior or collective work which she is pursuing. She
recognises it, and she testifies her gratitude to the artist by
declaring him a son of election, the son who remains at home,
devoted to his mother, instead of going, legitimately, but
with less of tender feeling for her, to seek a way of life which
she can only share at a distance.
In return the Church gives to this son what none of the
masters to whom he might attach himself outside her can
give him to the same degree. A doctrine which establishes
the human soul in such sublime certitudes, which gives our
life so sublime a direction, which puts us on a level with the
Infinite by causing us to rise and It to descend ; which
endeavours to make a God of man and shows us God in man
in the person of Christ ; which gives an interpretation of life
so wide, so consoling, so helpful to the wretched, so alluring
to endeavour, so strengthening to good but feeble wills, so
welcoming to the repentance that knows no pride; could
such a doctrine fail to inflame an imagination which dreams
of it, to swell a voice which seeks to express its greatness,
and to direct a hand which can fix in material images the
harmonious emotions which contact with the beautiful has
produced in the soul?
Lastly, for the interest of its work, its richness and variety,
can we compare laicism — ^whose treasures we retain — ^with
the themes proposed by Christian art ?
Christ, Our Lady, the Saints, the epic of our origin, the
heroic story of the martyrs, the sublime passions wherewith
the supernatural illumines human existence, transfiguring
ugliness itself by some reflection of its own beauty; the past,
present, future story of religion in the world, the divine
Beyond and its superhuman suggestions ; is not all this, com
pared with profane art, were it in no wise profaned, a field
overwhelming in its superiority? Might we not say rather
19

290 xrbe Cburcb
that it is a complete treasure, and that aU the rest is only a
part of the territory explored by this all-embracing vision,
only a ray of this light of life?
Ah ! If our Christian art has grown weak, it is not by
reason of the subjects it proposes, or the inspirations it offers.
The fault is ours, who do not offer art the environment it
needs; an environment of faith, in which may resound the
voices of Christianity whose vibrant echo it is; the whisper
from on high of which it is the .^Eolian harp.
We observe that a renewal is being attempted amidst our
wretchedness and inertia. That it may increase and succeed
is the Church's ardent prayer.
None the less do we maintain that in this field, so closely
connected with her own aims, the Church affords a welcome
to all. Christian artists, and artists pure and simple, have
her approbation in divers degrees, on the sole condition, so
often repeated, that they respect what is her own work and
the higher end of mankind.

CHAPTER IX
SOCIAL LIFE
MATERIAL civilisation, intellectual culture,
science, art and all the other goods of human
life are included in the whole called society,
confined within its framework, or rather drawn
into its current, for every society is a kind of
river which flows unceasingly, and consequently, at least as
far as concerns the possibility of making full use of them, all
these things are in dependence on what it is to-day agreed to
call the social question.
We cannot avoid asking what attitude the Church takes
up in regard to this question. To define it is already to out
line the reply. The social question is the search for condi
tions which will allow us to rise to better forms of collective
life, to ensure a more equitable and abundant distribution of
the good things of humanity. If it be a question of rising,
the Church is bound to be concerned with it. In a search for
better forms of life, such a specialist as she is in the higher
life cannot be withdrawn from it. If equity and fraternity be
supremely interested in it, the brotherhood which Catholicity
represents in God and in Christ cannot hold aloof from it, if
it operate in accordance with its law, nor can its representa
tives do so if they really represent it.
We have said of civilisation that the Church wills it. But
can we speak of civilisation in the full sense while in offen
sive and unnatural inequalities, in invincible oppressions and
undeserved sufferings, that abnormal state goes on to-day
which has gone on so long in every human society?
Civilisation is the life of the human tree producing all its
fruits, finding ways by which the sap may pass to the
animated tips of its branches, swelling up in its buds to
make them open out into fruit or flowers according to their
nature. But would not a tree composed in great part of
dead or dying branches be better called a bundle of flrewood ?
And is not a society composed for the greater part of mem
bers without Ufe, that is, members which do not share suffi
ciently in the natural and social advantages, so imperfect an
assemblage that in the proper use of terms we should be
obliged to refuse to call it civilised?
We shall be civilised when we have succeeded in making
all the children of our national families live, and not merely
vegetate ; when there are no other miseries than those which
are wilfully caused or are the result of inevitable accident.
We are far from such a state of things as that ! And
while waiting for that future, which, as a whole, is a dream,
that inspired dreamer, the Catholic Church, the daughter of
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292 xrbe Cburcb
the eternal Dream which has set all things in motion, the
continuation of Christ, the divine Dreamer, must toss
anxiously on her bed in this world, and when rising each
day for renewed action, urge men to social reform.
Our Church is founded on the unity of men in God, thanks
to their solidarity in Christ. Love, then, which is complete
brotherhood, complete in breadth and complete, if possible,
in depth, is its first rule. If this brotherhood were obeyed,
justice would result as a minimum; justice from man to man,
from individuals to groups, from groups, in return, to indi
viduals, and this justice, since it would be the justice of a
family instead of sharing in the commercial spirit of the
partisan in the struggle for life, would never feel that it had
done all that was expected of it. The more men act in a
spirit of brotherhood, the more they are brothers. The
more they pay, when love is in question, the less do they dis
charge their debt. Here occurs the real exchange of volun
tary good will, of law for grace. Owe no man anything,
says St. Paul, but to love one another.
It is not then possible to deny that the Church, by her very
nature, must of right be greatly concerned with the social
question. She is indeed insulted by being" represented as a
kind of wheedler at the service of the satisfied classes which
they would use to show pity towards the masses, in order to
dispense themselves from showing justice; but we do not
accept the insult.
Th.y kingdom come on earth as in heaven is our daily
prayer. To do without love by making calculations is the .
practice of the so-called positive sociologist who in his lofty
and useless science forgets the A B C of human relations.
To perform works of love without calculation, that is, with
out taking count of the bounds, the relations and the proper
hierarchy of things, is the tendency of many others. The
Church avoids both these excesses, and that, doubtless, is
why she seems furiously reactionary to the partisans of
anarchy tempered by sentimental songs; and wilfully revo
lutionary to the partisans of " order," that is to the division
of mankind into castes under the sanction of a regulative
whip. But to all these St. Thomas Aquinas replies : The
holy Apostolic Church advances with measured pace, keeping
to the middle of the path between the two hedges of contrary
error. ^
Why speak of extremes equally illusory, equally destruc
tive? Better to keep to the fundamentals of things; there
alone is wisdom, there for us is the explanation of the various
aspects, the various moments of an agelong attitude which
has lent itself to being judged in a thousand fashions, be
cause it indeed affords occasion to contradictory semblances.
1 Summa contra Gentiles.

Social Xife 293
The fundamental thing here is that the Church, in social
matters as in everything else, being the Wisdom of God
through the Spirit who dwells in it, goes straight to what is
essential. She sacrifices nothing of it, but precisely in order
to sacrifice nothing, she subordinates. To subordinate what,
though precious, is less important, and to place it under what
is the principal thing, that is in its proper place, is to keep it
safe, instead of exalting it at the cost of a fatal disaster to
itself and everything else.
And what is the essential in this matter? It is marked
out by this undying exhortation : Seek first the Kingdom of
God and His justice, and all the rest shall be added unto
you. Still, where are we to find the Kingdom of God?
Everywhere, since all is for the elect; since the Kingdom of
Heaven of the Gospel has been seen to include everything;
nature, mankind, history.
But this Kingdom of God which is everywhere is not every
where to the same degree. It exists in the first place in that
which is of the highest value, that which is of value in the
end, that which endures. Let us hear the rest : The King
dom of God is within you, said the Lord. The body is more
than raiment, and the life than meat. What doth it profit a
man if he gain the whole world and suffer the loss of his own
soul? Men of little faith, why are you troubled? Seek not
the bread which perishes, but the bread which remains unto
eternal life.
The individual is mortal. Temporal society passes ; does
not the very word temporal mean expectant of death? If
society, though it passes, has any importance, it is because
it is the servant of what does not pass; because it is indis
pensable for the development in value, in happiness antici
pated and in happiness to be achieved one day, of the
individual man, the image of God, the son of God, the con
temporary of God in an endless future. This is the essential,
then. It is of this first of all and especially that an institu
tion whose work is in the eternal, such as the Catholic
Church, thinks and must think. I say an institution whose
work is in the eternal, not to exclude time, since time is
included in eternity; but to exclude partiality in the interest
of time, and that reversal of values, the defect of secularising
teachings, in accordance with which the partial should
absorb the complete, life death, the nothingness that all flesh
is, the full-grown existence that endures.
We are going to say that by considering this point of
view alone, the Church works more efficaciously for social
progress than the sociologists and their learned cabal. But
for the moment it is enough to say that the Church desires
before all things our salvation, our salvation, in this world
and the. other.

294 xrbe Cburcb
If social forms show themselves to be imperfect — they will
always be more or less so — the Church teaches us to make
use of them, to correct their insufficiency by use; to bring
our good will into play, so that our virtues may act as a
remedy for their vices.
We know that the Church's wisdom led her to act thus in
regard to the most frightful social inferiority which she ever
encountered — slavery. Brother, wrote St. Paul from his
prison to the Christian Philemon, a slave-owner like his peers
in Roman civilisation, to whom belonged the recently con
verted Onesimus — brother, I beseech thee for my son, whom
I have begotten in my bands . . . whom I have sent back to
thee. And do thou receive him as my own bowels. . . .
For perhaps he therefore departed from thee for a season that
thou mightest receive him again for ever, not now as a ser
vant, but ... a most dear brother, especially to me. If
therefore thou count me as a partner, receive him as myself.
And if he hath wronged thee in any thing or is in thy debt,
put that to my account. I Paul have written it with my own
hand: I will repay it.
If Philemon listened to this exhortation, the situation of
Onesimus in his house must have been strangely modified,
and very far from the image that the word slavery evokes in
our minds.
What matters slavery when it permits of brotherhood ? A
wife and husband who love each other laugh at the idea of
claims and rights. The workman and employer who under
stand each other have no need of trade unions. But har
mony will of itself create institutions useful for its growth
and fruition.^ Meanwhile, it takes their place; it effects
actual happiness instead of the happiness of sociological
formulas. It is to this that the Church's moral action is pur
posely devoted.
Her conception is that there is as it were a double plan of
human life. There is an individual plan, in accordance with
which each destiny begins, continues and is perfected in the
space of a few years. There is a social plan, which has the
ages before it.
In the eyes of the Church, the most urgent thing is not the
changing of the human race. She ardently desires it, but
with that patient ardour of her God, who launches the
universe on a sea of immeasurable destinies for which mil
lions of ages will not suffice. What the Church desires in
the first place is to make us individuals reach perfection;
reach it here, by means of fraternal peace, the repose of a
good conscience, a little happiness if God so wills — or if He
does not so will, then patience, which is not deceived in the
end; to reach it on high, by obtaining a place in the definitive
City, where God will be our God, our joy and our good.

Social %ifc 295
It follows that in spite of her tendency to the future — a
tendency which the Church cannot renounce, because she
gathers together all ages in her wide-spreading arms, because
she claims to survive all things which claim a future for
themselves- — in spite of this never-weary tendency, the Church
applies herself especially to the present ; she is eminently prac
tical, objective, as the Germans say, opportunist in the
greater sense of the word, that is, she asks each social situa
tion and stage of development not so much to modify itself,
though that will one day become necessary, as to bear its
full fruits ; not so much to think for- to-morrow as to save
the present moment, since she is persuaded that there is no
system so imperfect that good will may not render it fruitful
in virtue and happiness, and also direct it towards a better
system ; no so-called ideal city which our vices cannot make
a hell, and so draw on to reaction.
As, then, politically, the Church tolerates all systems,
demanding not new constitutions, but wise application of
those that exist, so, economically and socially, she demands
less the improvement of the frame than proper care of the
picture. Virtue, wisdom, good understanding, brotherhood, these
are the things she declares of first importance. She preaches
them to-day, to-morrow, always. And from age to age, as
the spiral mounts and the bounds of possibility are widened,
she demands still the same thing, but also more ; she main
tains progress, makes each advance support the next Uke
mountain strata, and ascends, without leaving the heart of
the earth, to scan the far-off horizon.
* * * * *
It seems presumptuous to say that the Church alone pos
sesses what is needed not indeed exclusively to promote, but
to ensure the success of a real social life.
But it is the unadulterated truth. If we express it under
another form, and put it forward by degrees, we shall win
to this truth many minds which withstand it at first sight.
There are undoubtedly few well-informed men with any
regard for their intellectual reputation who would refuse to
subscribe to the following equation : Christianity, from the
social point of view, equals civilisation; paganism. Buddhism,
Islam . . . and atheism equal retrogression, disregard of
the conditions of life, sacrifice of the individual to oppressive
associations, or, conversely, of associations to exaggerated
individualities. Now if, historically — the greatest men have recognised it
as far as the past is concerned, though claiming, some of
them, that it will be otherwise in the future, a claim that
makes a hypothesis — if, I repeat, historically, Christianity
has revealed itself as the true educative agent of humanity

295 xrbe Cburcb
in social matters, it is enough, to get back to our proposition,
to add what we have so often said already : The Church is
the true representative of Christianity, the only one that is
complete, faithful at every point, fundamentally equipped,
and especially so from the social point of view.
Yet the Church does not possess what would seem to some
the sine qua non of social successes. She has no economic
system. The Church does not believe very much in systems ;
she has greater confidence in life. And though she entirely
believed in one, it would not be her business. The Church
has a religious, not a scientific revelation. She leaves the
world given up to the disputes of men. All concerns her,
as we have said; but all concerns her in so far as she means
to exercise an influence on everything, not that she wishes
to include everything, to render our competence useless and
to take our responsibiUties on herself.
If in the course of the ages she has been led more than
once to undertake social action, it was in order to be of use,
it was not to carry out her proper mission. In the long run
the Church keeps to the Saviour's attitude when two young
men came to Him from the midst of the crowd and one of
them said, Master, speak to my brother that he divide the
inheritance with me. Man, replied Jesus, who made Me a
judge or a divider over you? But as wishing to mark that
His detachment from the divider's office and from direct
intervention was only the clearing of the path for moral
action. He added : Take heed that ye beware of covetousness.
Moral action, then, in the name of Jesus, is His Church's
means of action. But this means plays the same part in col
lective life as morale plays in war.
What is the use of the quick-firing gun, the .75 and its
pneumatic control, the machine-gun and the military aero
plane, if the soldier is afraid, if he is a traitor, if he is an
anti-militarist? What, too, is the use of the best economic
system, if the agency which ought to apply it does not apply
it ; if the man who ought to be adapted to it is not adapted to
it; if the man faUs the thing, if the man and the thing faU
the plan?
There are so many ways of failing that the Church's action
will not be idle.
Firstly there is Utopianism, that mistress of pulling down
on the pretext of magnificent upbuilding. Remember what
the French Revolution did. With its humanitarian dreams,
and its anxiety for indispensable reforms, it urged men to
extremities through not being able to distinguish from
Utopian dreams such actual and really useful progress as the
actual world would stand. It threw to the ground ancient
institutions, and in their place raised a post bearing a placard

Social %itc 297
with the plan of a building which would never be erected in
fact because it could not be built. In the meantime people
had to live in ruins.
The Church does not like ruins, and that is why she does not
like Utopia. She follows up facts step by step, looking for the
footprints of her God, whose providence is seen in facts; she
sets men's feet firmly upon them, that they may walk with
assurance towards the true ideal.
Secondly, there is error, the pursuit of which creates many
enemies for the Church, but makes true progress her friend,
since error, more often even than Utopianism, is inclined of
its nature to beget unhappiness. Errors concerning the con
stitution of the family, the continuity of the race, the natural
unity of nations, the relations of authority and liberty, jus
tice in its relations with natural and supernatural brother
hood, property, hated by some, and pushed to an absolute
extent, and consequently an inhuman one, by others; the
equality or inequality of human beings with regard to their
temporal destinies, etc. . . . the list of possible deviations is
a long one; of certain deviations, we may say, for everything
that is possible is exhausted, as far as concerns aberrations,
by our human nature, which resembles always more or less
the drunken peasant on horseback of whom Luther spoke;
pick him up on one side, he said, and he falls off on the other.
The Church, resisting these with an energy as invincible
as it is calm, renders a service which is a sad one for herself,
for it exposes her to contradictions and to fury that would
break all patience other than hers. But the reward of this
service is equal to that of the whole natural and divine order
which it defends, remembering that the growth of beings, be
they persons or social bodies, can only take place in con
formity with their laws, and that He who was the Master of
Ufe has said : Every plant that My heavenly Father has not
planted shall be rooted up.
There is another moral office assumed by the Church, the
opposition she offers to disorder, to violence, which mark
time and produce nothing; to vice and self-seeking, which
consume in no time what has been produced by the feverish
effort and the long toil of generations.
When the flesh, even civiUsed flesh, overcomes the spirit,
corrupt nature, grace, barbarism, gilded or not, is not far
off; the thirst for enjoyment casts people back to poverty in
the midst of their riches, to bitterness amidst all the means
of happiness. They become antagonists through envy when
no longer driven by need. The wild-beast struggle begins
again, and as in a shipwreck men kill one another for a
plank, so here they fight for that prosperity which secures
the pleasure we madly confound with happiness.

298 xrbe Cburcb
We know weU enough that the thirst for possession is as
cruel as the wiU to live. Pleasure is more pitiless than hunger.
And it is aU the more terrible in its demands that they are
not measured by need, but in the hallucination to which they
give rise, put on a sort of infinity which drags society as
well as individuals towards the gulf.
Lastly there is the Church's task of conquering the inertia
which fetters those who are satisfied; which prevents those
who have succeeded in attaining or were born on the summit
from offering the ladder to others. Conservative sophistries
are no more congenial to the Church than revolutionary
theses. To be resigned on one's own behalf is not always a
virtue, but to be resigned on behalf of others is a love of
peace all too easy. Peace 1 we say; yes, but not the peace
of the cemetery. The peace of the dead is the lesson of the
Uving; they rest after having acted; we must act if we are
to have the right to rest. That is what the Church means
by the law of work, by the encouragement she gives to co
operation in work. Works of charity which heal sorrows,
but especially social works which create strength; of these
she reminds those who sleep after their meal at half-way
house. Opposed to the howling Socialists, who speak only of the
robberies of employers, of capitalist ferocity, of the ticket of
ignominy — one would hardly think they meant the work
man's time-book ! — she is opposed also, to such an extent
does her mission compel her to turn her back on all extremes —
to those who try to console the poor worker by saying to him
curtly : Economise ! or who say again : The situation of the
lower classes is ameliorated — which is quite true, but like
the situation of the sick man who has been allowed a corner
of the hearth — or again : There are sufferings everywhere :
money does not bring happiness ; the workers of former times
were perhaps happier with their limited desires than those of
to-day with their immense hopes : things with which we have
just agreed, but which prove nothing when there is a duty
to be fulfilled.
Those who, without rendering any service, are content with
preaching virtue to the multitudes, must expect the Church,
which is attentive both to the multitudes and to themselves,
to preach virtue to them. And in this connection virtue
means brotherly help, the just appreciation of suffering or
of right, the virtuous attempt to secure an organisation
which surpasses in extent their little daily charities and
brings to an end, as far as is possible and wise, those " un
merited sufferings " which Leo XIII. denounced before the
world. And if the Church condemns the passive selfishness which

Social Xife 299
denies the problem, and is slothful in solving it, so much the
more does she condemn the aggressive selfishness which
expresses itself in positive injustice, refusing due wages,
oppressing the weak by excessive labour, badly regulated and
badly adapted to the conditions of material or moral hygiene,
giving itself up to usury in its various forms, under the cover
of that word which serves to-day as the shelter of so many
wares : Business.
By this moral action, which is her higher speciaUty, the
Church claims without doubt to obtain salvation in the
present, to turn situations to account and to save souls — we
have said that that is her first concern; but equally she
means to prepare the way for a more equitable rdgime. When
it has been obtained, she will, in approving it, impose on it
its duties, as she has done with this, and while seeking the
Kingdom of God and His justice in as far as she is concerned,
on this plane exclusively, she will obtain in addition a new
progress, and be ready to apply to that the same rule.
No one can compete with the Church in such a mode of
action. She can make these higher means, the feeUngs of
justice, brotherhood, fideUty to oneself and others, devotion,
sobriety, patience, enter into their kingdom so far as the
heart of man permits, and she does so. Psychologically, she
puts in operation all the means which her long practice has
revealed to her, which real science confirms, after the science
of yesterday, given up to narrow rationalism, had laughed at
them. Socially, she is that admirable organism whose soul
we have studied, whose body remains to be studied, with its
universal extension, its power of organisation, its colossal
and supple framework, its wealth of functions, its profusion
of specialities, capable of reaching, from the top to the bottom
of the ladder of minds, of social situations, of souls, all the
infinite elements of the social body, in order to galvanise
them towards the good. Supernaturally, she has the sacra
mental sources of grace, prayer, the divine and fraternal
presence which is the object of her worship, the solidarity of
the living and the dead, and God, who has declared through
His Christ that Wherever two or three are gathered together
in My name, there am I in the midst of you.
God with us, in us, in our societies as in our consciences,
will be the source of the same effects : organisation, sanctifi
cation, progress. As the Holy Spirit, when He lives in our
hearts, puts aU things in their place there, and consecrates
the good in them by urging it towards the better; so the
same Spirit, which is the soul of the Church, living in the
social body through its vi^ork, produces the organising, sanc
tifying, progressive effects which accompany social works.
Even after this we must not think that an earthly para
dise will be set up; we believe in the valley of tears. We

300 Tibc Cburcb
leave the millenniums and golden ages to the dreamers; our
paradise is elsewhere. But for all this, the world was made
young in order to mature.
" God stirs in souls of twenty years old," cried Lacordaire.
It is God, too, who stirs in societies which feel called to the
work for renewal. The Church must be there too, the
Church which is ' ' the body of God. ' '
If the Church were to disappear, it would be with the
social progress that has been obtained thanks to the Gospel
as with the corpse which vegetates still for some time and
keeps its form after the departure of the soul; but decom
position would soon set in. We see signs of it which do not
invite us to push further. And what would become of the
ideal of human renewal, when humanity no longer possessed
its principle of life I

CHAPTER X
POLITICS
THE social question, as we have so far examined it,
has no direct bearing on the division of men into
nations. It is a question of the situations, classes,
and parts played by men in the production,
exchange and distribution of goods; it is not a
poUtical question.
It remains, then, to examine the latter aspect of things,
firstly as it concerns the interior life of a nation, secondly as
between different nations. We will speak only of what is
essential, and that is simple.
The fundamental character of Catholicism, considered from
this point of view, is its universality. CathoUcism claims to
be the religion of mankind. If it is the religion of mankind,
it is the religion of the Frenchman, the EngUshman, the
German, the Russian, the Italian, the Japanese, as soon as
they have become conscious, inwardly, of the rightly inter
preted call of the religious need, and, outwardly, of the divine
reply. Under these conditions, the Church, which is the organ of
universal religion, the assembly of humanity united in God,
can know no frontiers; she is international by right.
It follows that in the inner constitution of each state the
Church is present with the national life without belonging to
it. She acts on it strongly, but without giving herself up to
its sentiments of exclusion ; without letting herself be limited
to particularist points of view. She breathes the national
atmosphere, and it could not be said that her members remain
uninfluenced by that atmosphere even in the religious sphere ;
there are no water-tight compartments in life. But funda
mentally the source of life for the Catholic Englishman or the
Catholic Frenchman, so far as they are Catholic, is not the
English or French atmosphere in which they live, it is the
ethereal fluid common to both ; the truths and impulses, the
lights and influences which make up the common life of
Catholic souls.
It follows in the second place that the Church cannot obey
entirely any government, w^hich would in itself involve a
contradiction, inasmuch as by obeying one she would dis
obey another; and more, she could not allow any of her
members in a religious question to obey any government. She
is her own government, which within the very frontiers of
each nation rules in spiritual matters all religious men.
Each of us owes a double homage : each of us is a subject
of the State and a subject of the Church; son of the nation,
301

302 TOe Cburcb
and son of God, the Father of all and of Christ, the repre
sentative Man of all who are manifested in the Catholic
organisation. It is in this sense that we must understand
that the Church, a perfect society, can allow herself neither
to be absorbed nor even judged. In the field of national
affairs she is international; side by side with a government,
she is free.
And more than this — and here arises the angry resistance
of some — the Church claims that she has a spiritual mission
to govern societies as well as individuals, governors as well
as governed. Sovereigns, the presidents of republics, minis
ters, parliamentary representatives, generals, administrators,
when they are Catholics, are, as such, that is in spiritual
matters, her subjects not only as individuals, but also as
rulers. And this is so because, since the religious point of
view has reference to our last ends, it cannot be unconcerned
with the life of societies; because the divine is concerned
with all that is human, and humanity is social ; because
Christ, when He charged His Church to teach nations, did
not mean to speak only of their constitutive atoms, of isolated
individuals; but of nations themselves, of humanity as it is
organised in families of every degree; families in the proper
sense, friendships, professional unions, associations of every
kind, and nations.
Here, as must be agreed, is a source of conflicts which the
greatest of good will on both sides cannot succeed in warding
off altogether, out of which passions, lay or religious, have
made the plague of history, a mournful series of blunders,
mutual reproaches and combats.
The Saviour, whose custom it was to greet His flock with
the words Peace be with you, was thinking of this, when He
said so sadly : I am come into this world not to bring peace,
but a sword. And this painful declaration has been verified
from Jesus' own inevitable opposition to the Sanhedrin down
to our Kulturkampfs and separations of Church and State.
We do not propose to plunge into an examination of the
causes which provoke these conflicts; it would be a long
story, and it is not a question that concerns us here. What
we have to say is that there could be no conflicts with real
justification; that the so-called pretensions of the Church
are not really pretensions, but services; that her autonomy
makes no breach in that of the State, since two separate
orders are concerned, and she recognises its relative
sovereignty as much for the benefit of her adversary as for
her own ; and that in truth religion is a thing so precious, so
fundamental, since it is concerned with the One Thing Neces
sary, that it soars above those difficulties which wisdom can
always palliate, although we may not hope always to over
come them.

politics 303
Nations pass : God and the soul remain. PoUtics, that
little concern of time, cannot ask us to sacrifice the eternal
to it. And when we speak of the eternal, it is not for us
merely a question of what comes after life, but of the for
ever, in so far as our forever depends on the eternal truth,
on the indefectible law of good, and the permanent conditions
of these things.
Society is not a permanent condition of existence and hap
piness for man. What it procures is in itself only a transient
thing. Order, well-being, peace, temporal progress are great
goods ; the Church does not despise them ; she takes the risk
of doing this all the less inasmuch as though these things are
temporal in themselves, a good conscience eternises them
by making them the material of moral progress. But it
remains true that in itself time endures only for a time. The
way of peoples, like the way of individuals, like the way
of earth itself, is a way to death. The poor earth flutters
like a moth around its sun; it goes faster or slower; but at
last the moth will throw itself into the flame, or will freeze
after seeing it extinguished, and our noises will be silent, and
governments, amidst posthumous nothingness, will have time
to meditate, as in the Ligende des Sidcles, on
The form the throne takes on within the tomb.
During this time religious humanity united to its Christ,
and like Him having but passed through death, will be alive
and happy. From militant it will have become triumphant.
It will become so because it has followed its law, its own law,
and not that of organisations which perish. Does not the
path of the projectile depend on the place to which it is going ?
A parabola which comes back to earth, and a hyperbola which
goes towards the Infinite, are not interchangeable.
Leave the Church to travel to its God across the realities
of this world. Leave her to exhort, to help, to rebuke, to
aUure, and without being preoccupied with her rights, but
caring only for her duties, to say to all, rulers and subjects :
Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and His justice. We
know, since the Gospel cannot lie, that this first necessity
cannot be opposed in reality to aught that is useful : that all
the rest shall be added unto you.
And in truth, after making aUowance for the accidents
which are inevitable in connection with things so complex;
for the abuses inevitable in a world of sin, on the part of
the representatives of the one power or the other, the Church,
which seems to some so insupportable in its demands, so
monopolist, importunate and obstructive, is at bottom an
indispensable ally, a providential succour, even in matters
purely political. ' ' Serve God first, ' ' as Joan of Arc said ;
and your republic will only be served the better. Submission

304 xrbe Cburcb
to the Church in what is her business guarantees all the
rest, both legitimate liberty and the rightful prerogatives of
power. "There are some who claim," wrote St. Augustine,^ " that
Christian teaching is injurious to the State. . . . Let them
show us, then, an army composed of soldiers such as Christian
teaching intends them to be; let them show us governors of
provinces, husbands and wives, parents and children, masters
and servants, kings, judges, nay more, taxpayers and tax-
collectors such as Christian teaching intends them to be . . .
when they have done this, let them repeat the accusation if
they Uke."
If the few pages at our command allowed, we might see in
detail how the conditions of life which the Church imposes,
though they take us much farther than the results that can
be attained by politics, are yet inclusive of and favour in
the highest possible degree the conditions of political life.
There are three kinds of facts, it may be said, of which the
course of political life is made up; individual moral facts,
because each man is worth to the society that which he is first
of all worth to himself; facts of obedience, because the indi
vidual has to be subordinated by law to the needs of collective
life; facts of authority, because national unity and the public
good that is sought by this unity are represented, and must
be defended and urged to progress by rulers.
No one can contest the Church's usefulness on all these
heads. To individuals she says : Respect yourselves, your bodies,
souls, employments, as the temple of God ; and she helps them
to do so. To rulers she says : The princes of the heathen
rule over them: but among you not so; but let him that is
chief be the servant of all, and when the rulers obey her, she
makes them peers of St. Louis or St. Henry of Germany,
devoted to death for the greatness and prosperity of their
peoples. Lastly to subjects who hearken to her voice she
says : Let every soul be subject to the higher powers. For
there is no power but of God, and all those that are are
ordained of God: wherefore he who resists the power resists
the ordinance of God.
Life a divine trust, authority a public service, and obedience
to lawful power as to God Himself : these are the three com
plementary notions which she inculcates in practice, and
which form the Church's moral system in relation to public
life. Such a conception is worth as much as that of a social
contract, or the more recent quasi-contract, or the solidarity
imagined as a dead fact which proves nothing, or even more
certainly than the struggle for life tempered somehow or
1 Ep. 38, Ad Marcellinum, cited by Leo XIII. in his encyclical, Im-
mortale Dei.

politics 305
other by convergent interests or by a vague altruism con
stantly resisted.
The supernatural as motive and the supernatural as means
seem indeed to be the highest conditions of a political life
which is really worthy of mankind. If this is true, the atti
tude of the Church, though apparently exacting, is simply
that of a mother.
When God does not reign in the sovereign, the sovereign,
whether man or majority, claims to be God. When God does
not thus reign in the hearts of subjects, it is sinful and
anarchical nature which takes His place. There is nothing
which is by nature more adapted to society than man, wrote
Augustine ; there is nothing which is by corruption less so.
The Church, by applying religious means to overcome cor
ruption above and below, does therefore a poUtical work
which is more valuable than political combinations. Leaving
the question of political forms alone out of deference to the
State, she labours at the foundations and predisposes to
better forms.
If we looked at the past, we should see what eminent and
more than eminent services the Catholic Church has ren
dered; and to this all the great impartial historians have
borne witness. A few excesses of power noted here or there,
on the part of particular representatives, cannot make us
forget that she has borne the modern world upon her knees.
Modern political life is her daughter, in every respect in
which it is superior to despotic regimes or to the unbridled
licence of the ante-Christian past.
If this were the place so to do, we might add that more
than any other regime, our modern democracy has need of
the Church's action ; for its value depends entirely on the
value of each and of all, since everyone is sovereign, as every
one is subject to the law, everyone is social material.
Every thinker since Aristotle has repeated — and it was no
doubt said before him — that the excesses of a democracy are
more gravely destructive agencies than the crimes of any
ruler or any aristocracy.
Democracy is a sea; the Universal Church should be the
immense shore which holds its waters, sheds light on them
from its beacons, keeps them in place in the bed prepared for
them; the bed of nature, which the supernatural protects, as
the heaven guards the earth from drought and drives away
corruption from it by its winds.

20

CHAPTER XI
INTERNATIONAL LIFE
MUST not the Church's attitude towards inter
national life follow from her Catholicity even
more than her views on internal politics?
The Church by her spiritual action intends
to unite humanity with God. Now humanity
signifies multitude ; but it equally signifies unity, and it signi
fies finally a complex constitution wherein the unity of the
whole and the relative unity of the partial associations allows
multiplicity to subsist whether among men or societies.
Religion has to take account of this complexity when it pro
poses to divinise man in the sense we have explained, and
must neither rush to unity by breaking through the natural
frontiers established by human action, nor shut itself up in
those frontiers so as to forget the ideal of unity which is
founded on the initial realities from which it takes its rise.
In the eyes of the Church, all men form one unity, by
reason of their common relation of sonship to God, of their
common destiny in God, of their unity in action, in their col
lective responsibility for evil, in the redemption through
' ' Our ' ' Saviour, as she calls Him. Grace is for all, and the
first effect of grace is charity, that is, the unity of all men in
God. But in order to unite men, we do not begin by dividing
them, by breaking up the societies which have been estab
lished by the normal work of life. We do not begin to build
a house by smashing the stones.
We must expect, then, that the Church will on the one hand
maintain the unity of the human race in the Lord ; and on the
other will, at each stage of civilisation and in every order,
consecrate those morally constituted — or at any rate morally
subsisting — societies whose frontiers are for the good of
humanity like the cell-walls of a honeycomb, which support
the scaffolding of the hive and prevent the honey from
escaping. In these simple words we may see the whole of the doc
trine which we should have to lay bare if it were possible here
to treat with any fulness the vast subject indicated by our
heading — the Church and international life.
The destructive and proud illuminism of the " citizens of
the universe ' ' is not the position of the Church. She sees
in it an inteUectual deviation, seeing that the unity of the
human race is effected by a series of steps, and not directly
from the individual to the whole, as if a Uving being were
made of a pile of atoms, rather than of atoms forming mole-
306

international Xite 307
cules, which in their turn form elementary substances, mixed
substances, tissues, organs, and finally the body.
Geographical and ethnographical differences, the historical
contingencies which have created nations, are real things.
To neglect them, and to pretend to unite the human race apart
from space and time, without respect to space and time, is a
flight of fancy readily taken for a stroke of genius, but its
levity seems shocking to the Church.
It is all the more repugnant to her inasmuch as in this very
internationalist sentiment the Church sees moral deviations
which hardly tempt her to approve them. The renewal of the
caste spirit, which seeks to substitute an international coaUtion
of instincts for the love of children of a single fatherland ; the
spirit of the amateur and the dilettante, the so-called citizen
of the world who is in reality only the citizen of his own
garden, smoking-room or library; that cunning carefulness
for peace at any price which makes promises to everyone so
that it may have to pay no one, finding it convenient to asso
ciate those two things which cost nothing and produce a cer
tain amount of glory, cosmopolitanism in word and very
actual selfishness in deed ; the Church has not much taste for
these methods of evading one's duty. She proclaims that we
owe love, honour and- service to God in the first place, and
after God not to humanity immediately, but to our father and
mother, to our families, to our countries. After these, to
humanity. But if she says after these, it does not follow that this last
of duties should be neglected, or above all denied. That is
why the Church, after having bestowed her blessing on
patriotism, or rather after having imposed it in the name of
her moral system, turns on those who would say : This is
enough. It is not enough. Frontiers are sacred ; but their purpose
is not to form watertight partitions between us ; it is to sub
serve human good ; to furnish supports for our sentiments in
order that they may advance in concentric circles from the
inner to the further, without forgetting that in God the far-off
is very near; it is to make a series of our duties in order to
prevent their dispersal, their return to confusion and anarchy ;
not to make us forget any of them.
And have we not duties, individually and collectively, in
regard to what we call foreign to us? For the Church, the
foreign is simply a more distant neighbour, a brother some
times uncongenial, possibly unjust, blameworthy in our eyes,
perhaps, aggressive very often, even as in families we very
often find brothers uncongenial, aggressive or blameworthy.
The ideal of international relations, as the Church sees it,
would be exactly analogous to that which we can imagine as

3o8 xrbe Cburcb
a formula of relations between brothers ill-assorted by nature,
of varying characters, divergent interest, consequently likely
to quarrel; but who yet would have the desire to fulfil their
duty, that is, to draw from their brotherhood its consequences,
of which the minimum is justice.
The jurists of international law — apart from the theologians,
whom on this point the future will never praise too highly —
have not yet risen to the height of this conception. Begin
ning with Montesquieu, and ending with the most recent of
them, all say : Nations are sovereign. And by this they mean
that each is walled up by itself, that each, morally and
juridically, depends only on itself; that it has no duties
except such as it may be pleased to assume with an eye to
its own advantage, and that it is always authorised to break
the contract if it is considered too onerous, and to have
recourse to force to settle questions believed to be vital to its
interest or honour — that is in reaUty (and this is quite
acknowledged) all those in which there is an interest greater
than that of being faithful to one's engagements and of
having regard for a profitable neighbour.
The root of all this is the boorish doctrine of the struggle
for life, that is, the notion that every living being, animal,
man or nation, has its own preservation as its only law of
action, all that makes up its surroundings, precious or not
in the eyes of reason, brotherly or not in regard to a despised
religion or moral system, everything being only matter for
assimilation for the sake of ensuring a happier or wider life.
This barbarous thesis, the outcome of a science gone
astray, is the antithesis of the conceptions of the Church.
The Church deplores the profound immorality which governs
the relations of peoples. If she intervenes little in the matter,
it is because she is disarmed in face of so much rancour and
selfishness; her patient wisdom applies the rule which she
makes on the subject of brotherly correction ; do not warn or
rebuke unless you hope for amendment; without that, you
will only increase the evil. But disarmed or not, the Church
is bound to proclaim the ideal, and she does so in this prayer
the sublimity of which may be commended to those who
think our Church reactionary : O God, who hast given Thy
children the earth for their cultivation, grant that they may
have but one heart and one soul, even as they have but one
dwelling-place. This moral unity of mankind is in no wise a chimera; it is
the law. We hardly hope to see it obeyed under existing
circumstances, because the obstacles are too numerous, and
interests and passions are entangled in too complex a fashion.
But aU the same, it is the law. And at least we must know
it, and agree to it, and strive after it, at the risk of repeated
failure, as we do in other things.

international %iU 309
Every Christian must be ready to subscribe the following
propositions :
Firstly, there is no law of " right is might."
Secondly, international relations, Uke private relations, are
governed by the moral law.
Thirdly, and consequently, each nation, while seeking its
own interest and defending it by all honourable means, is
interdicted from having recourse to violence, to fraud, to
proceedings of intimidation, to the employment of traitors,
of disloyal spies, and generally, to all which is an offence to
morality as honest people understand it.
Fourthly, amongst all, from the strongest to the weakest,
from the most to the least civiUsed, from the most to the
least moral, there must reign, with due proportion, those
relations which subsist in a family between the oldest and the
youngest, the comer in and the goer out, the member that
understands his duty and the member that neglects it.
Fifthly, in cases of dispute, knowing that to be judge and
litigant are two incompatible roles, an arbitrator must be
sought. If war breaks out in spite of all this, war imposed by the
bad win of one of the peoples or by circumstances which do
not allow of recourse to the ways of justice, military action
must be directed only to the re-establishment of justice,
including indemnities, instead of to unjustifiable conquest and
Draconian demands, and instead of vengeance.
We are very far from this as yet ! But yet this, in the
clearest and most absolute fashion, is the teaching of the
Church. Dare we add that for her deepest thought, seeing that she
is the bearer of the Gospel and reckons on the future for entire
fulfilment, this is but a minimum?
Let us go so far, and invite those who do not fear to face
wide horizons to understand that for the Church the future
is not in the direction of an internationalism of crumbling
anarchy, the misdeeds of which are all too evident; since
brotherhood in God and in Christ have no juridical, political
or social organ that touches the life of nations; since the
Christianity of former times is dead, dislocated by ambition
and unbelief, and nothing secular has taken its place.
The future, if it is to obey the Gospel, will afford a sanction
to our unity in God and in Christ.
What will this sanction be? Who will risk foreteUing?
I am no propagandist of the United States of Europe, nor of
universal confederations organised in Parliament by simple
tons and visionaries. Every serious man believes that life
alone can know the ways of life, and that particularly in
respect of the immeasurable future every hypothesis is with-

310 xrbe Cburcb
out import and every prophecy ridiculous. But it is not
prophesying to say that the religious unity of man must
have — at this very moment — its moral consequences. The
moral unity of men must have, one day, its juridical conse
quences, and therefore, since juridical power in the strict sense
is an attribute of political power, the moral unity of men must
one day have — under what form no one knows — its political
consequences. There is no question of getting rid of nations ; but rather of
binding them more closely, by Umiting a sovereignty which
claims to be absolute, whereas it is dependent, since the unity
it represents is only a relative unity in relation to that human
race which is one by nature and united in God.
Our Popes have attempted at different times to draw these
consequences from the doctrines of Catholicism. They were
bound to fail, because the Church, which by definition has at
its disposal only a spiritual power and therefore no more
political influence than may be conceded to it, could not resist
the violence of separatist currents. But what the Church her
self has not done and could not do, in a domain which was
not hers, the future must do under the moral impulse of the
Church. If the human race cannot organise itself thoroughly, con
tinuing the work which was begun in the days when isolated
families made themselves into cities, cities into little pro
vincial states, provinces into states endowed with a wide
power of expansion — if the human race refuses thus to
organise its real life and to begin on this henceforth definitive
basis its real evolution on earth, we must say that it will
have been unfaithful to itself, that it will have failed to
recognise its fundamental unity; unfaithful to its God, who
is the Father of aU in common and who is only served when
we come to Him as brethren ; unfaithful to Christ, who, con
centrating in Himself our one humanity and the one God,
could say, sublime Dreamer as He was, at the moment when
the sleep of death was close upon Him : Father, may they all
be one, as We are one.
While waiting for what will be the last attempt of the
leaven of the Gospel to leaven, as the Saviour said, the
whole lump, the Church has as her duty the preaching of the
immediate Gospel, the Gospel of moral relations, whUe wait
ing for juridical and political relations to become organised
between the nations.
The politics of each man for himself need the corrective
supplied by the proverb God for us all, and we must remember
that God speaks in our consciences. God does justice through
us; God reaUses His providence through us. Each for him-

international !lLife 31 *
self and God for all, in the Christian sense, means then : We
peoples seek our own interest as at an election each candidate
seeks to succeed, and to beat the others if he can; but justice
must remain safe, together with fundamental fraternity, and
the God of justice and of fraternity then works for the good
of all, through our own action as through His.
How far we are, once more, from such relations as these !
Yet Christians must agree on them ; for this is the condition,
in the first place, of the good conscience of nations, and also
it must be the sanction of that good which we are no longer
on the watch against losing, but which everyone desires with
the better part of himself; that which the Saviour, at the same
supreme moment of which we spoke just now, desired to leave
us as His heritage — Peace.

CHAPTER XII
PEACE
IF we make ever so cursory an acquaintance with history,
and a superficial study of the complexity of its revela
tions, many semblances may conceal the real teaching
and real action of the Church with regard to peace.
Religion favours the principle of authority; when it
is militarism that is in possession of authority, religion might
easily seem to be working on its behalf, and thereby to be
friendly to war. Religion has strongly marked conservative
tendencies ; nothing appeals to it less than revolution, although
it is indefinitely progressive; under belUcose governments,
then, it must, to the contemporaries who are unable to con
sider it with a broad view, seem to be closely attached to
beUicose politics.
But that would be to look at the narrowest aspect of things.
What matters is the knowledge of what is the fundamental
doctrine of the Church ; whither, in the long run, the current
of her action is directed. To both these questions the reply
is very easy.
The Church is fraternity in God. Those who have any
other conception of her ought to justify it, and if they
endeavour, as some have done, to make her an apologist for
war, it is on their personal responsibility.
To us it has seemed that the notion of the Church arises
from this : God is the common Father of all men, calling the
whole human community, united in Christ, to a common
supernatural destiny; and to that end arranging it in an
organised society of which the fundamental character is unity
in universality, individuals and nations being united therein
without in any wise losing their autonomy, but allowing them
selves to be governed in spiritual matters by a spiritual
authority; allowing themselves to be penetrated by that spirit
of unity the effect of which in our hearts is called charity,
and the external effect of which, if they remain faithful to it,
will be concord.
As a matter of fact, war has no place in the Catholic plan.
It is not with Catholicism as with the ancient religions, which
were in favour of peace within the racial group, the narrow
family of a people; but forsook it aU the more in questions
of external relations, under the plea of opposition to adverse
institutions or rival gods.
The absolute elevation and all-embracing breadth of
Catholic religious feeling allows no one who penetrates into
it and is penetrated by it to faU into this zealous selfishness,
this selfish and therefore quarrelsome zeal. If it be true, as
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peace 313
has been claimed, that religious fraternity created Greek his
tory, of which the amphictyonies were a great factor, and also
Roman history, and also, earlier, on the same Latin soil,
Etruscan life — would not the universal brotherhood of Chris
tians, far more than this narrow fraternity, were it but
obedient to the voice of the Church, create a history of peace
for the world?
We Catholics do not preach the struggle for life, but union
for life, for the highest life. We do not believe that the
world is given up to brute force, and that brute force, thanks
to selection, is its method of progress. We believe that the
most fundamental law of the world is love, since love is the
concentration of forces. We believe that in the human king
dom this law, thanks to the intervention of reason and our
higher feelings, takes on a greater breadth than it shows in
nature, in which the reason and the love immanent in all
things are not seconded by a considered consent. And if in
addition grace comes to illumine the reason with a superior
light, revealing to it the views of Providence, and if our feel
ings, soaked with this grace, strengthen the thread whereby
our hearts are bound to each other, our teaching and our
tendencies will be even further from what Lacordaire called
a " doctrine of the slums."
No, our God is no Teutates, nor our Christ the hero of a
military trilogy. On the Mount where the Law of the New
Testament was given, it was said : Blessed are the peace
makers ; for they shall be called sons of God.
The liturgy takes up this theme, and after addressing God
as the author and lover of peace, it cries out : 0 God, from
whom proceed holy desires, right counsels and just works,
give to thy servants that peace which the world cannot
give . . . that our times, by thy protection, may be peaceful.
If this prayer be analysed, it will be seen to contain true
pacificism in its most perfect formula, the pacificism which
wants peace not through cowardice or illuminism, but through
the rectitude of desires, the wisdom of counsels and the jus
tice of deeds.
Our saints, again, those witnesses of doctrine, whose lives
are as it were the openings through which we may judge of
the continuity of a current which would otherwise seem hidden,
are in the most eminent degree men of peace.
That seems quite plain? Certainly; but only on the con
dition that the Church, as an institution, preaches peace,
seeing that the saints, those men and women without preten
sion, had no pretension but to reflect exactly the social idea
which is at the base of the Catholic organisation. If they
are sons of a divided city, they bear themselves like St. Francis
of Assisi, who reconciled the majores and minores in battle.
Between town and town they do as did St. Catherine of Siena,

3H xrbe Cburcb
who traversed the whole of Italy crying: Peace! Peace!
Between people and people they are as St. Bernard, who made
himself a universal arbitrator, and would have no war except
against the Oriental invader, who by threatening the countries
of the Gospel threatened the future of civiUsation.
The latest comer to our altars, that most sublime, most
remarkable, valiant and gentle heroine, Joan of Arc, was no
exception. This French Valkyrie, as some folk like to call
her, made war only because she could not avoid war; because
the avoidance of war would have been the consecration of
injustice, the consecration of invasion, the death of what was
nearest to her heart; her fatheriand. Death for herself she
could welcome; but death for France, no !
She addressed letter after letter to the Englishman in
endeavouring to bring him to do right to the King of Heaven,
as she said in her delightful way, that is, clearly, to realise
justice. She is ready to make peace, said she of herself, if
you will do her right, so that you restore and pay to France
what you have withheld.
They replied to her advances by calling her cowherd and
ribald. This lack of success wrested from her, says her
almoner Pasquerel, great plenty of tears. The idea of shed
ding blood overwhelmed her. She dried her tears for battle,
but she had made her act of Christian protestation, and she
declared her motive of action on the day when she said,
with that typical French vivacity which marked all her
behaviour : The peace that is wanted is that these English
should go back to their country, to England.
Yet we must understand that if the Church desires peace,
if peace is her prayer, peace her ideal, it by no means fol
lows that she desires peace at any price, peace before every
thing. What the Church desires before everything is neither peace
nor war; it is good. She adopts the definition of her great
doctor, St. Thomas Aquinas, who says after St. Augustine,
in his luminous and measured style : Peace is nothing else
than the tranquillity of order.
If order reigns, and all is safe among the goods for which
we are responsible, then peace is right; whosoever disturbs
it in the name of ambition, of avarice or pride need not hope
to gain religion for his ally. But if order is disturbed by
unjust provocation, by injuries to honour, or by obstacles to
the interest of a legitimate national development which for
the Christian represents the interest of Providence, then it is
necessary to react. War is not in such a case execrable and
cruel injustice; it is justice armed, Uke those figures of the
frescoes, of olden time, with sword raised, ready to strike
gravely and mightily, when the scales of Equity have deter-

peace 315
mined the right and shown the culprit with their imperturbable
and slow finger.
None the less, war, though it be thus an act of justice as
far as concerns the party that wages it for the sake of the
good, is none the less, considered as a whole, a daughter of
injustice, since the claiming of right by force presupposes a
force which is opposed to that right. If injustice be sup
pressed just war is rendered useless, and unjust war impos
sible. And so the Church, without useless invective, con
secrates her influence not to the search after pacificist
systems, but to the attempt to secure that all have their due,
and yield their due to others, make concessions in case of
dispute, and do not have recourse to extreme methods except
in extreme cases which would not occur if good will were
present. She is not content with this attempt ; she goes further, and
means to go deeper. For what we have just said, that peace
is the daughter of justice, is not the whole truth, nor even the
chief part of the truth. That justice which has peace for, its
daughter is itself the daughter of a mother who, in the Scrip
tures, bears the same name, but in a wider sense.
As in some countries the family name is doubled, being
given on the one hand to the father and on the other to the
son in place of the usual first name, so, in the language of
Christianity, the just man is he who does justice to his neigh
bour; but also and particularly he who does justice to God,
to himself, to things as well as persons, to the religious and
moral virtues — ^moral, that is, in the individual sense — as well
as to the social virtues.
Now let us consider if a man can be just in the first sense
without being so in the second — if a man can do justice to
his neighbour when he is avaricious, spiteful, jealous, care
less of the divine, luxurious, full of pride, and so on.
The Church does not think so. She thinks with the psalm
that deep calleth unto deep and that nations, no more than
individuals, can be just to others if they are not just, that is
moral, within. " A virtuous state is called to enjoy peace,"
said Aristotle of old {Polit. viii. i). Peace on earth to men
of good will, says the Gospel, with greater authority. There
is no peace for the wicked, said the prophets by anticipation.
They know not the path of peace; there is no justice in their
ways. They have gone in paths that lead astray. Whoso walks
in them knows not peace (Isa. xliii. 22 ; lix. 8). And alluding
to the misguided pacificists who look for systems without
attending to souls, another said : They healed the breach of
the daughter of my people disgracefully, saying: Peace!
peace! when there was no peace (Jer. viii. 11).
All these sayings ought to instruct us. In the actual state
of human morality, there is no hope of durable peace, because

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there is no hope of justice. Justice may be praised, but it
waits in the cold; from individuals to societies the leprosy
extends, and it is not the ointment of formulas. Parliamentary
resolutions or declarations of Congress that will stop its
ravages. It is here that in doctrine and practice comes the principal
r61e of the Church. What is the good of waiting to speak of
the truce of God, of the great projects fostered by Popes for
the organisation of the powers, and the consequent termina
tion of quarrels ! What matter the admonitions perpetually
addressed to Christian princes from the epoch of Constantine
to Pius X. and Benedict XV. ? Diplomatic documents and
encyclicals are not lacking. But the essential for the Church
is her moral r61e, her action of sanctification, and, it may
even be said, her very existence, seeing that she is the " Holy
Church." What the Church inculcates : what the Church does : what
the Church is : these are the sources of true pacificism. What
she is is the union of mankind in a worldwide society. What
she does is a work of amelioration of human relations begin
ning from within, that is, beginning with the causes, instead
of only touching the symptoms. What she inculcates is that
summary of the Law and the Prophets, that mainspring of
good, that central knot of all the ties in which peace is
trapped — love.
Love drawn from its source ; the feeling of brotherhood in
God, the centre of the whole circle of being, without whom
the sheaf has no band to hold it and the ears get scattered;
love in the universal Man, the Son of Man, the real symbol
of that unity which we make up, of that common foundation
which we have to defend against the hardness of life, instead
of rending it into bleeding fragments ; the love which does not
divide what is united — the Father to honour Him, the sons
to be treated as brethren, time to pass through as helpful
fellow-travellers, eternity to be attained in the unity of a
happy family — that, whatever illusion may think of it, is the
secret of peace among men.
All comes from the sources, and outside Love there are no
sources. War is the daughter of sin, and it is the Lamb of
God who takes away sin. Lamb of God who takest away the
sins of the world, cries the Liturgy insistently and repeatedly,
grant us, grant us, yea, do Thou grant us peace !
O pacificists, if you have a means of sanctifying men, of
making them moral and so of making moral institutions and
nations, use it, for it is good. The Catholic has one; it is
the living Gospel, Christ made real through an institution,
acting socially, the Church. Keep to the Church of Christ.
When you are within it and you enjoy its strength, you
will lend it yours regulated and sanctified, cleansed of its

peace 317
Utopianism, confirmed in its hope. But begin at the begin
ning. Recognise that here is the source of peace, because
here is the source of justice and of love, here the bridle of those
vices which fight against justice and love, here effective help,
warm feelings, kindly fatherhood and brotherhood, forces of
recovery beside counsels of innocence, stimulants which in
their action unite the energies of earth and heaven, and which
neglect neither the resources of the most scientific psychology,
nor those of that mysticism which is the sense of the divine
in us.
Peace I leave you, My peace I give to you, said the Saviour,
not as the world giveth. The world, unless it passes out into
the divine, has no means of establishing peace in itself.
Peace descends from on high, it does not rise from below.
When the dawn appears to rise, and seems to emerge from
the ground, it is our earth that bends down, after its night
long prostration, at the feet of the god of light, and, like
Esther before the Eastern satrap, feels the touch of his golden
sceptre.

BOOK V
THE ORGANISATION OF THE
CHURCH CHAPTER I
TH^ DIVINE ORDER OF THE CHURCH
NOW that we have studied the Church's raison
d'itre, and its raison d'itre has enabled us to
understand its essence, from which arise its
character and the various forms which its rela
tions assume, we come, without the hope of going
very far into the matter, to the question of its organisation.
We have to see the expansion of that unity which is the
fundamental note of the Church.
The fact that the Church is one does not prove that it is
uniform. As soon as unity is no longer nuUity, as soon as it
becomes enriched and in the measure that it does so, it calls
for a multipUcity of functions which themselves demand an
ordered arrangement, without which unity, pretending to
become richer, will be destroyed, and will involve in its own
destruction the very being which it made to consist.
Now this is what is meant by organisation. Organisation
is the unity of what is manifold. Our body is manifold ; but
it is only one. By means of the anatomical connections of
the organs, the physiological solidarity of its functions, it
realises what scientists call a symbiosis, that is a common
life governed by certain laws, a differentiation which is con
centrated, a concentration which is differentiated ; that is
what we mean when we say that a body is organised.
Our Church, which is a spiritual body, cannot escape this
condition. Beginning from its birth, as fast as it grows, it
must unfold the riches of its life, while continuing more and
more to concentrate them, as we saw when we spoke of the
unity of the Church. This twofold reciprocal effort consti
tutes its organisation.
But if we turn our eyes from the individual living being to
nature as a whole, we shall find that it too is organised. All
science, all philosophy, and even poetry are only the ecstatic
contemplation of this organisation. If the body of a tiny
midge which is born and dies within the space of a few hours
is a wonderful thing, we must agree that the great cosmos,
of which the phenomena of life are only a manifestation, is
no less rich in immanent wisdom. The ancients liked to
imagine it as a living being of colossal dimensions, endowed
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320 xrbe Cburcb
with functions that were the phenomena of nature, governed
by a universal soul whereof our soul was a reflection, and
which by some of them was confounded with God.
We no longer think thus, thanks to the Gospel and to
science ; but what made men think thus still remains. Nature
is organised. From that province of nature to which we are
confined we gather only a very small part of its organisation ;
but we infer the rest. But have we not said that in a
certain fashion nature forms part of the Church ? And if this
be true, must we not say that the Church, which is organised
in this inferior part of her, must be much more so in general ?
But once more, if the Church is organised in that con
tinuation of her that is called nature, much more and much
better must she be so in her principal manifestation, which is
mankind joined with God, as far as concerns the supernatural
destinies of the race.
Mankind is organised in temporal things as far as possible.
The effort of the ages tends towards this organisation with
an order that is only manifest when it is broadly considered,
but which is none the less easy to discover. Mankind knows
that it is organic by right. Descended, as it is, from a single
pair; responding to a creative idea which unfolds in races
and in families of nations, but which keeps its fundamental
unity and issues towards the same destinies, it experiences
this obligation in the form of the need of forming partner
ships, for the better exploitation of life, between individual
and individual, family and family, city and city, and in a
limited measure, but one which wiU, we hope, extend,
between nation and nation.
If this has not been done and carried out fully ; if, from
Adam to ourselves, there have not been formed, by means of
more and more complex alliances, a succession of syntheses
which might by progressing without rupture arrive at an
organisation of humanity, the fault has been not in nature's
call, but with sin, which has walled us up in selfishness and
destroyed the bonds between us ; with the dulness of mind
that has prevented us from looking down from above or
diving into the depths to discover the humanity within us,
with historical occurrences, chances, material obstacles such
as distances, cosmic revolutions, and so on.
But in the matter of the supernatural these causes of divi
sion do not obtain, or in any case are so weakened that their
action is only accessory. The duU-mindedness is overcome
by Revelation and by that permanent assistance which Christ
promised to His own. Sin is only too active, and produces
schisms, divisions, which are the effects of partial organisa
tion. But sin is kept within bounds by the interior grace of
the Church and by a providence which that grace fulfils.
External chances and material obstacles, which weigh so

xrbe 2)ivine ©rber of tbe Cburcb 321
heavily on temporal organisation, are no longer of great
importance in the matter of entirely moral relations. A
missionary Bishop who wanders by the Congo or the Yellow
River takes with him thither the whole of the Church ; he
takes but a little of his country, and certainly the Chinese
or the Negro understand him much better when he says, to
explain himself in a few words : I represent the Church, than
if he were to say : I represent humanity.
The new Adam, Christ, was able, then, to lay the founda
tions of a religious organisation which, to become a " perfect
society," that is a complete society, would not have to wait
on the slow progress of political or economic organisation.
Not that time refused its collaboration in the work. Time
is present everywhere, even when God is at work, since it is
in relation to man that He acts, and if we ourselves had a
little more of this devouring time before us, it would be most
interesting to trace the historical evolution of all the organs
of the human-divine body. But what we are saying is that
time, though necessary everywhere, was less so here than
elsewhere. A few well-used centuries would be enough for
this colossal growth, and the first day of the Church's life
already showed that its essential had been obtained, thanks
to the Spirit who hovered over her as over the primordial
creation, without having the same resistances to count on,
knowing that He had obtained better co-operation.
I This Spirit of organisation rested first of all on Christ. It
I produced in Him individual effects the harmony of which will
I be part of the contemplation of eternity. But these indivi
dual effects were only individual as far as concerned their
location ; their intention was already social, and they called
for the display of a social organisation which had to be
universal. Shall we ever weary of calling our Christ the Son of Man,
the Universal Man, the Man who draws mankind and the
nature that is conjoined with mankind towards the Godhead
with which He himself is joined ?
It was to fulfil these r6les that He was made sin, as
St. Paul says, because humanity was sin ; that He was made
sorrow, because humanity was sorrowful ; that He was made
expiatory virtue, in order that our expiations might acquire
a value through His ; that lastly He was made glory, drawing
to heaven living humanity in the, person of that One of its
members who was given to it for Head ; the glorified Head
which the members will follow, when the collective giant has
ended his painful journey.
In Christ, says St. Paul, all things are made one and con
sist : omnia in ipso constant (CoUos. i. 16-18); and so much
the more all men.

322 xrbe Cburcb
If humanity, then, is organic in itself, it must be organic
in Christ, that is to say it must be so to the extent that it is
by Him constituted into a Church, that it becomes in a
spiritual sense His own Body, the Body whereof the Holy
Ghost, communicated through the Incarnation, becomes in
some sort the common soul.
We will go farther still. We will say : The Church, a
human-divine body through Christ, which includes God
within itself, must form part of that divine organisation
which makes the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost the
model of aU life, the supreme Order, the ideal case — although
transcending ideality — of unity in organic multiplicity.
In God, also, there is vital richness in the full unity of life,
and the divine relations. Fatherhood, Sonship, the mutual
bond of Love ; power, wisdom, goodness ; source, law, end ;
these make up a hierarchy, an organisation whose reflection
is found in all things, seeing that everywhere and in all
things we have to do with nothing else than creation, govern
ment and use ; of furnishing an initiative, which is an act of
power ; of ruling it, which is an act of wisdom ; and of direct
ing it towards a chosen end, which is an act of love.
But the divine order must be reflected first of all in the
Church, because, firstly, she is the emanation most akin to
it ; since Christ, who as the Word is part of the divine order,
directly founded the Church ; but, above all, because such a
foundation is not the act of an architect who builds and dis
appears. Christ remains conjoined with us ; his Spirit lives
in us socially, and it is He who organises us. The Father is
given to us for a father by Him who has adopted us as His
brethren by virtue of His divine solidarity.
This Church, whibh is wholly in Christ, inasmuch as it is
His Body, the Man Christ, who is also God, the Son of God,
introduces into the Trinity.
The Father sends His Son, who sends His apostles, who
go to the faithful, and the faithful, in giving themselves to
the apostles, give themselves to the Son, and return through
Him to the Father, in the unity of the Spirit communicated by
the Son.
Did not Jesus, in His sacerdotal prayer, say : Father, that
they may be one, as Thou and I are one, that is in an organic
unity? The glory which Thou hast given Me, He went on, / have
given them. And to His Apostles : As My Father has sent
Me, so I send you (John xx. 21). He that receiveth you re-
ceiveth Me: and He that receiveth Me, receiveth Him that
sent Me (Matt. x. 40).
And the Apostles, in their turn, said : We announce to you
that which we have seen and heard, that you also may have

xrbe Divine ®rber of tbe Cburcb 323
fellowship with us, and that our fellowship may be with the
Father and with His Son Jesus Christ, that you may have
joy, and that your joy may be full (i John i. 3-4). No men
tion is made in this text of the Holy Ghost ; but He is under
stood, and we find His effect, the fulness of joy.
This intermingling of the divine order with the human-
divine social body led St. Cyprian to define the Church as
" a redeemed people, assembled in the unity of the Father
and the Son and the Holy Ghost " : De imitate Patris et Filii
et spiritus sancti plebs adimata (De Orat. Dom., No. 23).
And carrying his boldness still further, he dared to call the
Church "the Unity of God," to signify that the divine
embrace which harmoniously unites the Three Persons passes
through the Son as it were under the Church, to maintain it
in God the Three in One, as in those old pictures where God
the Father, in the light of the Spirit, folds in His arms and in
His garment the Church united to His Son Incarnate and
crucified. It follows naturally that the order of the Church is only an
extension of the eternal divine order, and that no other
organisation could pretend to so rich a simplicity, so complete
a simplicity as hers.
Her outlines, however, will be deficient, if not her centre,
and she will allow of a certain relativity, because a human-
divine society, if it is perfect in so far as it is divine, and per
fect moreover at the point where the curve touches the infinite,
yet so far as it is human, and as the finite curve recedes from
the infinite tangent, it becomes frail, subject to human acci
dents, to chance, to historical contingencies.
If we push our study of the religious organisation a little
farther, instead of keeping, as we have been doing, to the
main lines, we shall see in it variabilities and failings which
disclose its human element, which is never perfectly sub
mitted to the divine that acts as its soul.
Our soul, also, organises our body as best it can; in the
most favourable circumstances it only succeeds in bringing
its matter into subjection for general purposes. God is not
thus powerless in humanity ; but He makes Himself powerless
out of respect for man. He leaves us our responsibility. He
lets rule the general laws of life which He has ordained. Yet
He is none the less there to give the whole its direction, and
this, unless by a permanent miracle foreign to the broad views
of providence, can only be done by an organism working on
the lines expected of it.
The Papacy and the Episcopate represent this organism.
We shall see their various developments. In studying these
institutions, we may get an idea of the high wisdom that
informs them ; of the deep unity that guides them. " Let us
be many," said Albert the Great of our debaters ; " but let

324 xrbe Cburcb
our cause be one." Let us be many also in the Church;
many playing various parts, assuming various responsibili
ties ; but let the common cause be served. It wUl be, seeing
Who rules over it and gathers it into one.
When the Queen of Saba came tO' the court of Solomon,
the wise and subtle order of the Eastern array took her
breath away for wonder — non habebat ultra spiritum; and
much more must the assembly of the Gentiles of all times
marvel at the wisdom of the divine Solomon in the adminis
tration of His Kingdom.
And the Church is not unworthy of such admiration.
She is all the more worthy of it, and God shows Himself
so much the more worthy of it in her, since the work of
sanctification is above all a work of mercy. -^ It raises up us
who were fallen ; it sustains us, who waver every moment ; it
makes us who oppose it go forward; it uplifts us who are
weighed down ; it heals the wounds that we incur in the
ceaseless battle of moral life, and administers to us enduring
draughts of refreshment on the march.
The Church is an enterprise of salvation, a thing more
difficult and delicate, and yet more necessary than a work of
pure justice. Her functioning must reflect this purpose of
hers, and this will explain certain rigidities and complexities
which surprise us.
Religious humanity, like a vessel in a storm, needs a crew
always ready, a sure pilot, a firm discipline, an energetic and
active goodness, duties properly distributed and properly
supervised, and all hands on deck and the steersman's eyes
on the stars.
Only on these conditions can the passage be made.
And must not this fearful and everlasting passage of ours
be made at all costs?
^"Per viscera misericordice visitavit nos (Luke i. 78).

CHAPTER II
THE MONARCHICAL GOVERNMENT OF
THE CHURCH
THE Church's organisation has the Trinity for its
source. Through the Son, the Father, the Son
and the Holy Ghost enfold in Their noble
familiarity and cause to take part in Their in
effable relations all who are called to reap the
benefit of the Incarnation, that is to say all consentient man
kind, and nature linked together with mankind.
The head of this all is Christ, and whatever makes but a
single body with Him enters with Him into the divine
hierarchy of the Trinity.
From this source, high and far removed from everyday
reality as it may perhaps seem, are derived in the Church all
everyday realities, and if we fail to understand the proceed
ings of our chiefs, the fault is often with an initial blunder,
since the regions in which the action of religion is elaborated
are not even suspected by the critic. Moreover, starting
from thence, it does not refuse to descend step by step to
the humblest realities of life ; but the summits have to be
explored. At this stage we must elucidate in the light of the above-
mentioned general principle a very important question relat
ing to religious government. Is the Church a monarchy?
Is it more or less of a democracy? Does authority come
from below, and are the chiefs only representatives, manda
tories? At the very least, is there room for the authority to
be controlled, divided, limited, as it is in most human govern
ments? Or does power in the Church come on the contrary
from above, so that the faithful are simply subjects, and
their immediate authority only an emanation of a supreme
authority ?
This question has given rise to dangerous mistakes on the
part of those who are not members of the Church, and even
on the part of many of the ill-instructed faithful. It is at
the bottom of the Protestant dispute ; it is a part of the
Modernist dispute, and it is the key to many special ques
tions in which good Catholics, even if constitutionalists, get
into a muddle.
The solution is to be sought in the hidden mysteries whence
everything arises.
The Church is humano-divine. God is included in her
being and her functioning through the Son of God made
Man ; through the Spirit of God which He communicates to
us ; through the Father, whom He makes our Father by
reason of His Fraternal solidarity with us.
325

326 xrbe Cburcb
If God is included in the Church, it goes without saying
that He takes the first place therein, whether in the order
of constitution or of functioning. We cannot create or
govern God.
Secondly, since God is included in the Church through
Christ, of Whom it is written that He hath given all things
into His hands: who is the Head of supernatural descent, the
conjoint instrument of the Godhead and participating in His
human nature in all His prerogatives, it also goes without
saying that under God, or rather jointly with God, the holder
of the first place in the Church is Christ.
Whence arises the classic thesis of theologians and
preachers of the kingship of Christ. A spiritual kingship,
whereof the name Christ is only the expression, seeing that
Christ (X/oto-Tos) means anointed^ consecrated as a king for
the government of souls.
So far there is no difficulty. The Church is the Kingdom
of Christ, and so the Kingdom of God. We cann6t change
this kingdom into a republic of which the God-Man will have
the honour of being president, nor into a constitutional
monarchy where He will reign with diminished power, half
decorative. God must reign actually through Christ in the
unity of a government in which there is no room to dis
tinguish between what belongs to the Father and what
belongs to the Son, because the One is in the Other and acts
through the Other. We must leave to unity what belongs
to unity, and to God what belongs to God.
Once more, since Christ returned to the unseen world, if
there has been a visible representative of Christ in the
Church; if it has been said to anyone: As My Father hath
sent Me, so also I send you — Go and teach all nations, which
is the power that we call magisterium; Baptise them in the
name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost, and
Do this for a memorial of Me, which is the sacramental
power called ministry ; Whoso heareth you heareth Me, and
whoso despiseth you despiseth Me — Whatsoever thou shalt
bind on earth shall be bound also in heaven, and whatsoever
thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed also in heaven, which
is the power of government (imperium), comprising the legis
lative, judicial and executive powers, all three necessary for
a true government; if such there is, the College of the
Twelve and their authentic successors wUl be the first
authority in the name of Christ and in union with Christ.
The whole Christian people will depend thereon as a flock on
its shepherds, the flock as a whole on them as a whole, and
each particular flock rendered necessary by local demands
depending on each of them, without prejudice to the unity
that embraces all the groups.
Here again the deduction is inevitable. We are not going

xrbe /Iftonarcbical (Bovernment of tbe Cburcb 327
to prevent Christ from realising His divine intentions ; and
He who was but a passing influence so far as concerns His
visible walking with men. He who died and yet in the spiritual
world is King of ages, will not be withheld from finding a
way in which to realise His loving promise : I will not leave
you orphans — Behold I am with you all days, even to the
consummation of the world.
Lastly, if the Twelve and their successors set over the
flock are not themselves to be an amorphous flock ; if what is
multiplied must return to unity to be made perfect ; if Christ
meant to give Himself a representation not only collective,
but also individual, as His visible survival, and if He said to
one of the Twelve : Feed My lambs, that is the faithful;
Feed My sheep, that is the pastors; and again, I will give to
thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven, as to a major-domo
of the palace, to whom he must go who is desirous of
approaching the master ; and if, in consequence, when Christ
has departed, Peter is a Christ by proxy, by mission and by
the assistance of heaven ; if this too be true, then he who will
be at the head of the Church will be the successor of Peter,
and the other bishops wiU be in relation to him what all bishops
are in relation to Christ, what Christ is in relation to God ;
all will be only an emanation, a derivation of the sovereign
power of salvation.
The monarchical character of the Church is here fully
apparent. But it is so only on condition of retaining all the
links of the chain.
But for the Protestants there is a gap in this succession
of human-divine facts. God sends Christ, and Christ is
God — at least for those who are orthodox ; for as for the rest,
one does not quite know what they believe. But Christ is
not in relation with us through the Church. Starting from
Him, the direction changes. It ascends again, instead of
continuing to descend. It is we who go to meet Christ.
We adhere to Him across time, as to an historical character,
and that each for himself, each on his own responsibiUty, the
Bible serving as a bridge between the isolated Christian,
perhaps ignorant, but in any case free to make his own
comment, and the far-off Christ who is his whole life. What
a fragile bridge ! . . .
It is true that we place ourselves, in reading the Bible,
under the presumed light of the Holy Ghost, each his own
Holy Ghost, if I may dare to say so, as if God had arranged
to enlighten each of us separately from the rest in order to
disunite us, and as if the broad sun which enlightens men or
the common candelabrum which illuminates the feasting-hall
of the Gospel were but the solitary candle that casts its
flickering circle of light on an obscure text !

328 xrbe Cburcb
It is only after this that we, as the adherents of a common
idea, undertake to form a Church. Thus the Church de
pends on us and not we on it. The authorities that govern
it are of our creation, and the form of government will be
that which we impose, always dependent on our initiative
and always subject to revision.
Here the idea of the sovereignty of the people in the
realm of the supernatural is very obvious. The systems
have changed, but the fundamental principle has remained.
Following Marsilius of Padua, a heretic of the fourteenth
century, the Protestants have generally sustained the theory
that the Church is democratic and not monarchical. It is the
religious society as a whole which possesses the authority
and delegates it to the pastors. Unless, indeed, this care be
left to temporal princes, who are appointed for this very
purpose of undertaking the burdens that weigh on their
peoples ! Thus conflicts between Church and State will be
avoided, after the Church has been devoured by the State.
There follows a right of control, an eventual right of
resistance, a right vested in the people or in their princely
mandatories to depose the religious authorities, and many
other things as well, according to the varieties of the sys
tems constructed on this scheme.
We Catholics cannot reason thus. We do not claim to
give the Church its constitution, but to receive our constitu
tion from the Church. It is she who, in the name of Christ,
begets us spiritually in baptism. She stands between Christ
and us, a solid bond of a social character, because humanity
is solid and social ; it is not we, tiny, weak and isolated indi
viduals, that make the tie between Christ and her.
We have not, then, to control her ; it is she that con
trols us.
The descending scale of authority which passes from God
to Christ is continued from Christ to the Church which
emanates directly from Him, and in the Church, which is an
organised, not a scattered society, it passes firstly to the
Twelve and their successors, the Bishops, then, within the
Twelve, to Peter, and his successor, the Pope.
/—'Such is the system to which we give our allegiance.
The unity of the Church, St. Cyprian declares, is like the
robe of Christ, which was woven without seam from top to
bottom {desuper). "One God, One Christ, One Church," he
says again, meaning to sum up in these three words the whole
of the supernatural regime, in that God, fully one; Christ,
one with Him in unity of person ; the Church, one with them
both in its unity of organisation wherein Christ is found once
more ; the body of His envoys, grouped around His own
representative; these are the complete integration of the
divine work.

xrbe /Ibonarcbical ©overnment of tbe Cburcb 329
In spite, then, of the various parts that our authorities
share among us, in order better to be adapted to human life,
there is among us no real division of authority. We are
under a single government, that of Christ, the King of souls,
who binds us to the single and- supreme government of
God, the universal King.
Hereby we see that the monarchical principle is the founda
tion of the Church, because it is the foundation of the com
plete reality which has God for its head, and the foundation
of the supernatural reality of mankind which has Christ for
its head, since the whole human race has its religious
solidity not of itself and on its own initiative, but by insti
tution and in its divine and human Christ.
Without wishing to be suspected of a desire here to
introduce political speculations, it must be granted to the
defenders of royalty that monarchy is in itself, in its ideal,
the most perfect form of government, because the unity of
order obtained more or less in democracy or aristocracy is
only a kind of secondary unity, which in the long run
demands the other. That is why the universal regime is
ultra-monarchical, under the name of divine government.
It remains to enquire if men live solely by the ideal, and
if God, represented by the rulers of the State, is Himself
sufficiently to be found there. In the Church He is to be
found, because He dweUs in her through the Spirit. Whence
it follows that monarchy is of right in the Church, and that
at any rate in essentials she offers no danger of oppression,
whether in regard to secondary authorities, or in regard to
liberties. Long ago Seneca said : Parere Deo libertas est, to obey
God is liberty. If the religious chain, passing through the
bishop, the Pope, Christ, binds us to God and His immanent
law through the Holy Spirit, liberty, so far as it is contained
under this law, has nothing to fear. God does not tyrannise :
He makes us live.
All the same, particular authorities, bound to us on the
one hand and to God on the other, do not lose their power
over us by the fact that they hold to God. And if it is through
an intermediary that they are bound to Him, they do not
lose their prerogatives from the fact that they possess them
and exercise them by virtue of a dependence which is in the
long run a dependence on God. God, once again, absorbs
nothing ; He gives all things.
If we did not fear to tire the reader by an appeal to a very
familiar comparison, we would say : the government of the
Church is monarchical in the same way as is that of the living
being. There is nothing less democratic than a living

330 xrbe Cburcb
creature. Those who call it a colony of cells state a partial
truth relatively to the processes of the construction of tissues
and the realisation of the organic plan ; but to use this as a
complete definition of the Uving creature would belong to a
very flimsy philosophy.
The primary thing in the living body is not the cells, nor
the parts in general; it is the whole, and in the whole, the
principle of the whole, which is the vital idea, what is called
the soul. In the body of the Church, also, the first thing is
the soul, namely, the divine Spirit communicated by Christ
the Son of God and by the Father who sent Him.
After that, the first thing in the living body is the central
nervous system, and that is not a number of anarchic cells.
In the Church, the first thing as a visible element is the
episcopal body united to the Pope ; the brain from which pro
ceed, under the action of the Holy Ghost, both the thought,
under the name of dogma, and movement, under the name
of government, and the whole of the life that comes from
Christ for the benefit of souls, by the flow of the sacraments.
In the one case as in the other unity begins from the top
{desuper) ; it is not a result ; it is not the multitude that
creates it by organising itself, but on the contrary the
organisation issues from it.
In architecture, is it the stones that in the first place explain
the house ? What explains the house is the idea of the archi
tect, and next the initiative of the builders. After that the
stones receive their organisation.
Hence comes that profound thought which has determined
the order of the Creed : J believe in the Holy Ghost, the Holy
Catholic Church, the Communion of Saints, the Resurrection
of the Body, and Life Everlasting. In this series the Spirit
of God takes the first place. The Church is attached to It as
to its organising principle. The communion of saints ex
presses the fundamental law of the Church, which is charity
under the action of the Spirit. The resurrection of the body
and eternal life are the results of their work.

CHAPTER III
THE PART OF THE GOVERNED IN THE
GOVERNMENT OF THE CHURCH
THE Church, then, is not a democracy. Authority
in her comes from above, since it comes from God,
through Christ, and since Christ has regulated its
outflow to us by the foundation of a permanent
mission, the Twelve, with an authentic succession
in the episcopal body; and then, at the head of the Twelve,
Peter, with his authentic succession in the Papacy.
Does this mean that all we are merely passive in the Church ?
we passive under our immediate atithorities, tbe immediate
authorities passive under higher authorities, and those passive
themselves, doubtless, under the supreme visible authority of
the Pope, the invisible authority of Christ, and in the last
resort that of the Holy Ghost?
Such a system of ruling all things by hidebound regulation,
of hanging all things together from nail to nail, of abolishing
all things, it might be said, in order to sanctify all things, and
to make God — not all things to all men in order to save all,
as the Apostle says, but what takes the place of all men in
order to suppress them all, would be the very contrary of a
real system of religious government.
Religion consists in linking us with God, not in absorbing
us in Him. The religious system of government must be a
system that excites, not that swallows up energies. Its pur
pose is not to ecUpse or extinguish us, but to enkindle us with
the whole flame of life. / have come, said the Saviour, to
cast fire on the earth, and what will I but that it be kindled ?
(Luke xii. 49).
Government, then, among us, must leave room for our free
action, and if it does so, this free action cannot fail to react
, on the authorities themselves in so far as they are human ; and
more than this, to modify what comes to them from on high,
seeing that matter, and especially living matter, determines
in part the result of the influences which it undergoes.
Philosophers have always counted matter among causes,
and they are right, if it be true, as science teaches, that there
is no action without reaction, in any order of phenomena.
Even were our Church a rigid mechanism in which trans
mitting organs pass on force to each other, under a single
central motor, the faithful would not lack a share in its action.
They would act in this way, that they would impose on the
authority, by their manner of being and their manner of bear
ing themselves under the government of its law, particular
methods of government, which would in itself be an influence
on their part. 331

332 xrbe Cburcb
But the Church is not such a machine; she is a living
organism. And in an organism what is moved, that is the
particular organs and even the most minute cells, is equally
the mover, by reason of the body's organic solidarity.
There is only one thing in the living creature which is a
mover without being itself moved, and that is the vital idea,
the soul. And even that is conditioned ; a fact which is proved
by this, that if the conditions are unfavourable, the organism
swerves, suffers and dies, whereas the soul endeavours always
to make it live.
In the Church the Holy Spirit is as it were our common
soul. And this soul is independent, in that none of us can
pretend to influence it in itself; but it depends for its effects
upon the accepting of (%ir liberties and the collaboration of
our efforts. We are not, then, governed without our own
participation, even by the soul of the Church. And it is even
more true that we are not governed without our own partici
pation by the human authorities which rule us in its name,
but with less worth and power.
In this latter case we not only participate in the effects of
the government, but we participate in a certain fashion in the
government itself, without for all that coming back to the
democratic principle which we excluded just now.
In a living body, indeed, in which a soul is at work, direct
ing the body's functions towards certain results which are the
work of life, the principal organs, and particularly the brain,
the central nervous system, are also the principal points of
application of the soul's action.
What animates a body is firstly and before all its brain-
action. From this proceed the great streams which arouse
and direct everything, by reason of that centralisation which
is more and more perfectly revealed as we mount the scale of
beings. But this is not to say that the soul dwells exclusively in the
brain. The soul is everywhere; all in the whole and in each
part, as the philosophers say, in such fashion that the Ufe
which is communicated to the members by the brain does not
prevent a direct communication to the members, by which the
brain, in its turn, profits, as weU as the centres on which it
works. So the divine Spirit which animates the hierarchy, in accord
ance with the Saviour's promise, also animates, in His name,
those to whom it was said : Know you not that your members
are the temples of the Holy Ghost?
The actual indweUing of God in us by grace is one of the
fundamental dogmas of our faith. But if He is in us, as He
Is in the hierarchy, His communications in us and in it cannot
be foreign to each other. What He gives to the hierarchy
comes to us socially, by authority. What He gives to us

xrbe (Boverneb in tbe Cburcb 333
ascends to authority by another road, that of an influence
which authority will judge and make its own, so that in
respect of it we shall be governed and not governors; but
which none the less will have its source among' us, in one or
in several of us, separately or in one of our groups ; either
an association with special ends, a religious family or a
nation. It is in this sense that we may say that initiatives come
especially from the faithful; from authority come directions,
controlling influences and restraints.
This is only partially true, because the first initiative in the
matter of salvation necessarily comes from the Saviour and
His representatives. By teaching in so far as it has direct
revelation ; by the ministry of the sacraments and the general
direction of life, the hierarchy begins, because Christ begins
and God begins. But in the course of the activities of salva
tion and as concerns the relative values it allows of, other
initiatives can take their rise elsewhere, since God is present
everywhere, and though He respects the order which He Him
self has estabUshed, He is not a slave to it.
The grace of God, say the theologians, is not tied to the
sacraments. Let us understand the word sacrament in the
general sense that we have already several times attributed
to it. Neither the sacrament of truth, which is teaching, nor
the sacrament of holiness, which is ritual action, nor the sacra
ment of Christian activity, which is the exercise of govern
ment, contains all that God has willed to give to the organised
whole of the faithful. There are private truths, bursts of
sanctity which do not arise from ritual action ; good directions
are taken which are not enjoined. The God within, the
strength of things, as the liturgy calls Him {Rerum Deus
tenax vigor), pushes forth shoots at every point where His
living creation allows His presence to flourish.
Nature is full of soul (n-Xi^piys 4''"XV'^)> said Aristotle of old.
Was he thinking, when he spoke thus, of that drama of
forests and prairies where so much eager and urgent Ufe
abounds beneath the green suggested by the dash of an
artist's brush? . . . Well, in religious humanity life thus
abounds, and for the same reason. It is fuU of soul. The
soul of the Divine Spirit penetrates it, and we see it escape
everywhere from the fronds that come neither from the official
sower nor from the forest-ranger, but issue directly from the
immanent source of Ufe diffused in all things.
We must not forget that this spontaneous life which gushes
up from the root of our souls at the touch of the Spirit needs
to be controlled. That is where we differ from the false
mystics or the Protestants who throw aside authority, and
ask us to put our belief in the God in them, that is in them
selves. But what authority controls is not for all that of its

334 xrbe Cburcb
creation, and if it uses it although it has not created it, it has
a right to say that life has been its collaborator.
Let us consider the Church no longer as an organism, which
was our first metaphor, but as a nation or social body, which
was our second, and we shall arrive at the same conclusion.
The Church, we have said, is a monarchy. But is it a
monarchy whose government is influenced by no one? Is it
an autocracy in the full and exclusive sense of the word?
Such a being would be a monster, or else a maniac. Every
personal regime is modified by various collaborations, without
which it would become the most unsupportable tyranny. But
a wise monarch organises this collaboration and extends it as
far as he can, instead of attempting to lessen it ; he surrounds
himself with counsellors, leans on the opinion of the best of
them, and sounds his people before he makes laws for them.
The law, according to philosophers, is a statement of reason
{dictamen rationis). What governor or what government can
claim a monopoly of reason? Authority legally represents
reason in regard to the ends of the society ; but it has no real
claim to incarnate reason in itself. It knows, or ought to
know, that useful lights may be obtained from the most
humble citizen, and much more from the best citizens or from
constituted bodies. And so it will desire to consult, to seek
inspiration, while it retains the supreme power of decision.
Now what reason is to law in earthly governments, the
action of the divine Spirit is to religious law in the Church.
And as reason in a State is not the exclusive possession of its
government, so the action of the Spirit is not exclusively to be
found in out* chiefs, although in this case — and it is here that
the comparison breaks down — they are promised a special
assistance. Religious authority, then, knowing that the Holy Spirit is
not entirely confined to her, but that He is diffused through
out the whole Church, giving life to the faithful and breath
ing truth into them, affording them grace and useful impulses,
listens as well as speaks ; is passive as well as active ; and
sanctifies her own sanctifying work by means of the social
infiltrations that reach her.
And by saying infiltrations we do not mean to exclude more
direct action. Christians make petitions, and their humble
supplications are not counted for nothing. At certain epochs
popular intervention was valued so highly that the celebrated
adage Vox populi vox- Dei seemed to be an axiom of govern
ment. Admonitions, assuredly the most vivid form of popular
coUaboration, admonitions certainly respectful, and also ener
getic and insistent, were addressed to the highest authorities,
and that by persons who, like Catherine of Siena or St. Vin
cent Ferrer, could feel themselves authorised to do so by

xrbe (Boverneb in tbe Cburcb 335
nothing less than what was at least the hope that God ex
pressed Himself through them. But their authorities recog
nised it.
To listen thus to the voice of God from without is not to
cease to count on the voice of God within, but only to hear it
everywhere. And it is not abdication, since if the authority
thus submits in appearance to the judgement of an inferior,
it is to a judgement of which the authority itself remains
judge; but with a judgement better judged, better prepared,
better controlled, while awaiting God's sanction for it.
On this side, the Church, which is not a democracy, shares,
like every wise power, the features of democracy. Also, like
every wise power, she shares the features of aristocracy, in
that the secondary authorities, bishops, priests, deacons,
dignitaries of whatever sort, exercise authority in a very real
sense without authority being divided.
They do not divide it, and in this sense do not share it,
because it must remain one, since it is entirely a thing of
Christ, who is not divided ; but they participate in it, by
virtue of a communication which supposes a counterweight
of influence.
They have, by election, a part in the constitution of the
authority. They have moreover, by their private or organ
ised advice, by the direct government of a part of the flock,
a part in its exercise.
We shall have an opportunity of dealing more precisely with
this co-operation in each case; but at the moment the prin
ciple is enough. It enables us to conclude that if, as the
wisdom of the ancients thought, it be true that the best
government is that which unites the participation of all with
the action of the best, controlled and centralised in a single
person; then the governmental system of the Church is mani
festly as near perfection as possible.
It remains to make it efficacious by means of a kind of col
laboration which is the most necessary of all, and the demand
for which, although apparently purely exhortatory, funda
mentally corresponds with what we are treating of. We must
collaborate by giving it our hearts.
Authority, indeed, has no other purpose, in any association
whatever, than to procure the good of the society. And what,
among the children of Christ, is the good of the society, but
charity under its double aspect; love of God and of one's
neighbour, including all the virtues which arise from it and
protect them, invoking that moral progress which is their
growth, while awaiting their consummation later?
Charity of heart is the Church's most precious possession.
Better, from this final and fundamental point of view, a vir
tuous soul than an authority, and a saint than a Pope, if the

336 xrbe Cburcb
Pope be no saint. The greatest in the Kingdom of heaven,
as Jesus testifies — and the Kingdom of heaven whereof He
spoke is in the first place the Church — is not Peter nor any of
the Twelve, at least by virtue of their headship, it is the
humble and upright little child, and whoever is like him.
It is true that the graces of authority are greater socially
and visibly; we are not ranked in order of sanctity; but the
interior graces are greater absolutely considered, and more
efficacious in the end. This follows from the teaching of
St. Paul concerning the divine gifts; this follows from his
doctrine of authority, which he puts always " at the service
of the Spirit " (2 Cor. iii. 8), precisely because it is its rule.
None can dispense with the rule, a society even less than a
man ; but without the urge of life and the virtues which the
Spirit, when obeyed, arouses in us, the rule would be but a
rope dangling over the abyss; the whole of the Church's
governmental system would be a mill without wheat to grind,
and then what would matter the perfection of its machinery?
That formalism which the Gospel calls Pharisaism has
never been able to save anyone.
The faith is preached to us ; it cannot be given to us. The
Church prescribes a path for us, but she cannot walk in it on
our behalf, nor even lead us in that way. She gives us the
sacraments, and the sacraments, efficacious by institution,
may through our action reverse their efficacy. But if this
were general, the reaction on the whole body and on the
government itself would be deadly ; not in its source, which
is divine, but in its methods of application and its efficacy.
Government can no longer be carried on when the subjects
no longer obey. The strength of governments is the good will
of their peoples. When this good will is lacking, the machine
cools and stops.
Let us not be afraid that the Church will ever stop, for
the Spirit of holiness which lives in her has means of limiting
the evil and of preventing the general effects which might
arise from it. History shows that the trials of the Church,
even her moral trials, cause her hidden virtues to come to
light in aU directions. But if the Church does not perish, she
may all the same decrease, from the fact that in each one of
us life may be exhausted.
It is for us to give to the hierarchy the support which alone
can make it fully efficacious for us and useful for the whole
work that is incumbent on it. Of this work and its condi
tions Paul spoke to the Corinthians, too much attached to
particular persons of the hierarchy, when he said to them :
I have planted; Apollo watered; but it is God — God working
within, God obeyed — who giveth the increase.

CHAPTER IV
THE POPE
ALTHOUGH the Church's rdgime admits of wide
co-operation on the part of her subjects and her
secondary authorities, it is none the less a cen-
, tralised and fundamentally monarchical system,
^ because the spiritual authority under which we
rank ourselves is in the last resort divine.
We are governed in the Church by revelation, which is a
communication of the Primary Truth; by the sacramental
system, which is an outflow of the divinity, and by an
authority which, since it extends to the last end, must arise
from the First Authority.
All, then, descends from on high. And the first stage, if
there be one, is Christ. The Father, who is greater than He
considered as man, but with whom, through the grace of
union. He makes only one, communicates to Him the good
things destined for the human race. The Son of Man reigns
with God over that organisation which is called in the Gospel
the Kingdom of God, to denote the character of the authority
that governs it.
Starting from Christ, we have seen how divine authority is
passed on by means of the permanent mission organised by the
Saviour as a kind of collective representative of Him. The
episcopate, the true successor of the Twelve, incarnates this
mission. But since the mission is collective, it cannot itself be
inorganic. It has a chief. And this chief, at its head, plays
the part which Christ Himself played among the Apostles ; he
is the substitute for Christ, he represents the Sender among the
group of the sent, lends his visibility to the invisible Chief
who is again hidden in mystery, ceases not to rule His house
hold by His Spirit incessantly communicated, by His sacra
mental presence, and by His manifold action in our rites.
Peter, the steward of the Kingdom of Heaven, thanks to
the keys which His Master has conferred upon him, and
Peter's successor, the inheritor of his power, who represents
like him, now that Christ has departed, the permanence of
Christ's action, are then the supreme authority among us.
We have already emphasised this in dealing with the Roman
character of the Church.
Such an authority can only be plenary, with regard to all
the needs which arise from the permanent mission of the
Saviour. The Saviour Himself is the centre, not only of the visible
and hierarchical Church, but also of all men, living, dead, or
yet to be born; of nature itself, even, and of the whole
universe with all its destinies, seeing that it too has a part in
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338 xrbe Cburcb
the human plan. The Pope has no such power as this. He
is simply the head of the Saviour's mission, and that mission
is concerned with the present and the visible. But in regard
to these his power is plenary, for it is not other than that of
Christ Himself. The Pope has not an authority intermediate
between that of Christ and that of the Episcopate. He is
Christ Himself ruling the Episcopate of His Church vicari
ously. It is of the essence of a vicariate that it constitute no new
hierarchical degree; but that it permit identity to subsist by
communication between the chief who is represented and his
mandatory. An ambassador, within the limits of his powers,
is not an authority set under the ruler he represents, but he
exercises the authority of that ruler himself. So in the Church
the Pope exercises Christ's authority; he governs in Christ's
name, forming as His vicar one single and only authority with
Him, and acting as the foundation-stone of the spiritual
building conjointly with Him who is called the Corner-stone.
That is what the divine Master meant when He gave to His
representative the symbolic name of Kephas, Peter. The
Pope, who thus bears the name of Christ, corner-stone or
foundation-stone, will be seen to enjoy all Christ's prerogatives
as far as concerns His proper mission.
Firstly the magisterium, that is the teaching authority.
Not that the Pope has authority to teach anything new after
Christ ; he teaches nothing new ; but he is at the head of those
to whom it was said : Go and teach all nations, teaching them
whatsoever I HAVE SAID UNTO YOU.
And thus he is the chief teacher of God's doctrine to men.
He confirms his brethren in the faith; he organises the creed,
interprets it, defends it, solves as a sovereign authority the
questions to which it gives rise, acts as the last court of appeal
in the disputes which such questions cannot fail to raise in
a coherent society, which is united by this very means, but is
yet so varied in intelligence, and tempted, too, in this respect
as in every other.
All the powers of evil are not of the practical order. There
is the demon of intellectual pride, the demon of self-opinion-
atedness, of stubbornness, of caviUing and contention in
respect of others.
Jesus had foreseen this, and wished to provide against it,
when He said : Simon, Simon, Satan hath desired to have
you that he may sift you as wheat. But I have prayed for
thee that thy faith fail not. And do thou strengthen thy
brethren. Notice this singular and plural. Satan hath desired to
have you, all of you, to sift you, that is to disturb and trouble
you with various thoughts. You, My envoys, will have to
undergo his attacks in these things. But thou< Simon Peter,

xrbe pope 339
if thou also art troubled and disturbed by perplexities about
My word, remember that I have prayed for thee that thy faith
fail not. And then do thou, thou in particular, thou as their
chief, strengthen thy brethren.
Here the privilege of infaUibility comes in. But that must
be considered separately.
The second prerogative essential to the vicariate of Peter's
successor is government. Whatsoever thou shalt bind on
earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatsoever thou shalt
loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven (Matt. xvi. 19). This
means that the authority of Christ, now returned to heaven,
is not for all that absent from His work. He has com
municated it. And He has communicated it, doubtless, to
the whole group of His envoys collectively ; so He will say
to them all, a little later on and in the same terms {Ibid, xviii.
18) : Whatsoever you shall bind on earth shall be bound in
heaven, and whatsoever you shall loose on earth shall be
loosed in heaven. But, says Bossuet, " the continuation does
not invalidate the beginning. . . . This first statement.
Whatsoever thou shalt bind, said to one alone, has in itself
already put under the authority of that one all those to whom
Whatsoever you shall loose was to be said later. ^
Feed My lambs, said the Saviour also at His departure;
feed My sheep (John xxi. 15-17). And on this St. Ambrose
wrote : " Firstly the lambs, then the sheep are committed to
his care; for he is appointed not only shepherd, but shepherd
of shepherds. He feeds the lambs, and he feeds the sheep;
he feeds the children, and he feeds also the mothers (that is
the churches), he rules both subjects and prelates."^
AU hangs on these words of institution. Jesus said : Feed
My sheep, feed My lambs ; that is, I do not lose them, nor the
power that I have over them, but I communicate this power,
so that it may be exercised in My name. Thou, Peter, shalt
be shepherd, with Me and in Me, thou shalt be one sole
shepherd with Me.
And again, Jesus does not say : Feed My flock, as if speak
ing collectively, but My lambs. My sheep, putting the part for
the whole, as if He meant to name each of them, to entrust
to Peter's care not only the whole body of the faithful, but
each of the faithful, not only the body of churches as a whole,
but each separate church. And by this He meant that the
authority of Peter and his successors over the churches and
the faithful is immediate, that is, that he can give orders to
each and to all, individuals or groups, faithful, pastors, par
ticular Churches or the universal Church.
Ordinarily, apart from the greater matters which the Pope
' Sermon on the Unity of the Church,
^ Expos, in Luc. x. 175.

340 xrbe Cburcb
reserves to himself, this authority is exercised by varying
degrees, as wisdom demands ; but there is in this no necessary
jurisdiction ; for since in the Church the authority is one and
the Pope has it in its fulness, he can at need suffice for all,
and it depends on him to determine in accordance with what
forms and to what extent it is fitting for him to impart or to
reserve its exercise.
The Pope, also, is supreme judge, in default of which his
government would lose its efficacy. And his decision is with
out appeal. We cannot even say with Pascal in the time of
his forgotten Jansenists : Ad tuum Domine Jesu tribunal
appello; To thine own tribunal, O Lord Jesus, I make my
appeal. This cry, touching as it is, is justified in certain
cases; but that is when authority is not acting in accordance
with its law and in its own field. In its own domain and
when following its own law the Pope's authority cannot yield
to that of Christ, for they are the same.
Lastly, the legislative and judicial power of the Sovereign
Pontiff supposes as its consequence the power of making use
of sanctions; sanctions, it is of course understood, conform
able to the nature of his jurisdiction; and hence arise the
canonical punishments of which he is the supreme dispenser.
As Pontiff properly so called, that is as concerns sacra
mental action, the Pope is nothing more than a bishop ; but
in the usage of the sacraments and the rites that accompany
them, he is master here as elsewhere; he is the master of
liturgies ; he arranges the whole and the details of divine wor
ship, so as to give the Church's mysteries means in relation to
times, places and persons.
These various r61es and the spirit that is needed for their
fulfilment are reflected in the names which the Head of the
Church has traditionally received ; in the exterior badges with
which his dignity is adorned.
He is called the Pope, that is the father, father par excel
lence in supernatural things, father of fathers, since he is at
the head of those who beget us in the faith by instruction, in
Christian life by baptism; at the head of those who govern
us with a government which ought to be entirely paternal,
since it applies the law of love and its effort expressed by
St. Paul in the cry : The charity of Christ urgeth us: Caritas
Christi urget nos.
He is called Vicar of Christ, and we have already explained
the reason for that name; by delegation he carries on the
work of Christ and is His procurator in His earthly mission.
He is called Holy Father or Most Holy Father, not so
much in filial allusion to his personal sanctity which is piously
supposed, as to mark the holiness of his office, the holiness of
the teaching and the laws he promulgates, the holiness of

xrbe pope 341
Christ whom he represents and of the Spirit whose instrument
he is.
He is called Sovereign Pontiff and Bishop of Bishops to
denote that the hierarchical order finds its perfect unity in the
single shepherd of the single flock of the Gospel.
He calls himself, in his apostolic letters. Servant of the ser
vants of God, in memory of that formula of the Master when
He defined authority under the Christian rdgime : Let him that
is chief among you be the servant of all. And this humble
but sublime appellation marks the goal of authority as well
as its spirit. It urges us to the service of God, since so, and
only so, can it be at our service.
The three-crowned tiara represents the threefold power,
doctrinal, legislative, judicial. The pallium, a smaller form
of the old Byzantine mantle which the emperors gave to the
pontiffs, is in, the Roman pontiff a sign of universal jurisdic
tion, inasmuch as he wears it always and everywhere, unlike
the bishops and archbishops who make a restricted use of it
as of their authority. The Cross which is borne before the
Pope on ceremonial occasions shows in Whose Name he
advances. And so of the rest. The symbols are numerous
in the external splendour which surrounds religious authority.
But the idea is always the same; plenary power, universal
power, the power of Christ communicated, and thereby divine
power in the visible world, for the ends of heaven.
The Pope, in the name of his office, claims no temporal
dignity or principality ; but in the name of his office he claims
that full and entire independence that he needs in order that
the spiritual may soar above the meshes of the political web,
above the disturbances by which national or international
waters are always more or less troubled.
It has become apparent in the course of ages that the best
guarantee of this temporal independence is a temporal prince
dom of small extent, merely capable of removing the Pontifi
cate from the grasp of any particular State, to the detriment
of apostolic liberties and of the confidence of peoples. " It
is necessary," as was declared by the deliberation of the
bishops in 1682, " that the Head of the whole Church, the
Roman Pontiff, should be neither the subject nor even the
guest of any prince ; but that, seated in his own domain and
kingdom, he should be sui juris, that he may be able to pre
serve and propagate the faith, rule and govern the whole
Christian commonwealth, in a noble, calm and august liberty. ' '
Napoleon thought such an institution " the wisest and most
advantageous that could be imagined for the government of
souls." We may well believe him; for in certain respects
this institution was very uncongenial to him.
Now that this time-honoured institution has perished and

342 xrbe Cburcb
the Holy See is reduced to a position of protest, now that his
torical changes have undoubtedly made it difficult to return
to the ancient state of things pure and simple ; if we discover
any other solution, let us say so ; the Papacy will decide. To
the Papacy alone it belongs to utter a final verdict in this
matter. When one has no superior, one can finally decide on
the conditions of one's own status.
To sum up, the Papacy presents itself to us as the unifying
organ of the whole work of Christ and of aU the faithful in
the Christ whom it represents ; of all the scattered souls who
benefit by His redemption and of all His offices. All that
moves in the Church finds therein its centre of movement and
its prospect of return. All starts from Rome; all comes back
thereto. The brightness of the tiara is caused by an immense
radiance which, from the dome of St. Peter's where it seems
to shine, scatters in all directions its active light and sees
thousands of answering eyes turn to it. It is the lighthouse
which, on the uneven coast, above the hidden rocks, at the
crossing of roads unexplored and full of pitfaUs, guides,
warns or strengthens by means of its light, plays the part of
a star, and speaks the message of hope by calling up the
vision of the haven.
When the General Council calls to Rome hundreds of
bishops, coming from all parts of the globe, bearing homage,
prayers, and tokens of the religious thought of millions of
sculs, that is, the palpable sign of the unity which the Papacy
procures ; it is a march towards the star on the part of man
kind, which attempts across space to reach a point where it
knows that its God rests in His institution of salvation, as
He did in the manger at Bethlehem.
But there is nothing more in this visible convergence of
travellers than in the calm daily reality. Towards Rome ever
goes the road of the heart and the mind; it can always be
traversed; the true faithful traverse it daily. And it is no
negligible motive for faith, this vast adhesion of elements
borrowed from every race and every nation, from every rank
and every stage of culture, from every age and every degree
of civilisation ; elements differing in all things except in belief
and the essentials of worship, in adhesion to an undivided
centre which allows it to be said, Ubi Petrus, ibi Ecclesia;
where Peter is, there is the Church.
If bonds of flesh attach us to our families and our coun
tries, which are our mothers according to the flesh, it seems
indeed that only the grace of God could attach us durably
and deeply to the family of the children of God, who, born
only of the Spirit, can subsist only in Him.
There is more than man in this. There is the witness of a
divine presence.

CHAPTER V
THE INFALLIBLE MAGISTERIUM
IN the visions of the Apocalypse which relate to the
Church triumphant is found this phrase, so profound in
its symbolism : And the city has no need of the sun nor
of the moon to enlighten it, for the glory of God en
lightens it, and the Lamb is the light thereof.
Strange kingdom of light, seeming twofold and yet one,
where the Lamb is the light, and yet the glory of God is the
sole light of the city !
The mystery of communications through Christ is indicated
here. There are not two lights ; there is but one. But the
ineffable light, like the vibrations of the ethereal fluid, which
our eyes do not perceive, is gathered up in the Son of Man,
who acts as its luminary. And it is just to apply this mystery
to the city of God in this world, since the earthly city forms
but one with the heavenly, in spite of useful and provisional
partitions.
% God is the sole light of men. We call upon no other source.
We must not let it be said that in spiritual matters we believe
in any light other than Him. But God is revealed to men
through Christ ; He has made the Lamb, sacrificed and glori
fied, the Light of the City, so allowing Him to say, though by
communication so far as concerns His manhood : I am the
Light of the world.
Though the Lamb has returned into the invisible. He has
not for all that left our regions of earth bereft of light. The
teaching of the Gospel instructs us. But teaching without a
living authority — ^we know what happens to that !
When Aristotle was dead, his teaching, so coherent, so
elevated in its positiveness, so admirably synthetic, fell into
the hands of disciples of diverse tendencies, who dragged it
in all directions and finally turned it in the direction of
materialism. In the Middle Ages, when the Arabs took it up
once more, they urged it in the direction of pantheism. To-day,
those who study it in partial texts, as are our texts of the
Gospels ; obscure texts, as are our oracles often ; texts in con
sequence susceptible of various interpretations, as exegesis
proves to be the case with sacred writings, do not know what
to make of it.
Crumbling, error, disputes without result, and finally prac
tical nothingness ; this is what would have awaited the Good
News, if its mere perfume had remained to us in memories,
or even its crystallisation in texts without any living repre
sentative. So true is it that all the sects which have stood
on their dignity have arrived at a doctrinal confusion the more
accentuated the more alive they have been. The stagnation
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344 xrbe Cburcb
of some proves simply their death. It has gone so far that
book after book has been written among the Dissenters to
throw light on that primordial problem : What is the essence
of Christianity?
The divine Master, then, knowing what was in man, as the
apostle John says, and possessing other means than an Aris
totle in quest of a fleeing posterity, organised His earthly
representatives from the doctrinal as from the practical point
of view. He Himself was the Light; He was departing; He
appointed a light in His place, a substituted light, as it were ;
a light which shone with His light and not with a new light
of its own. And this by a unity of communication whereof
He, together with God, remained the source ; by a continuity
which would preserve the lights of the Gospel from extinction,
urge their rays in every direction, shoot them forth on every
instance, use them for all intellectual and practical measures;
but without innovation in any respect.
Nothing in the Church would be a sun, a moon, a star,
that furnished its own light to the supernatural. The Lamb
alone would be the luminary ; the glory of God alone the light ;
but there would be continuity of the communication of the
light by means of an unfailing organ called the Papacy.
(" Such a centre of unification is Papal infaUibility, and we
promised to define it more in detail, although really every
thing is clear from a right consideration of what has gone
before. The first thing to be noticed is that infallibility, being a
\ guarantee for us all, is not a personal privilege in the sense
ithat the Pope should benefit by it more than we; he benefits
Iby it as we all do, and like us he is bound to submit to it and
ite^elieve it. The,Pope has faith in inf alUbUity ; he has faith
im^ils^own decisions. HeTs bdiitrd to them as is the most
ihumble of the faithful; and this is the proof that it does not
belong to him, and that even here the Holy Spirit is the sole
light. Neither is infallibiUt3La4).eEs^iaLprivilege in the sense
that the Pope has its conditions in himself, as if we supposed
he had some special psychology of his own. The Pope, con
sidered as a private person, is a man like any other, weak as
we are, a sinner as we are and subject to error like every one
of us. Of this we have the proof that .certain Popes ha.ve
written works of theology which enjoy no special authority
in the Church; that are freely contradicted. The simple
monk St. Thomas is far more important as a doctor of the
Church than Pope Benedict XIV., though the latter has his
importance.
I From this we see the value of the reproaches of idolatry
/ that some bring against us in this connection, as if infallibility
I were the deification of a man.

xrbe infallible Magisterium 345
We deify none but God; but we deify God enough to put
Him above the petty conventional pride and the thanklessness
that would prevent Him from condescending to mankind.
He condescended to create and to redeem us. He con
descends still more in continuing to redeem us in all the
spheres in which we need to be restored.
Of ourselves we slip into unfathomable error; we are the
Danai'ds of religious truth. If we are to be redeemed from
doctrinal destruction, we must by some means or other be
guaranteed the minimum of necessary truths. Christ's means
is that prayer which the Father heareth always, and which in
this matter obtains freedom from liability to error. I have
prayed for thee that thy faith fail not.
Christ's prayer is efficacious enough to save us from dark
ness. But it is easily seen that there is no question of new
revelation, or of inspiration, or of the inbreathing of truth into
a human mind ; it is a question of providential preservation.
Our Popes are no supermen, nor demigods after the pagan
manner. Such an interpretation must be left to the semi
conscious bad faith or the unpardonable thoughtlessness of
some of the dissenters from the Faith. Our Popes are feeble
mortals receiving assistance. They do not reap the benefit of
a psychological miracle. The Saviour prayed for them ; that
is enough. His all-powerful prayer obtains, by means that
differ in their operation in each case, according to the dis
position of providence, what we can ask for ourselves,
though with less efficacy, when we say to God : Keep me from

Hence in the second place infallibility has a definite pur
pose : it is the perpetuajjen of £hrist^g_teaching ; it is the
purport of the mission expressed in~tnewo^s : Teach them
I'HAT I HAVE APPOINTED YOU. And that is not the earth's
station. No scientific or historical theory, no philosophical system
falls as such under the ecclesiastical magisterium. If the
Church troubles about such a thing and issues judgement on
it, it is only when its conclusions imply some denial of the
sacred deposit. In such a case the same jurisdiction that
knows itself to be judge of the deposit knows itself also to be
judge of that deposit's contrary; but, as we already know,
that is no abuse of power; the liberty of scientific methods
remains untouched.*
Tnj4ie third place, •fyhpri^wpaHrihfitp. infallibility to Peter's
sucpessqr, thatJs_in the maimjwedonot attribute it~to him
exclusively. We must noFTbrge't that it" was^saidT'in the
'plural. Go ye., and teach all nations. The privilege of free
dom from error in matters of religious teaching is a privilege
' Cf. Book ii., chap. ix. : " On InteUectual Liberty in the Church.''

xrbe Cburcb
that is a part of the mission; it belongs to the whole mis-
sionarv band, and in them to the whole Church.
-^'Xikewise the decisions of the Councils, from the Council of
Jerusalem presided over by St. Peter himself, are drawn up
in the plural. It has seemed good to the Holy Ghost and
to us, said our first fathers. But the apostolic or episcopal
college only enjoys the common privilege through its unity
obtained by the headj and depending on the head, by virtue
of the confirmation with which Peter was charged in respect
of his brethren : I have prayed for thee that thy faith fail
not, and do thou strengthen thy brethren.
The infallibility of the apostolic college and of its episcopal
successors is a strengthened infallibility; that of Peter and
his successor the Pope is a strengthening one. So that a
decision is only covered by the Saviour's efficacious promises
if it is made in union with Peter and confirmed by him in
accordance with the laws of his own mission. What the
Council says without the Pope, and even more so in opposi
tion to the Pope, is null; what the Pope says without the
Council is sufficient in itself.
All the same, it is his part to proceed according to God who
does all things with wisdom, to enlighten himself with the
common lights and ordinarily to find in such agreement the
human means of the divinely guaranteed inerrancy. But if
this be lacking, the promise of Christ is not for all that of no
avail. The failing of one will not work the destruction of aU.
God has means of saving in aU circumstances what He has
willed to save.
Thus the preservation of the Faith in the Church is the
work of the Twelve coUectively and of Peter in the first
instance, of the body of bishops as a whole united to its head,
and of the head by right of primacy which affords him a
unique and personal prerogative. We say singular, or per
sonal, not, once more, because it belongs to him as a private
person; it belongs to the hierarchical person, it belongs to
the office; but in that office and in him alone is it concen
trated in its fulness, and it is in this sense singular.
On the other hand, it does not depend on the whole body ;
on the contrary, it is communicated to them, coming from
Christ and from God, and in that sense it is personal. We
have said already that religious democracy, which makes
power, doctrinal or otherwise, ascend instead of making it
descend by progressive communication, is the contrary of the
divine rdgime.
Can anyone recognise in these very simple deductions—
quite simple when starting from what we believe to be
God's intentions as to humanity — can anyone recognise the
phantom power pursued to such an extent with sarcasm and

xrbe infallible /Bbagisterium 347
hate on the morrow of the Vatican Council? The defiance
of an age of enlightenment, the Byzantinism and idolatry,
the autocracy opposed to all the principles of modern life,
and so on ! . . .
For some twenty years there was an outcry, and then,
since people cannot always go on thinking about the same
things, the matter was forgotten; but it is enough merely to
say the words Papal infallibility to see in certain quarters a
smile on the lips, or hear some half-uttered blasphemy, the
echo of the keen combats of yesterday.
But before smiling or blaspheming it is well to understand.
What we claim is so very unsurprising, so natural, even, on
the hypothesis of a positive revelation, that there can be
found even unbelievers, and some Protestants among the
Christian dissenters — I mention these in particular because
their characteristic is precisely opposition to the Holy See —
who broadly acknowledge it.
We will mention only one ; but one who can be disregarded
neither by his co-religionists, among whom he enjoys a well-
deserved prestige, nor by others, seeing that he is one of the
most remarkable of men. Auguste Sabatier,* in an analysis
of the notion of dogma, proves at length that if a fixed dogma
be desired, it must necessarily be watched over by infallibility.
And assuredly such a demonstratiori was not difficult ; it is at
least sincere.
It goes without saying, of course, that the author does
not offer this as a reason for adhering to the Pope ; but as a
reason for rejecting fixed dogma, to which orthodox Protes
tants, like Catholics, are still tied.
On this point we are settled, we need no new lights; but we
are very glad to record the argument. If there is a revela
tion, we are told, there is a deposit of truth to be preserved;
there is in the world a light which we must protect with a hand
so that it may not be extinguished. But think of the storm
of human opinions and contradictions ! If there is a deposit,
and if there is a permanent and fatal danger to which that
deposit is exposed, one of two things must happen ; either the
Revealer must leave things to themselves and let the night
overcome His light once more, perhaps without blame to
anyone, or He must organise a system of safeguarding it.
Instead of a torch exposed to the full force of the wind, we
need a protected flame, the lighthouse whose glazed lantern
protects the blaze against the gales from the sea.
" A dogma that is not open to discussion supposes an
Infallible Church;" this is the proposition, unassailable as a
rock, that our author establishes. Many thanks, dear
enemy ! It is in vain that you add after this that there is no
' Les Religions dautoritd et les religions de P Esprit. Qu'est-ce qu'un
dogine ?

348 xrbe Cburcb
dogma above discussion; that the Gospel has only " an
entirely moral invitation, an experience and an invitation set
before every man ' ' ; this leaves us unmoved. An experience,
a consolation, a merely moral invitation — it is an anthem, it
is the "old song" with which our ears are continually
greeted. But we believe that the Saviour said a word; that
He spoke as one having authority, as His hearers said ; as He
that alone knew the secrets of heaven, since He came from
heaven, and spoke that which He had heard from His Father,
as He Himself affirmed.
For us there is something that is above discussion, and we
believe that it is the life of man's mind with regard to objects
about which our science is entirely ignorant, although they
are infinitely the most indispensahle of all.
So, returning to your proposition, we say : A dogma above
discussion presupposes an infallible Church? Very good.
And let us add a point that you do not raise : An infaUible
Church supposes some person in that Church in whom infalli
bility may find its centre. Thereby will the dogma live, and
we, in the religious sense, will live also, while you, with your
" experience " entirely moral and consoling, will die the
finest of doctrinal deaths. And indeed, I feel moved by a
sympathetic pity when I hear you say, in a phrase which I
admire from the literary point of view, apropos of the solemn
definition of infaUibiUty in 1870 : " An apotheosis is nothing
but a first-class burial. ' '
A burial ! For whom do you speak? Have corpses now
got the right of giving burial certificates to the living ? Who
has become dissociated, Uke a body without a vital idea,
undergoing more and more the effects of an arbitrary and
antisocial principle; who has become reduced just where he
most closely obeys your suggestions, to that state of magma
in which are found substances rich — as you, O great mind —
but without organic bond, given over to the anarchy of
chance combinations — as happens in the depths of the earth,
when the soul, that great mistress of unity, is no longer
there? And it is you, on your bier, not even sealed down — for all
your artificial systems are coming to pieces — ^who intone the
lament for us. Sleep on in peace, and do not trouble about
the Church !
We have said already in dealing with unity, one of the
notes of Catholicism, that the movement of concentration
which the Church effected at the last Council, far from
stifling her, has given her a wider freedom. It was the
movement of a lion crouching to spring. The Lion of the
tribe of Juda can make great bounds, and submits at times
even to conditions of restraint. If ultramontanism is a
restraint, we see and we shall see its relaxation especially

xrbe infallible /Ibagisterium 349
to-morrow; pliant, mighty, wide enough to espouse a great
future, when the current disputes, sometimes so confused,
but with the confusion of wealth, have come to an end.
Concentration is the first movement of Ufe; expansion the
second; and that from phase to phase, until one day, when
the immortally living one has fulfiUed its destiny, it will find
in its eternal expansion, together with the peace which it has
sought, a state of happiness for the manifold elements of
which man is made. For it is we human beings who benefit
by the supernatural Ufe, which infallible truths guarantee for
us in this world with the next in view.

CHAPTER VI
INFALLIBILITY IN THE NINETEENTH
CENTURY
NOW that we have taken a good look at the
phantom of papal infallibility which is such a
dreadful bogey to some people, we have found
that it vanishes and all is clear. Infallibility
keeps the life of religion on its proper course,
gives it stability, guarantees it against that dispersal which
is the natural tendency of the human mind, since the store
house of necessary truths is safeguarded by means of indis
putable decisions.
When we come from the general meaning of this privilege
to the privilege of infaUibility attributed personaUy to the
Roman Pontiff, we find its justification in the observation
that authority in the Church does not ascend from the mass
of the faithful to their heads and the supreme head, as in a
democracy ; but descends, in Christ's name, from the
supreme chief, who strengthens his brethren, to the inter
mediate chiefs, the Bishops, who are strengthened ; and then
to the faithful, who are instructed; and thus the Church's
infallibility has its centre in that of the Pope, coincides in
a certain manner with it, so that we may say : Where Peter
is, there is the Church. Ubi Petrus, ibi Ecclesia.
InfaUibiUty, a quite simple thing, is none the less a funda
mental one, and the more so as that which it is required to
guarantee is more fundamental. Doctrine is, we have said,
for the religious society, what its vital idea is to the living
creature; that is, its principle of unity, its principle of
separate existence, its principle of being.
Hereupon the question arises : Why was infallibility de
fined so late? Why in the nineteenth century? Essentials
do not wait. The central thing ought to be found at the
beginning, middle and end of an existence which pretends to
be unchangeable. If things are otherwise, people might
seem to be justified in saying, at the moment of a declaration
which could not be foreseen : The Church is losing her way ;
she is being led by caprice and autocracy ; and they have not
refrained from saying thus !
This question must indeed be answered. It is not for us
an embarrassing one, but it is interesting for more reasons
than one.
That the essential does not wait is true. But that is one
of those principles which mean nothing until their subject-
matter is defined. To wait may mean either for the sub
stance of a fact, or for its developments, or for its manifesta
tion, Manifestation, in its turn, and also development, may
350

Jnfallibilit^ in tbe mineteentb Centun? 351
be partial, drawn out, perfected more or less, and finaUy
complete and unquestionable.
Let the matter be considered in this light.
The first of aU the councils, the meeting of the Twelve and
the first disciples at Jerusalem to discuss the question of
Jewish observances, shows us the initial functioning of the
teaching hierarchy. Now why was it said, after the setting
forth of the question and to introduce the decision. It has
seemed good to the Holy Ghost and to us? Such a manner
of speaking leaves no room for doubt that the Church was
conscious from the very start that she possessed in her
hierarchy, at least taken collectively, a means of coming into
unity with the highest Truth.
But let us remark that this decision, carried by a general
vote, is uttered by St. Peter ; that it is he who presides ; that
James, "the Lord's brother," who enjoyed a great personal
authority both by reason of his relationship to our Lord and
his holy life, only expresses his own opinion, in agreement
with the general one, by a reference to Peter, and that the
assembly "keeps silence" after Peter has concluded. Is
not this an anticipation of Roma locuta est, causa finita est:
Rome has spoken, the cause is ended, to be heard in later
ages? When St. Paul had already been preaching for three years
on the faith of inspirations whose origin he knew, but which
had not yet been proved, a scruple took possession of him,
and, dreading self-interested bias, the cause of so many
religious wounds that have had to be got rid of, he went up
to Jerusalem to compare "his Gospel," that is his teaching,
with . . . whose? — Peter's. He remained with him for a
fortnight, saw only James, was careful to say that he saw
none of the others, and returned in peace, ready to say to the
Galatians, with that energy which has no fear of excess :
But though I, or an angel from heaven should preach to you
another Gospel than that which I have preached to you, let
him be anathema!
Certainly, here infallibility is not working as clearly as it
does to-day in the Catholic Church. We cannot think of
claiming that it is ; it would be neither honest nor intelligent ;
for to do so would be to conceal from our view a mark of
the Church which is as dear to us as her infallibility, and
which, far from contradicting it, is its complement, namely
her progressive character.
We must repeat it once more : The Church is not a vehicle
stuck fast in the mire. Neither is it a vehicle which travels
on, fast or slow, loaded with immovable luggage. It is a
living being. Its unchangeableness, then, is that of a living
being, and every organ that forms part of it must act like a
living organ, at first hidden in the mysterious seed, and then

352 xrbe Cburcb
revealed progressively, under the spur of necessity, as a
result of inward and outward circumstances.
The Church possesses from the start the perfection of her
essence, and consequently, even in the embryonic state, aU
that can in any age be called essential to her, but yet she
has not from the start the whole of this essential in a fully-
developed state. And as in a living being life becomes self-
conscious and rises from stage to stage to its eventual full
knowledge of itself, so the Church at her beginning has not
the full and perfect consciousness of her essential constitution
as far as her precise definitions are concerned.
Infallibility is no exception to this law, and there are more
over historical reasons to which we have already made
allusion. Not only was it not necessary that the infallibility proper
to the Supreme Pontiff should come to light at the com
mencement ; but it was natural that it should be relatively
dim in St. Peter himself, and that after him, instead of grow
ing forthwith, it should become weaker, and not continue its
growth until later.
In all this is there any cause for astonishment? Let us
reflect that in the Church the Papacy is only an organ meant
to act as a substitute. It is Christ who is our Head ; You
have but one Master, He said. And a substitutive organ
only functions fully when what it is intended to replace has
quite disappeared.
On the morrow of the Master's death, the remembrance
of Him was so present, and the contact of the Twelve with
Him, apart from the distinction of hierarchy, was so in
tensely close that aU were fully conscious of it. Were not
they, whom Christ Himself had directly formed, in a way
other Christs ? Did not whoever heard them hear Him? All
the divine words still sounded in their hearts. The Spirit
had roused them to life there, after the momentary sleep of
the Passion, like the beUs under the hand of the ringer in the
belfries of Bruges.
In all this Christ was, as it were, present in action. For
the faithful, one of the Twelve, whoever it might be, was
Christ hardly yet departed ; He was the flame that is found
in the smouldering ash, the heat of which is stiU to be felt.
And if He Himself was stiU present, then of what use was
explicit and ordinary recourse to the chief of a mission whose
only claim to authority came through Him?
When Peter was dead, those of the Twelve who remained
must have seemed entirely to eclipse his poor successor, who
had never seen Christ ; who had not touched Him ; who had
not heard the command : Go and teach all nations.
When the Twelve were dead, the particular churches which
each of them had founded still retained through their imme-

Jnfallibilits in tbe mineteentb Century 353
diate memory of an apostle a continuity with Christ which
only gradually became weaker.
The life of Jesus in His mortal Flesh ; the appearances of
Jesus risen ; the surviving life of Jesus in the Twelve and in
their immediate successors : such were the stages of the
Saviour's visibiUty.
And this dispensed the primitive churches from the need of
appealing, regularly at any rate, for there are numerous
traces of occasional appeals, to a far-off central authority
which had not yet gained a worldwide prestige.
It is only when the first generations were extinguished, the
early memories enfeebled, the historical reality of Christ
thrust back into the past and clothed in its veil, and time,
instead of looking backwards, as it were, had definitely
resumed its progress, so compelling the Church to turn about
and to take a new direction, that this Church, seeking its
Christ always in the visible world in which He had promised
to remain, remembered clearly that He had left a vicar, a
representative established from the very beginning, precisely
to meet the needs of this future.
We may be allowed to suppose — although perhaps it is
rather bold to form a hypothesis on such a matter — that if
the Church had had to endure only two or three centuries,
there would have been no Pope. He would not have been
necessary. Christ Himself would have been the sole Pope,
firstly in His own person, then, as we have explained above,
in His person continued in men's memories.
But there was the future, and the future, besides demand
ing its Christ by deputy, as the visible mark of the unity of
divine government in the Church, would reveal necessities
for concentration which would continue to increase, as in
living organisms life becomes concentrated the more as it
becomes differentiated and widened.
Thus the Church's monarchical government had in doc
trine as in all else to grow ever more and more manifest.
Until one day, when the moment had come for a complete
taking possession of herself, for giving herself the strength
to exist and act with her organisation complete and in the
full light of day, for avoiding contradictions, for satisfying
the doubts which would be possible to an indefinite extent,
even among the most faithful, as long as the question of
reliability, if we may so say — of divine reliability in this case
— had not been resolutely put ; and also for overcoming the
illusions which would tend to assimilate the Church's divine
government to the democratic constitutions which had spread
on aU sides, ^ when the moment had come for this supreme
acquisition on the part of the hierarchy, the Church, in the
' It is this, partly, which, at the moment of the Syllabus, was being
referred to as " coming to an agreement with modern civilisation." 23

354 xrbe Cburcb
Vatican, that is to say at her very centre, held her solemn
assizes. And there, before God, by the action of His Spirit,
trusting in the promise of Christ, she decided to proclaim
what had, she knew, always been included in her innermost
constitution. There was no innovation ; but the Church, more self-con
scious and more enlightening, threw a fuUer light on the
triple crown, and so brought to perfection in the visible
realm what had been perfected in the invisible on the day
when Christ, returning to His Father's side, had inaugurated
His eternal kingdom.
After this, need the question be put of more or less in the
matter of years or centuries ? Need it be asked why it took
three or nearly three centuries to reveal the infaUible primacy
of the Roman pontiff in generalised historical facts, and why
eighteen centuries to attain to its latest and most striking
manifestation? Is it found to be a long while, too long, and
consequently arbitrary?
We reply in the first place : in the eyes of Providence, on
whom these things depend, a thousand years are as one day
and one day as a thousand years. This saying of the Gali
lean fisherman is high enough in its philosophy to suffice for
an answer. But we understand it better if we add : Three cen
turies, eighteen centuries, in relation to the whole life of the
Church, are periods comparable and more than comparable
to the months of nursing and adolescence of a human being.
Is it unusual for a human being not to be fully constituted
or not to be recognised as such until the end of a period that
unhappily represents a large part of the time that he has to
spend on earth? The Church, with her apparent slowness,
is of a more precocious vital power !
Shall we forget that her destinies coincide with those of
our race; that the history of this human-divine synthesis of
life through Christ, Man of the whole world and all time, is
History, and its evolution the evolution ofour inhabited planet?
Or again, are we to believe that the world is near its end?
Are we to be the dupes of the childish prophecies which from
time to time endeavour to take us back to the so-called terrors
of the year looo?
If we may be allowed to push this comparison, which per
haps may appear bold, but is in any event illuminating, a
little further ; the definitive installation of the Papacy in its
historic r61e at the Vatican Council is a fact parallel to the
definitive installation of the true religion in the world. In
each case there was considerable delay, but delay that was
normal relative to the duration of the whole.
Investigation, groping, error, all this is preparation ; and
this is all that there was before Christ. Then Christ came,
and definitive religious history begins.

Jnfallibilits in tbe IFllneteentb Century 355
Put for Christ, the Pope — the Pope, I mean, in complete
possession of his definite and generally recognised r61e; a
similar succession appears. Here too is preparation ; here
too are the errors of heresy ; here too are gropings on the
part of the faithful and of private teachers, and lastly, with a
formal inauguration, comes complete birth, that is, the bring
ing to the light of that which was prefigured in Simon Peter,
but had remained more or less latent in the depths of the past.
Christ came in the fulness of time, St. Paul says, that is at
a central moment between the preparations necessary for His
work and the use which the future was to make of it.
The Papacy, armed with the whole of its powers, likewise
arrives thus in a fulness of time which divides from the
preparations for it the agelong utilisation on which a society
can count from now on until the end of the world, a society
which does not die but is transplanted.
So that the ironical phrase which we found a little while
back on a heretical lip, with regard to the Vatican Council :
Apotheosis is only a first-class burial, seems compelled once
more to lose its sting.
What will die is that which is unable to merit apotheosis,
having no divine life in it to make manifest, no growth to
achieve, but on the contrary a principle of dissolution to be
revealed more and more, and one day fully, in the tomb.
What will live is what apotheosis awaits, because, since
it is divine in itself, it must make that which it bears unfold
more and more from day to day, and fix it at last, from a
human point of view, in definitive forms.
The apotheosis achieved ; Christ fully manifested, and
represented in an institution which possesses the whole of
His importance in the mission He has given it, though under
other aspects it is seen to be based on sinful and erring
humanity, we see our Church, with all time before her. She
goes forward in time with confidence, rich in aU her energies ;
her strength in the unanimous adhesion of her members, in
an anterior cohesion which has never been so strong as now ;
and this is a sign of life if aught can be one, for it is the
contrary of anarchic mortification.
Every people that is perishing tears itself in its convul
sions; that is a universal law. Every people that is One,
in an environment in which its destiny maintains a raison
d'itre, is assured of its future.
The Church, which is one more than ever, and is more than
ever necessary to a world that is terribly disturbed and
unable to co-ordinate itself anew apart from her, shows to
our eyes not only her immortal promises, but her charter of
duration written in historical necessity.
In her last apotheosis, which will consist in rejoining
Christ when He comes on the clouds of heaven, the papacy
will die at last, but in glory, as at dawn die the lingering stars.

CHAPTER VII
THE EPISCOPAL ORDER
AFTER considering the Church's order in her
chief, who is the expression of her unity, we
must now study it in the episcopal body, which
shares and communicates the prerogatives of the
^ Bishop of Rome.
An order in architecture is characterised by its columns
and their junction with what they uphold. The bishops are
the columns of the Church.
We have remarked how far this order descends from above
and to what extent it is " related to the mysteries of heaven. "^
The source of its development is to be found in the Trinity.
The Son proceeds from the Father, who finds in Him the
form of His substance. The Church proceeds from Christ,
and He is extended in her, she is His permanent and collec
tive manifestation. His "Body." Likewise, the episcopal
coUege, to which Jesus Christ has communicated His power
that produces the Church, beget it through the priesthood,
which they themselves possess in its completest form, and
are afterwards found within it. Lastly, according to the
same methods of initiative and reciprocal action, each par
ticular church proceeds from its bishop as from a principle of
generation, and the bishop finds in it the manifestation of
his priesthood, the effect of his character, the fruit of the
divine fecundity which comes to him from Christ.
All this is interdependent; and if Horace could say that it
were easier to rob Hercules of his club than Homer of one
of his verses, it is much more true that the divine Poet, the
Word, cannot be despoiled of a single one of those strophes
by which He finds active expression in His manhood in its
religious embodiment.
Thus the Episcopate considered in its unity, of which the
Bishop of Rome is the connecting link, and after that each
bishop in his own church, by virture of the priesthood of
Christ which is communicated to him, is the source of the
spiritual fecundity which is spread through the whole Church.
They are the spouses of that mother who bears them new
children from day to day.
Bishop {liria-Koiro^), means inspector, overseer, the pro
tector and warden who presides in order to serve. But it is
evident that in this the name understates the thing. Before
inspecting and ruling, the bishop begets ; he is a father ; for
it is indeed to a new life, the life of grace, that we are born
by the sacramental action where he is the agent. Amen,
' St. Cyprian, De unitate ecclesia, II. 6.
356

xrbe Episcopal ©rber 357
amen I say to you, unless a man be born of water and of the
Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God (John iii. 9).
The Episcopal body is, as it were, the germ of the Church,
which is wholly contained in it. The apostolic college, which
it succeeds and perpetuates, was the seed of His great tree
in the mind of Christ. So, in His sacerdotal prayer, when
He prays for all His own. He prays in the first place for the
Twelve, adding afterward, to mark what He expected His
work to reap from their activity : I pray not for these alone;
but also for all those who through their word shall believe in
Me (John xvii. 20).
We see clearly enough by these words and by all those used
at the institution of the Church that the work of the apostles
and their successors was not to be manifold and individual,
but collective. Father, that they may be one, as Thou and
I are one. One in the unity of the Spirit, they will all be but
one single principle, acting in the name of Christ, who is one,
and of God, who is Unity itself.
Though, then, there are many bishops, there is only one
episcopate, as there is only one Church. All these priests
endowed with the fulness of priestly power share in the one
eternal priesthood. All are "brethren"; the Pope, as
Bishop, is but one among them. But because he is at the
same time the representative of the Saviour among the
Twelve ; because he is His vicar now that He has departed,
the Pope includes in his powers the powers of all the bishops,
as being their source. It is he who gives them such powers,
or rather it is as depending on him that they receive them ;
from him they issue forth. Election and nomination are but
accessories ; apostolic institution is the fundamental thing ; it
is that which makes the pastor, in union with the supreme
Pastor. It is of course to be understood that the Pope does not him
self lose his powers by communicating them ; the source does
not dry up by flowing. Moreover we have said that the Pope
has a direct and ordinary authority over all particular
churches and over each of the faithful; that the particular
titles of these churches belong to him in the first place, fail
ing which unity ceases ; the entire communion of the Church
would no longer be attached to Christ through His represen
tative ; Christ would no longer be all to all men, the one bride
groom, in the whole and in every part, of His single bride.
Many consequences arise from the solidarity of the episco
pate, notably this, that in certain extraordinary circumstances,
as in times of persecution or schism, a simple bishop may be
seen to intervene outside the limits of his particular church
and to play a universal part, a part which may be interpreted
as an act of the communion of bishops, according to their

358 xrbelCburcb
solidarity as envoys of Christ, and consequently as an act
emanating from the principle of their communion, the Pope.
Thus, without having recourse to any principle of excep
tion, may be explained what took place in the first ages, when
each apostle, playing the part of universal envoy, attributed
to himself a general r61e without territorial limitations, in
stituting bishops and prescribing rules for the whole com
munity. This, it is evident, was a part confined to the
beginnings. Had it been maintained, it would have created
anarchy later on. But such a role was none the less con
nected with the permanent principles of the religious consti
tution, and particular only in its application. The reflection
of the person of Jesus in each of the Twelve, in whom the
faithful found Him anew, gave each general action a very
simple procedure.
Apart from these particular cases, bishops, inasmuch as
they are part of the body of envoys who collectively represent
Christ, have none the less each a universal r61e in the Church.
This r61e must even be regarded as anterior to that which
they possess in respect to their own particular church, seeing
that, before they were accredited to spheres of influence, they
were sent to all, and heard the words said to them, in the
person of the Twelve : Go and teach all nations.
This is what the theologians mean when they say that the
communion of bishops is anterior to their title. The bishops,
all together, form an order, which is called a communion
when we remember that charity is the bond of the Church.
And it is from this episcopal or apostolic communion that
there flows, through their spiritual and sacramental paternity,
the communion of all the faithful, as a step towards the com
munion of saints.
A bishop, then, is not the shepherd of a single flock ; he is
in the first place, together with the other bishops and the
Pope, under the authority of the Pope, a shepherd of the
Universal Church. That is what is solemnly, though not
solely, made manifest by an ecumenical council.
In these mighty assemblies, in which the Church's order is
so broadly revealed, the unitive intention which creates the
religious assembly is proved firstly by this, that the Church
assembled in council is like a circle, where every part and
every line is drawn around the centre. The Pope is this
active centre whence all takes its rise and in which is assured
the consistency of the whole. It is ordinarily he who con
vokes and presides over the council, and who finally confirms
its decisions. If he has not actually convoked it, he is
deemed to have convoked it from the fact that he confirms
the council's action, of which its convocation was the pro
logue. If he does not personally preside, his representative

xrbe Episcopal ©rber 359
in act or in word occupies the central position in his name.
We can no more find the Church apart from the Pope than
light and air without the sun.
Always, conjointly with the Pope, all the bishops his
brethren really sit in council, are in reality the judges of
Christian faith and practice. In their decrees they say, as at
the first Council at Jerusalem, It hath seemed good to the
Holy Spirit and to us, and they all combine in unison to utter
the sound which they make men hear. Under the promise
of the Spirit which is the Spirit of Christ, as human envoys
overshadowed by the Divine Spirit, they decide on spiritual
matters for the whole Church. They judge in this world the
twelve tribes of Israel, that is the Catholic Church, in order that
through their action she may go forward to her sublime ends.
Thus all the bishops of the world have an inalienable right,
a right belonging to their order as such, to sit in Councils.
They are entitled to a place there without being specially
caUed, as every minister exercises his right of sitting in the
council of ministers by the political constitution.
For the same reason all bishops are equal in council,
equal, that is, as far as concerns the decisions which are the
proper purpose of the council, if not in their preliminary
debates. The wisest, the best informed, those who occupy
the most important sees, which make them the representa
tives and witnesses of a more considerable portion of the
subject multitudes, exercise without doubt a greater influence
on the decisions, but the decisions are not theirs. The we
is uttered in perfect unity and fraternal equality. They say
This is so, or Let this be so, as Let us make man was said in
Trinity. Their language is in the plural, and so are their
actual words, but not their action.
So long as this divinely constituted body keeps to the law
of its operation, which makes it a principle; so long as it
confines itself to its proper functions, it stands for Christ
Himself, it is one as is Christ, the multiplicity of its human
elements being as it were assumed into the unity which it
reflects : He that heareth you heareth Me.
As in certain circumstances, and commonly in the primitive
Church, the bishop and the group of his priests {presby-
terium) together consecrate the Body and Blood of Christ, our
¦ life, by a single communal action, so here the episcopal body
in union with its chief consecrates Christ the truth, by mark
ing out the roads of Christian progress, beginning from the
doctrines which determine its direction and end.
The equality of which we speak is not, then, a distributive
equality, as if each brought his own contribution, or as if the
Pope could not do by himself what he does together with the
bishops. This law of the sharing of authority, which is that

36o xrbe Cburcb
of most human institutions, has no place in the divine
hierarchy, because it has no place in the Trinity from which
the hierarchy emanates.
The president of a republic cannot do alone what he can do
together with his ministers, nor they alone what they can
do together with the parliament, because in this case authority
is an integration ; the complete principle of action is made up
of complementary instances. On the other hand, an absolute
monarch can do by himself all that he can do with his coun
sellors ; but that is so because his counsellors have no part in
the royal power ; they only pave the way for its exercise. In
the Church there'is a real participation, but a participation in
unity, as in unity the Son participates in all that the Father
does and does it with Him, although He owes to the Father
both His Sonship and His power of sharing in the Father's
works ; The Father who dwelleth in Me, it is He that worketh
. . . and I also work (John xiv. 10-17).
The same thread of thought brings us to the understanding
of how unity of life in the Church remains perfect, in spite of
its division into particular churches and the attribution of a
portion of the flock to each bishop.
A particular church or diocese must not be considered
merely as an administrative area, nor as a tiny state within
the State ; they are unities on a substantial basis, like our
families, wherein racial unity is communicated and distri
buted without being destroyed. The race of the sons of God,
also one in Christ, is disseminated in various families which
enrich it and do not divide it, which indeed are it, variously
manifested, it is true, but in the identity of its essence, and
obtaining extensions of themselves from its original fertiUty.
It follows evidently that this order is unchangeable, a very
nature of things, since the supernatural in every degree fol
lows the forms of nature. No particular church is necessary,
any more than any particular family. To no single church
taken by itself has been promised either continuity nor that
doctrinal infallibility which are the privileges of the super
natural race. But in what it is and what it receives are
found all the fundamental relations ; the communications
which have come from Christ, and have their beginning in the
Trinity into which He permits us to enter, are perfected in it
and are its principle of order, as they are its principle of life.
He that receiveth you receiveth Me, said Christ to the
Twelve. The particular church in receiving its bishop re
ceives Christ and His saving priesthood in him. The bishop
is its foundation, as Christ is the foundation of the Church.
And through him it receives the Father ; for Jesus added :
And he that receiveth Me, receiveth not Me, but my Father
who hath sent Me (Mark ix. 36). Thereby, lastly, it receives

xrbe Episcopal ©rber 361
the Spirit, the living Bond of the Father and the Son, the
Soul of the universal Church, the consecration of its own
participated unity, as well as that of the body of which it is
an organ.
The particular church in relation to its bishop is as it were
a bride destined to bear him children and to lead the spiritual
Ufe in common with him. This beautiful simile, which begins
with St. Paul, is ceaselessly recurring in the speech of the
Church. But by means of the unity of the episcopate, in
which the unity of the Church is found, these mystic spousals
enter as a particular case into the general case of the uni
versal Church united to her Saviour. The sacrament of our
union with God is there in its entirety, because the fulness
of the priesthood resides in the bishop, and it is through that
priesthood that each church shares together with its members
in the divine adoption.
Moreover, as through love there arises a mutual com
penetration of souls, by reason of which it has been said that
the lover is in the beloved and the beloved in the lover, so
through organised charity in the Church there arises between
the mystic bride and bridegroom, between Christ and re
ligious humanity, between the bishop and his particular
family a kind of mutual identity by unitive compenetration,
as in the Trinity the Father and the Son are but One in the
Spirit of love.
He that seeth Me seeth My Father, said Christ ; for I am
in the Father and the Father in Me (John xiv. lo). Likewise,
he that sees the Church sees Christ ; he that sees the Pope
sees the Church {Ubi Petrus, ibi Ecclesia) ; he that sees the
bishop sees his particular church, the whole with its com
plement. Is it not for this reason that the Church, conscious of the
mysteries she holds within her, continues to provide titular
bishops for dead churches as if to preserve a life for them in
the pastor that she gives them, a legal life that is also an
actual life ; a life which may find its subject-matter once more,
since its germ lives on, its torch is not extinguished. Sup
pose that, by some accident of history, one of these sees be
suddenly revived, its titular may be transferred to it and its
life may be taken up again as of old.
*****
The bishop, on his side, exercises in his church the triple
prerogative which we have already seen to belong to the
hierarchy taken as a whole : teaching, priestly ministry, and
government. All this he does in the unity of the episcopate
united to Peter, whereof he is one of the members ; but by a
particular title, which is recognised by the Church.
From the point of view of teaching {magisterium), he is in
his own church the master of doctrine, and that is his primary

352 xrbe Cburcb
office, even as faith, implicit or explicit, is the first act of the
Christian's supernatural life. The bishop is a teacher before
he IS a pastor ; for in order to become a pastor it is necessary
that he be given to the flock by virtue of their free adhesion
to him in the faith. This order, which was found at the first
preaching of the Gospel, has been maintained since by the
natural relations of things.
The bishop receives from Christ, for his church, in virtue
of the mission which he holds in common with others, the
word of life. His own faith is a teaching faith, as that of his
faithful is a taught faith. Those who adhere to him, as he
communicates to them the deposit, will be in the mind of God,
as the powerful formula traced by Ignatius of Antioch puts it.
" I have desired to exhort you," he says, " to be of one accord
in the mind of God. For if Jesus Christ, who is inseparable
from our Ufe, is in the mind of the Father; so also the
bishops, in the regions of the earth which they govern, are
in the mind of the Father. It is meet therefore that you
should be aU one in the mind of the bishop. "^
By reason of this magisterium, the bishop has charge of
preaching in his diocese, and must provide for it; of the
instruction of children and adults, of theoretical and prac
tical Christian doctrine, of propaganda and printing, the
higher direction of which remains in his hands, although he
cannot always be the immediate and directly responsible over
seer of such things. If any unusual occurrence happens, if
special devotions are introduced, it is for him, saving the
rights of the Holy See, to judge on such matters, and to
determine the conduct of Christians in regard to them.
For all this he does not enjoy personal infallibility,
although, as we have said above, he has a share in the
infallibility of the Church, as a member of the collective
authority. But this share is only effective on the conditions
laid down for common action.
From the point of view of priesthood (ministerium), the
power of order confers on the bishop the right of administer
ing all the sacraments, including Holy Order and Confirma
tion, which are his special prerogative, all the sacramentals,
all liturgical acts, all that is a divinely instituted or ratified
means of sanctification directed to the perfection of reUgious
life. In fact, the complete religious life of any particular
church, a perfect image of the universal Church, is the
counterpart of the full sacerdocy.
In this matter every bishop is in complete equality with all
his brethren. The Pope himself, from the sacramental point
of view, is but a bishop among bishops. The character of
representative of Christ as priest, which is imperfect in the
1 Ep. ad Ephes. iii.

xrbe Episcopal ©rber 363
inferior clergy, is complete in the bishop and extends to all
his functions. This is emphasised by certain details of the
liturgy, as at the Mass, before the collects, when in place of
the formula Dominus vobiscum which the simple priest uses.
The Lord be with you, the bishop says Pax vobis. Peace be
with you, a formula which was made use of by the Saviour
Himself. Here we find the idea that the bishop is the head
of his church, its source of peace and spiritual life, even as
Christ in Himself and through His Vicar is the head of the
Church universal.
Hence the bishop has to keep watch in his diocese, as the
principal minister, over the administration of the sacraments,
especiaUy of the principal sacrament, the Eucharist. Indeed,
the mystery of the Cross and of incorporation with Christ the
Saviour of mankind find their real representation in Mass
and Communion as they find their hierarchical instrument in
the Episcopate. This, then, is the central rite and the first
care which in each diocese as in the whole Church makes all
turn to itself. Pontifical Mass, with the whole group of
assistant priests and ministers, with the assembled faithful,
is the best image as well as the principal act of the complete
religious activity of a Church.
Hence also the bishop is foremost in prayer, an intercessor
with and for his people, communicating to God the requests
of them all in union with them all. Hence comes his part
in the establishment and the performance of the liturgy or
public prayer, which without interruption even when the
faithful are absent treats of their interests and supplies their
place. " Every church," says St. Ignatius of Antioch, " is a
lyre ; in it the priests and the faithful are united to each other
like the strings to the wood of an instrument which gathers
them together, and in this union of souls and voices, on the
lyre of the Church, the Holy Spirit sings of Jesus Christ."''
In respect of government {imperium), the bishop shares in
what we call, in a spiritual sense, the kingship of Christ,
which is manifested, like every government, in the threefold
authority : legislative, judicial, and executive.
He can make laws, subject to the general laws of the
Church. He adds to them such rules of public administra
tion as are necessary for their application. He can also add,
either at his pastoral visitations or otherwise, particular
ordinances. And the laws which he makes are valid even
under his successor until they are abrogated by an authority
equal to or higher than himself.
He is the judge of his people in spiritual matters ; and so
he can call delinquents to his tribunal and pass sentence on
them, applying punishments if necessary.
¦Ep. ad Ephes. ii. 4.

3^4 xrbe Cburcb
He ought, however, to remember, as the Council of Trent
forcibly said, that he is a shepherd and not a striker {Pas-
tores, non percussores) ; and that therefore he ought to treat
the faithful confided to him as children, as brethren, not as
subjects to be domineered over. To convince and beseech
in the first place, to reprove in the second, is the order
St. Paul emphasises {argue, obsecra, increpa — 2 Tim. iv. 2).
If he has to reprove, he must do it in all kindness and
patience {in omni bonitate et patientia) " so that without
bitterness, salutary and necessary discipline may be preserved
among the people."^
In order to exercise his judgement with harmony and
wisdom, the bishop convokes at regular intervals a diocesan
synod, that is an assembly of his priests and clerics, either in
their full strength or a selection of them, charged to give
him information and counsel on all the matters that depend
on his charge. Thus his government will be more competent
and better fitted to his flock, the promulgation of his legal
enactments more solemn, and in those cases in which they
impose penalties or are unexpected they wiU be less liable to
the charge of being arbitrary.
The bishop has likewise a permanent assistance from what
is called his chapter, a sort of religious senate which takes
charge of the Offices in the Cathedral Church, shares in the
government of the diocese, and takes the bishop's place in
the event of a vacancy of the see.
Of old the bishop had lieutenants in the form of arch
deacons, who had considerable powers, so that they were
called "the bishop's hand and eye." But this title has
become almost everywhere purely honorary, and its duties
have become confounded with those of the vicars general.
Thus are those officials called who exercise in the bishop's
name or as responsible to him a general jurisdiction of order,
whether voluntary or disputed. In the latter case the com
petent vicar general takes the name official. Temporary or
local vicars, whose work in France is done almost always by
archpriests or deans, complete this organisation of episcopal
power and act as its instruments.
Besides these things, the holding of particular councils,
ordinary or extraordinary, provincial or national, which in
the great body of the Church are as it were special functions
subordinate to the great general function of life, assists in
another way, and that from above, in the bishop's govern
ment. He is bound thereby to the common order, as just
now we saw him to be to his flock. The impression of these
meetings, which are an image of the Church in little, hovers
over the clergy and the mass of the faithful, strengthening
the Catholic sense in each and all. It must also strengthen
1 Council of Trent, sess. xxiv.

xrbe Episcopal ©rber 365
the impression of charity, if the assembled bishops keep the
sense of their office always before their eyes in the same way
as they do individually.
Indeed, this character of harmony and goodness attached
to the episcopal power is no accident ; it arises from its origin
and special nature. The bishop is only chief because he is
shepherd, and in order tO' be shepherd. He " who gives' his
life for his sheep " — for such is his law, if it be necessary —
is not going to tyrannise over them ! It is only to defend the
life of which he is the spiritual giver, as father of souls, that
the bishop is vested with all his powers.
Lastly, the bishop is an administrator. Things and per
sons in his spiritual flock are the subjects of his action con
formably to the laws of the Church, to particular agreements
and to civil laws recognised by the Church. And this is so
because his subjects are also subjects of the State, and cannot
be snatched from the jurisdiction of one to the advantage of
the other. Each society is sovereign in its own order, said
Leo XIII. ; utraque in suo genere maxima.^
Consequently, all the offices and charges that the adminis
tration of a diocese presupposes are dependent on the bishop.
He is their dispenser, their guardian and their judge, though
with appeal to a higher authority. He has to extend his
vigilance to possessions, which are the means or the matter
of works.
In short, in all respects the bishop is the centre of life in
whom all converges, even as all begins from him.
But in all things also the bishop is the dependent of the
Pope, who can, for reasons of which he himself is the sole
judge, restrict, extend, suspend or suppress the legitimate
exercise of the former's rights. That is why, although we
have said : In principle and as far as concerns their order, as
principally manifested in Council, all bishops are equal, yet
it belongs to the Pope to communicate to some rather than
others some part of his principate for the better administra
tion of the Church. This, while involving no alteration of
the essence of the hierarchy, will enrich and renovate the
resources of government in the empire of souls. So in the
body some more important nerve-centres exercise in depend
ence on the brain some of its functions.
Hence arise Patriarchs and metropolitans, primates, patri
archal delegations, legates, vicars apostolic, etc., which are
in no wise a cause of dispersion of the central authority,' nor
a check in the return of life to the centre, but rather a useful
stage in that return.
*****
By reason always of the unity which holds together the
^ Encyclical Libertas.

366 xrbe Cburcb
whole episcopal body ; by reason of the unity of the mission
entrusted to the Twelve by the divine Master, the particular
action of the bishop does not have its whole result in his own
diocese ; it has a general bearing. The autonomy of each
pastor in the midst of his flock is more visible, but not more
real, than the mystic unity of the whole body.
The scattered bishops, by means of their union with each
other and with the Holy See, form a kind of permanent
spiritual counciL The reciprocal life which circulates between
the centre and the circumference, and even laterally, from
see to see, resembles what goes on in a healthy organism,
in which the parts are not confounded, the parts are not
equal, but all are reciprocal.
The laws which are made in this place or that, the customs
which arise, confirmed by authority and experience, contribute
to the formation and perfection of general laws and customs.
The holiness which springs from them becomes a common
stock. What we have said as to the part that the governed
play in the Church's government is much more true of those
governing subjects, the bishops. If the Pope " strengthens
his brethren " in the assistance they render him, this assist
ance is none the less actual. In doctrine, in discipline, in
liturgy, in everything, the subordinate action of the bishops
is one of the means of life of which the Holy See is tbe centre,
of which Christ and His divine Spirit are the driving forces.
Lastly, is not this the place to recall the fundamental
remark which we made in relation to the sacrament of Order?
In the Church the mystical point of view always dominates
from a far higher standpoint the administrative point of view,
the latter being a means, the former an end. So that in the
administration itself, when it is religious, the scale of offices
ought to correspond in principle with the scale of vital values.
It follows that the bishop, placed at the head of the hier
archy in his particular church, and at the head of the whole
Church in the communion of his brethren the other bishops,
is from this very fact engaged in a state of perfection; for
that which is supreme ought to be perfect, in an order of
things whose purpose is sanctification.
The bishop, who is charged with the most sacred of acts
of religion, who is in that respect equal to the Pope himself,
who applies himself to the greatest of duties which have all
a mystical import, is called to a state of life which corresponds
to the divine caU. Of the three states that theologians dis
tinguish, that of beginners, of progressives and of the per
fect — it being understood that the last term is used to apply
to those who are striving after and actually going towards
pferfection, not that they have reached it — it is to the last that
the bishop is invited to belong. At the time of his consecra-

xrbe Episcopal ©rber 367
tion he makes perpetual and public profession of it; he has
to prove it by his actions.
The sacraments, which the pastor administers and which
are in his charge, sanctify, as we have said, the channels
through which they pass. Are not these channels living ones,
and ought not they to be conscious, for themselves as for all,
of the value of what they impart? Are not they clients also?
They, then, should partake more than anyone of the sanc
tifying effects, since they are the first to have full powers
for sanctifying others.
The fulness of the priesthood corresponds normally to the
fulness of faith and love. The power of imparting the Holy
Spirit implies normally a personal possession of that Spirit in
an eminent degree.

CHAPTER VIII
THE PRIESTLY ORDER
IT is not good that man should be alone, said Jehovah in
the Bible; let us make him an helpmeet for him.
These words might be applied to the bishop, and to
the episcopate generally.
It would not be good for the episcopate to be alone,
without sharing its fulness of priesthood. The hierarchy
would in such an event be impoverished ; and also in a certain
manner depreciated, in that if the principal and the accessory,
the great and the small were not distinguished, the whole
would be reduced to the level of those secondary duties which
from day to day the bishop would be called upon to perform.
Moreover, such isolation would be a very distant imitation
of the harmony of the works of Providence ; for God has given
His creatures not only being, but the power of communicating
being; not only fecundity, but the power of communicating
that fecundity. And thus it is in conformity with God's
creative and recreative purposes that the bishop should com
municate to his assistants the fruitfulness of his priesthood,
as Christ communicated His to the Church in the person of
the bishops, and as God has communicated His to His Son.
The helpmeet for him of whom the Bible speaks is in the
case of the bishop his own Church, since the assistants with
whom he provides himself are drawn from her bosom. She
is the spouse, as we said above ; and it is chiefly through the
order of priesthood that she becomes a mother.
Thus the hierarchy will be enriched and widened, and the
life which emanates from the divine springs and passes
through Christ and the body of bishops will reach the Chris
tian people through the priesthood, keeping its single unity
rooted in the unity of the Father and the Son.
And there, moreover, stops the hierarchy properly so called,
which cannot be broken up indefinitely to transmit itself
through more and more grades. The priest receives the
priesthood and does not pass it on ; he is the consecrated, not
a consecrator. Likewise, he is not a chief in the hierarchy.
No priest is a chief except the complete priest who is clothed
with the pontificate. Each particular church has a " senate "
— as a little while ago we called the presbyterium or assembly
of priests encircling the bishop ; but it has no head other than
the bishop himself. Be he parish priest or vicar-general,
none has the right to be caUed a head. It is true that the
priests of every rank have a share in the principality that is
conferred on their chief. They have a share in it, but they
do not divide it or multiply it; they are partakers of the single
368

xrbe priestls ©rber 369
fruitfulness which is bestowed upon the hierarchical body,
consecrated for that purpose.
Likewise there are below the priests ministers of inferior
rank. At all times there have been deacons; for many ages
there have been sub-deacons and clerics vested with minor
orders. All these have a ministerial function in regard to the
priesthood; they are witnesses and servants of the mysteries,
occasional delegates from the clergy to the faithful, to prepare
for them and to preserve the bond between them and the
priesthood. But in reality it is about the episcopate that
they are ranked. They are the helpers of the complete priest,
the bishop, and only after that of the simple priests who assist
him. It is in order to be of help to the former that they put
themselves at the disposition of the latter. ^
Thus once more is revealed the essential dependence of
every priest on the bishop, whose prerogatives and authority
he shares in perfect unity with him. The priest is associated
in the three r61es mentioned above, instruction, sacramental
ministry and the threefold government (legislative, judicial
and executive), and acts in all of them in a supplementary
manner. He preaches and teaches in the bishop's name; he
baptises in order to give sons to the bishop, who at their
confirmation will receive them at his hands; he celebrates at
the altar, either jointly with the bishop, or separately, but
always in unity with him, administering the Body of Christ
with him, as he distributes His truth and shares in His King
dom. The bishop's hand is in all that is done in his diocese,
and it is he in the first place who does it. And so there is
perfect unity in the local as in the universal Church.
Granted that the character of the priesthood as found in
the simple priest is incomplete, its very dependence has its
greatness ; for it allows him a share as participant in the
dignity of which he partakes. As St. John Chrysostom said
in this connection, " I know not what the priest has less than
the bishop, except that he receives it from the bishop."^ So
in the Trinity the Son has all that the Father has except
being the Father.
As for that, priests also, in spite of their lesser rank, are
successors of the apostles. To them also was it said : Go and
teach all nations ; Do this for a memorial of Me; and What
soever you shall bind on earth shall be bound also in heaven.
1 All 'the ministerial offices of which we are speaking' are derived from the
diaconate, the only one which existed at the start. '' They must therefore be
considered as subdivisions derived from the Church's authority ; they do not
belong to her first institution. In their case there is an organic differentiation
having its rise in the episcopate, as we have seen a differentiation ¦ in the
episcopate having its rise in the Holy See.
2 Horn. II. in I Tim., chap, iii^ ¦'
24 ¦;

370 xrbe Cburcb
Whether by derivation or of right, the unique authority which
is derived is exercised in the same way none the less.
This glorifying unity of the clergy with their bishop in each
church had of old time a moving symbol which even now has
not entirely perished. On the greater and more solemn days
the whole presbyterium surrounded the bishop and celebrated
together with him in the presence of the people. In common
they said : This is My Body, this is My Blood, and all the
faithful, sharing and communicating in the mysteries, had
under their eyes, in their hearts, through their feeUngs, the
vision and impression of the mystic unity, the divine hierarchy
of which the sacrificed Lamb is the centre, and which was
there, if one may venture to say so, in His action, exercising
His eternal priesthood.
In spite of this unity between clergy and bishop, which is
of itself a source of equality between all priests, there are
various grades among the latter. But in reality it is the very
unity of which we are speaking which accounts for this, since
without it the various functions of the episcopate would not
be fulfilled.
The necessities of religious administration, then, have
caused an order and division of functions to be established
among the members of the priesthood, who though as such
they are brothers, none the less have a hierarchy of duties.
And hence arose the ancient institution of cardinal priests,
whose fortune rose so high in spite of all changes ; hence too
that of ecclesiastical titles with cure of souls, which originated
parishes and collegiate churches. Hence also the various
r61es of economist, penitentiary, provost, dean, schoolmaster,
etc., which have in the course of ages been subject to great
variations. And hence also arose the creation of little
churches without episcopal title, but dependent on a bishop,
and forming, in varied combinations, those religious areas
which are to-day called dioceses.-'
To mark better the unity which persists through these
divisions, customs were established which presented other
advantages. Such were the stations, or assembUes organised
by the bishop in the various churches of his area in turn, to
which his throne was removed one after another. To-day
pastoral visitations achieve the same results.
*****
We come thus to the consideration of parishes and their
titulars; for these constitute the actual form of the clergy's
co-operation in the bishop's pastoral mission.
The word curi'^ {curatus, one who is in charge, that is of
1 In the language of antiquity, the word diocese (dtolK7i<n.s) was the name
of an administrative division belonging rather to the civil order.
2 The word cur^ is not exactly translatable into English. Its nearest equiva
lent is our parish priest, or priest having the cure of souls. — Translator,

xrbe priestly ©rber 371
the Parish, from the Latin word parochus) does not belong to
the primitive language of the Church. The parish originally
meant what we now caU the diocese, or a part of it.
There were no cur^s properly so called before the fourth
century, for the reason that the Christian flock, smaU as it
then was, did not yet require this subdivision of the churches.
All the faithful were grouped about the bishop and celebrated
the sacred liturgy with him, whether they formed part of the
town or came from the surrounding country. The bishop
was properly speaking the curd {curatus) of the whole diocese,
with the assistance of his priests, be it understood, but in
such wise that none of the latter had the exclusive and per
petual care of a particular group of the faithful.
This does not mean that there were no churches other than
the Cathedral Church; but in them there was nothing but
prayer; neither the holy Mass nor preaching took place in
them, for it was preferred that these things should be con
fined to the place where the bishop's seat was fixed. ^
Naturally it was in the country districts that the need of an
extension of this system first made itself felt; and there in
the fourth century it began. We must wait until after the
year looo before we find a regular system of parish organisa
tion in the episcopal cities.
In Gaul the zeal of St. Martin did much for the beginnings
of the parochial movement. This saint, who, when a
catechumen, divided his military cloak in order to give half
of it to a beggar, divided his episcopal mantle in order to
cover therewith the reUgious nakedness of his children. All
along the Roman roads, starting from his own city, he
established parochial centres which flourished and became
models for others.
It soon happened that the rural proprietors, either through
interest or zeal, contributed to these religious foundations,
which, by affording facilities for the exercise of religion,
tended to settle the inhabitants and to attract new ones. But
it was above all the monks, who, beginning in the fifth cen
tury, clearing and civilising the land, opening Gaul to civil as
to religious life, hunting the wolves and making room for the
Lamb of God, created the network of French parishes.
We see hereby that charges with the cure of souls are not
of either Apostolic or Divine institution; they arose in the
Church as a necessity for her development. The parish priests
do not form a third order in a hierarchy which has the Pope
and the bishops for its higher ranks. A curd has no jurisdic
tion in the proper sense, at least by reason of his charge.
He is neither legislator nor judge, nor has he any independent
executive power. All these qualities appertain to the bishop.
The curd, then, is not, properly speaking, a pastor, which
* The word cathedral, indeed, is derived from seat: cathedra.

372 xrbe Cburcb
word implies a personal jurisdiction. The pastors of peoples
are their kings, their chiefs endowed with the triple preroga
tive into which social authority expands. The pastors of the
Gospel, then, are those who possess like powers in spiritual
things. But nothing prevents us from applying to them the name
pastor m a less precise sense. It is fitting so to address the
head of a religious family, as the curd is, without prejudice
to the verbal precautions which Jansenist and Galilean errors
impose on theologians.
The functions of the curd are as follows. He is charged
in the first place with procuring the good of souls in his
parish by the word of God and the administration of the
sacraments. Not that he is obliged to assume in his own
person the whole task of instruction and edification ; but he
ought to assume it in part, and for the rest he must watch
over it. So that if anyone speaks, teaches or administers the
sacraments in his church, even though such a one hold the
powers of a bishop, he is nevertheless in a way the curd's
substitute, inasmuch as the latter has received special charge
in these matters.
From this we may easily see what the curd is in spiritual
matters and what he is not. The fact that the curate or the
temporary priest receive their powers from the bishop proves
that there is no communication of the pastoral office from the
latter to the curd. But yet the fact that the curd has a respon
sibility in the matter proves that he is really curatus, one who
is in charge.
The curd has to watch over public prayer and himself cele
brate Mass for his people. He must organise religious
instruction, cherish and forward good Christian life, visit the
sick, comfort them, and help them to make use of their suffer
ings for a Christian end. He must concern himself with the
poor and with all forms of activity in general, organising
charity and appealing to the richer of his parishioners to
supply the wants of the others. He must administer, with
such co-operation as is determined by law or by wise custom,
the property that is set aside for purposes of worship or
charity. He must keep in good order and adorn the church,
his " spouse "; but must above all watch over that spiritual
spouse, the community confided to his care, exhorting in
season and out of season, as the Apostle says, giving warn
ing of dangers, denouncing open faults. In certain cases he
may dispense from the laws of the Church at his discretion.
He names his assistants with the approval of the bishop;
that at least is his ordinary right, though in France necessity
has disposed otherwise.
The parishioners, in return, ought to listen to the instruc-

xrbe priestly ©rber 373
tions of their parish priest, accept his paternal care, receive
the sacraments from him or his deputies, so far as law and
custom determine. They ought to supply with ready heart
what is needed for his works of public interest and charity,
works which concern themselves, since they concern their own
persons, their children, their religious objects, the poor. Are
not those in each parish specially our brothers who have need
of help, religious aid, instruction and comfort?
But before all the parishioners fulfil their duty if they are
good Christians, giving satisfaction to the curd in his very
raison d'itre. He is there for them, not for himself; it is
their soul which is his care, and their Christian life which is
his work. To be present at the offices, to give of one's
property or even one's self to outside needs, is not enough.
The house of God is empty when only bodies are there, and
the parish also is empty if there are in it only worthy people
civil to their priest, regular at his offices, generous in response
to his demands on them, but all the same given up to vanity
or overcome by evil. Souls ! souls ! the apostles cry, and the
curd is a resident apostle, a conqueror of the inner life for
the good of the conquered.
At certain epochs in the past, parochial life had an intensity
such as we can hardly imagine now. The word family was
not too strong to express the union which ordinarily existed
between a pastor, the offspring of the locality, supported
exclusively by his parishioners, living their life, sharing their
thought as a preliminary to the endeavour to direct it
towards Christ, attached, in those days when communica
tion was so difficult, to nothing that could distract him from
his duty.
The bonds between such a pastor and his flock, who found
in the church all that they needed ; firstly the church itself —
and we well know how great was the attachment of the faithful
to that — and moreover a forum, a town hall, a market, a
meeting-place for confraternities, a theatre for mystery-plays
and liturgical drama; in time of need a storehouse for corn or
furniture, and in time of war a fortress — such bonds must
indeed have been strong' !
Such an accumulation of purposes was not without its
inconveniences; but at least it nourished that common life
by which the Church sets so much store. In his sermons the
parish priest did not consider himself forbidden to deal with
civil affairs after he had treated of religious ones. His opinion
was of weight, for he took part in all the community's deci
sions with a preponderating voice; he uttered that opinion;
in the name of morals he solved many material or administra
tive questions. The whole of the life of the parish was there
considered, judged and disposed of with fatherly admonitions.

374 xrbe Cburcb
sometimes severe, but nearly always well received, if not
obeyed. At the offices the kind of respectful but rather inert passivity
which we meet with to-day would have very much astonished
our ancestors. The Church was a place for acting, for carry
ing on a drama : Spafia, a thing done. The people, book in
hand, or rather with their memories well stored from infancy,
took an interest in all the liturgical ceremonies. They sang,
they walked in procession, and if perchance a strange preacher
made his appearance, they listened to long addresses, varied
but familiar, which lasted sometimes for hours. Eleven o'clock
masses were unknown, and so were fifteen minute sermons.
They loved all that the parish procured for them and stood
for in their eyes. They brought it faith, they drew from it
courage and gentleness.
With this medium so close to the facts of life, the power of
the Church got home; it reached the little familiar details of
existence, where good and evil abide, where the Kingdom of
God is established or destroyed. What did it matter then
that Rome was far away, and the bishop a fleeting vision of
greatness ?
Napoleon dreamed of effecting a wholesale " moral revolu
tion ' ' in France by means of the parish priests. He dreamt
of a priest on the old lines; independent and respected, " well
fitted, by the high function which he meant to assure him, to
increase the intelligence of the community," " the natural
magistrate" among his parishioners, " a true moral leader
of their conduct, ' ' and, thanks to his practical knowledge and
merited influence, a real " providence for his sheep. "^
This was a great vision ; but it came too late in time to be
new. The country parson, on whom so much verse was
written in the Romantic epoch, that ideal being of whom
even a Lacordaire could dream, was not so foreign to reality.
He was indeed not far from being in former times the general
rule, and it is not for nothing that in the French tongue, in
which long-standing customs are so often found reflected,
the love of one's native soil— the love, that is, of the little
local fatherland — is called amour du clocher.
The belfries of France were, and in many cases still are,
the communes of France. The council-house, the school, are
the first houses of the village; the church is the house that
cannot be classified, the house between earth and heaven,
the house of the body and the feelings, for the life of every
day and for the great aspirations that know nothing of time.
Births, marriages and deaths, the three guide-marks of exist
ence to which all is directed, themselves are directed towards
the belfry ; the belfry dominates them all, draws them to itself
and gives them its help.
' Commentaires de NapoUon I'r, vol. v. , p. 409.

xrbe priestly ©rber 375
But the belfry is a living thing; living firstly in God, who
dweUs under its summit ; but living also in the pastor who dweUs
in its shadow. The cock who turns high up in all directions
stands for the Father's sleepless vigilance; the beU with its
great waves of sound or its tiny jingle is his voice echoing the
voice of God. The Cross in the cemetery near at hand is his
last blessing; those by the roadside and in the houses, on
cradle or breast, on the tool, on the very morsel of bread, is
the hearty and solemn Yes which with his Master he says to
Life, to aU life, which he desires to see joyous, glad, but also
thoughtful and sanctified, having another life in view.
The curd it is who receives, who unites, who consoles and
bids Godspeed to those who pass so speedily through exist
ence. At every stage he marks what in each of them is
strong or weak, good or evil. He easily obtains the confi
dence of the sorrowful, gladly welcomes that of the happy.
Inclinations, desires, intimacies, enmities, successes and sins,
there are indeed few of these unknown to him, and sooner or
later those few will be made known to him in the Con
fessional. He is everywhere as soon as he is wanted, near or far, by
night or day, in heat or cold, with the great or small. He is
the appointed healer of discords, the consoler in suffering, the
redresser of open wrongs and the witness of happy events.
To-day, almost everywhere in France, as has become the
case elsewhere in the cities, the bonds are somewhat relaxed ;
our life has become more complex, more dispersed; but the
spiritual unity remains, and all may yet be reborn. Those
who have striven so long to make a breach in this magistracy
pf souls, have committed, perhaps without knowing it, a
crime against souls as well as against their country and
God. It goes without saying that in speaking specially of France,
and even so particularly of the country districts, we have not
meant to do so exclusively. In a town the part played by the
parish priest is very complicated and necessarily subdivided.
The law of increasing differentiation on the part of organisms
in evolution applies to the parish. The parish priest is no
longer everything ; curates with definite functions, in ordered
ranks, form a kind of secondary presbyterium about him.
None the less he remains chief, in the non-canonical sense we
have explained.
The more value, the more zeal, the more power of attraction
and devotion he has, the more he holds the reins. Parochial-
undertakings of every kind, catechisms in various grades,
schools, benevolent societies, confraternities, propaganda,
social work spreading ever more and more, works of zeal
whose effects reach sometimes to foreign lands, to mission
countries, to Rome, to the colonies to which his parishioners

370 xtbe Cburcb
emigrate, demand his attention and application, and some
times formidable financial duties weigh upon him.
The French Law of Separation, which some thought would
be the death of the parishes, has greatly increased their im
portance, and yet this movement has hardly begun. As the
Christian revival which is noticeable on all hands develops,
our parishes will be reborn to a freer and therefore a deeper
life; their numbers wiU multiply, and so they will be more
fitted to regain the people.
And so, throughout the whole world, in spite of very great
variations rendered necessary by differing circumstances and
surroundings, the fundamental part played by the parish
priest is everywhere the same. In all places the parish may
be called, to use an expression dear to sociologists, the social
cell of the Church, as the family is of the temporal sphere.
It is its " tactical unit,"^ though not its mystical and hier
archical unit in the proper sense, which is the diocese.
The author we have quoted adds profoundly that " the
Catholic parish is easily discernible, in virtue of certain funda
mental characters, from the non-Catholic parish, however
close to it the latter may be in appearance, whether it be
the parish of the schismatic Greek or Russian, of the Dutch
Jansenist, of the Swiss Old CathoUc or of the Anglican
Ritualist who calls himself a Catholic and copies all the
usages of the Church, but remains separated from its head. ' '
And the reason for this is indicated exactly in the last phrase.
The religious bond is uninterrupted from the parishioner to
the Head of the universal Church, by way of the Bishop;
influences circulate which give to the life of each little society
a completeness which comes to it from the great life to which
it is attached. Has the separate twig which vegetates, drinks
in a little dew from the ground in an attempt to shoot, the
appearance of the twig holding to its branch, the branch
issuing from the trunk, which drinks up its food through the
roots, while the whole shoots up to heaven?
It is but natural, then, that the Catholic parish should be
of a special character and the same everywhere.
The Church's constitution is supple; but the type of each
of its organs is very quickly fixed, even when it is not settled
by original institution. All evolves in accordance with laws
which are dictated by the fundamental nature of things;^ of
which God is the founder, and subsequently the restorer
through Christ. This organisation, which has the same work
to perform, a work human and divine, can only gravitate
around fixed points, which are determined jointly by human
nature, which is seen in its fundamental principles therein,
and the unchanging immobility of God.
1 Cf. Lesetre, La Paroisse, p. 233.

CHAPTER IX
THE MONASTIC ORDER
THE Church, local Churches, parishes : these are
the successive zones wherein Catholic religious
life is called upon to unfold and reveal its supple
and single organisation.
In turning to the monastic order, we are no
longer dealing with a particular field of the Church's action,
nor yet with a degree of the hierarchy ; but with a deepening
of the religious life, and with the various forms used to
extend its resources, to the direct advantage of higher souls
and the indirect benefit of the whole Church.
As an organ of the Church, the monastic order is collective
in essence like the Church herself. We have pointed out
often enough already that in an organisation of love, such as
Catholicism is, there is no room for an isolated search after
salvation, and even less for solitary perfection. All is bound
together in God through Christ, each soul is bound to all
the others, and each band is only a company, a regiment, a
brigade, a division, or a special formation in the complete
army. We must apply in the first place to the Church as a whole
what St. Benedict said of his work, when he called it a school
of God's service {Dominici schola servitii). The particular
"schools " all operate in the Spirit of the Church, under her
guidance and for her ends, which are general as well as per
sonal to each son of God.
Whether we consider anchorites, men who live apart from
mankind, in secluded retreat, or even in the desert, as did the
hermits, or whether we take the case of the cenobites, monks
who live in community, as do the Benedictines, or, again, the
canons regular, of whom there were many in the first cen
turies, or the friars, of whom the Franciscans, the Dominicans,
the Carmelites, the Augustinians, the Minims are the largest
families, or the regular clerks, with their most famous divi
sion, the Society of Jesus, or lastly secular clerks living in
community, with or without vows, like the disciples of
St. Alphonsus Liguori orof St. Paul of the Cross, the Priests
of the Mission, the Oblates of every kind, the Oratorians,
etc. ... in all of these cases, the order under consideration
is only an application of Catholic thought, an outgrowth of its
organisation, and consequently a social thing.
This is all the more so when it happens that a monastic
centre is erected into a particular Church, with a prelate
belonging to the episcopal order, or at least under the direc
tion of clerics belonging to the hierarchy and ruUng the
society of monks or nuns in its name.
377

378 xrbe Cburcb
Monastic churches were numerous and flourishing in the
fourth century, and perhaps even before. Their chiefs, in the
case of communities of men, were soon drawn almost exclu
sively from their own ranks, so that there was complete
homogeneity between the-society considered as belonging to
the monastic order and the same in its place in the Jiierarchical
order. It thus generally happened that these particular churches,
being generally more fervent, better supplied with personnel,
and more influential, widened their field of action and saw
secular populations come under their care, the monks being
their clergy, the abbot or prior their pastor with cure of souls.
When the superior was a bishop, he had a true diocese around
him ; when he was not, he became an archpriest in the ancient
sense of the word, like the cardinalitial titles of diocesan
churches, and took part in all the acts of the ecclesiastical
life which emanated from him. In this apparent confusion,
the distinction between the monastic and the hierarchic or
canonical orders continued none the less.
Later on, the foundation of the great apostolic orders issued
from a general system of thought which attached these groups
more directly to the Holy See, without prejudice to the indis
pensable bonds connecting them with the particular churches
in which they spread. And this was an even more evident
demonstration of the social character with which the monastic
order is endowed.
It remains for us to estimate the value which these creations
have for the Church, and to that end to define the religious
state in itself.
The religious state is, properly speaking, a public pro
fession of what is in its perfection the Church's own very
work, namely holiness, which is characterised by charity;
adhesion to God and to all that is God's, especially one's
human neighbour, and an accompanying laying aside of all
that is really foreign or hostile to Him, particularly the
selfish and sinful ego.
We must avoid two possible mistakes in this definition.
The outward profession of perfection here involved does not
imply the attainment, but the determined quest of perfection.
And again, when we say " outward profession," we mean
that the inward may be separated from it. There are re
ligious who are scarcely perfect; there are simple Christians
who advance heroically along this royal road. The latter
have the soul of the religious life without belonging to its
body ; the former have the body without the soul.
But it is important to make it clear that this soul of the
religious life is the soul of the Church herself, and in no wise
a special thing. What is special is the external and public

xrbe /ibonastic ©rber 379
profession. And such a profession, precisely because it is
public, that is, sanctioned by and included in the Christian
unity, makes him who professes a representative. The whole
Church declares her aims in him, as the hero declares the
army's wish, victory.
The whole Church has holiness for end ; this is her proper
work. That is why the Church is called Holy. We have
also said that the Episcopate, the highest representative of
the Church from the mystic point of view, is in itself a state
of perfection, and calls to actual perfection every one who
receives episcopal consecration. In the present case the
representation is spontaneous, not hierarchic, but it is sanc
tioned and thereby also canonical in its own way. The cases,
then, are radically identical.
Hereby we see the great error of the ' ' moderns ' ' who
maintain that religious profession is an out-of-date institu
tion, and that it would be in the Church's interest for her to
disembarrass herself of it as an encumbering accessory. The
institution of the religious life is by no means an accessory ;
it is connected with the Church's fundamental sanctity; it
reveals the best, the highest achievement of the Church, in
agreement with the principle that is its starting-point. If
there were no religious, there would be a relative check to
the sanctifying work which has been undertaken ; for all that
is undertaken tends towards achievement and must be able to
show evidence of it. A theologian has very well said that
" the religious state is so far of the essence of the Church
that it naturally began with her, or rather she began with
it."i The religious, then, merely carries out the natural sequence
of his baptism and carries out all its consequences to the end.
Every baptised person makes profession of giving himself to
God by means of Christ and of renouncing all that opposes
or ignores Him. The religious can propose nothing more
to himself; he only proposes to do this better than it is done
ordinarily, to do it more fully, and to use means which are
better adapted to the end.
And the difference that constitutes degrees in this matter is
that the simple baptised person can confine himself to the
precepts, the fulfilling of which is the proof of essential
charity; whereas the religious makes profession of the
counsels, of those at least which are the matter of the three
vows; detachment from the goods of this world by means of
poverty, renunciation of the flesh by chastity, abandonment of
his own will by obedience.
In the life eternal, will not all things be common ? will not
the works of the flesh be absent? will not loving adhesion to
the divine will be the law? The reUgious life is an attempt
' Dom Grea, V&glise et sa divine constitution, p. 428.

38o xrbe Cburcb
at and an anticipation of this order of ends, as it is a con
tinuation and a perfecting of baptism.
Every Christian, at death, makes his religious profession;
neither his goods, nor his flesh, nor his own will matter to
him any more; he is lost in God; he descends into the tomb
with Jesus that he may rise again with Him, and this is what
baptismal immersion signifies.
Life in God, whose riches lie in having nothing and in
being all, will be the reward of whoever is willing to be cut
off by death from the transient. Life in God, in whom is
perfect and changeless life, will be given to him who with
draws from that ever-dying life which is sustained by food
and reproduction. Life in God, the Ruler of all beings, will
associate with His ever-obeyed Providence him who finally
renounces willing in accordance with his own will, who with
Jesus renders up his spirit into the hands of the Father. In
that greater life he will be a consentor to the divine pro
gramme that he will then see displayed, an actor in the drama
of the universe, precisely because he has renounced the per
sonal ' ' comedy, ' ' by agreeing that it should end with the
' ' tragic act. ' '
The religious forestalls this moment and wills to die
spiritually, as Jesus did from His first hour, as all His
chosen have done, beginning with the Twelve. Henceforth
nothing will count for him but God, but what is enlightened
by the light of God; all the rest will be but objects in the
darkness; he himself, in that part of him to which God does
not give life, will be no more than a corpse.
All this the religious vows, that is, he makes of it a state
instead of a temporary function; he means to extend the
Christian perfection he has professed to cover the whole of
the Christian Ufe ; he attempts to imitate in time that confirma
tion in good which is the achievement of eternity; he means
to guarantee his fidelity, and to add to the value of his gifts
that of their permanence and their source ; the stock with the
interest, the tree with its fruits.
Ordinarily, the new life will have for its shelter the
monastery. And the monastery is a " house of God " because
God governs it, God is served in it. He dwells in it. He is
the possessor of its souls and of its goods; and the monas
tery is a " workshop," in which are found the best " instru
ments of good works. "^
The special habit which he wears iS a sign of consecration,
of separation, of sanctification, the robe of the mystic bride,
the white garment of the newly-baptised, a symbolic fashion
of "putting on Christ," as St. Paul said of the baptised,
by putting on a habit blessed in His name, and it is there
with a guarantee against forgetfulness, a preservative against
1 Rule of St. Benedict, chap. iv.

xrbe /Ibonastic ©rber 381
many dangers, a source of respect in relation to others, for
common edification.
Community life, which is the ordinary rule, syinbolises
Christian unity; it reveals in the heaven of the Cburcb, that
vast coherence of stars, still closer combinations, Pleiades;
it invites to a life with our neighbour as with the Eucharist, in
communion, with the Lord for its centre ; it will be a spur to
charity and good works (Heb. x. 24). Those who have gone
out of the world, if the world comes to them under the forms
of guests, of travellers, of the poor, will give them the wel
come that they would give to Christ, because in Christ the
charity that is symbolised by mutual life is universal.
The monks exercise themselves in mutual humility, in
humility before God, by means of numerous practices which
are misunderstood by the world ; but is it not a principle for
the monk to receive the world's scorn, even as he himself
scorns the world?
Their eyes do not wander about over all things; they keep
them for inward contemplation, for the far-off, interior Beauty.
They do not speak indiscreetly; when they do speak, it is
still in the spirit of silence, and their silence, full of mystery,
is like that sUence which is one of God's virtues.
Their silence is respectful and wise; it is a stillness which
waits on a work from on high, an influx of light into the dark
ness within. Thanks to silence, their speech, once begun,
is kept within bounds and is confined to its proper matter.
The soul has concentrated its forces, watching over the
organisation of thought instead of its dispersion, cultivating
calmness in place of agitation, free instead of catching on to
every trifle, deadening the interior uproar of passion, receiv
ing words of inspiration and free to comment on them, empty
ing itself of nothingness to make room for the all.
Monks mortify themselves, that is, they cause to die in
them that which has no right to live, or rather that which
might rightfully live, but which they sacrifice wisely in pur
suit of noble ends. And is not the rising of the spirit from
the bottom whence the diver leaps upwards a noble thing;
and the love of expiatory suffering something nobler still,
the suffering of love summoned and tamed, which teaches you
to taste the chalice of Jesus after He had poured out His
blood ?
For the many sufferings tainted with evil, in themselves
or in others, as for many a depraved pleasure, they are eager
to substitute the suffering that purifies, merits and saves.
Filling up that which is lacking of the sufferings of Christ,
these men, crucified of their own free will, let their tears and
blood flow into the stream of redemption. They inspired in
Ozanam the feeling of their efficacy and power to cancel the

382 xrbe Cburcb
past when he wrote, after a night-office at the Grande
Chartreuse : " I thought of all the sins which were being
committed at that hour in our great cities, and I asked myself
if there could be truly sufficient expiation in these things to
wash out so many stains."
For all that, they are neither sombre nor depressed. The
happiness of the monastery is proverbial. These men, who
have driven away the gross laugh, the bitter laugh, the laugh
which seeks to deafen sadness, the concealed laugh which
escapes restraint and takes the risk of stirring up all the mire
that is in us, find all the easier the divine smile or the frank
laugh which cheers us.
It is they, the monks, who afford the world its best supply
of joy. But it is a pure joy ; a joy which is the fruit of charity ;
the inward kiss which expands and perfumes ; the joy of
belonging to God in union with all that loves God and of
expanding the heart to His stature; the joy of anticipating
heaven, though it be in the midst of tribulations.
For tribulations too are a source of joy, just as all joys
bring tears in their track. The present life is such a blend of
possessions and regrets, of hope and of painful expectation,
that it is a continual hurly-burly of sentiments in which the
soul's deepest feelings are no longer recognisable. Tears
are a nourishing bread, and the bread, when it is eaten, leaves
a taste of ashes in the mouth. Life and death, fatherland and
exile are mingled here, and God, who is our life, who is our
fatherland, God, the " portion " of the monk, God, I say,
because He gives and withdraws Himself, because He reveals
and hides Himself, becomes to the monk his ordeal and his
pure joy at the same time. That God, we mean, who is with
him, crucifying him as it were in coquetry, enrapturing and
smiting him, granting to him, as He does to His Son, the
privilege of sorrow. Happy is he when he keeps quiet on
his cross !
When the monk works with his hands, it is because work
purifies and calms; because work is the enemy of Satan;
because it brings us nearer to the workmen, our brothers,
and puts us into touch with Nature, our sister; because it
relates us to all reality, God's child, and to ourselves in our
better sources; because prayerful and patient work is happi
ness at hand, and to work in accordance with order is to live
in God.
It is the property of work to allow the mind to be strength
ened by contact with earthly realities. It makes us obey a
law and do our share in the work of mankind. The earth is
holy, and all real things are holy; by means of labour they
are raised up from their provisional fall and helped to rise
to their origins, which lie close to their ends.

xrbe /Ibonastic ©rber 383
St. Benedict wants the cellarer of the monastery to con
sider and care for the monks' tools as much as for all that
he had to look after, " as much as for the sacred vessels of
the altar. "1 ^t. Basil had said earlier "as the vessels of
God," and had added "To despise them is sacrilege."
Sacrilege indeed is whatever harms consecrated goods and
fetters labour, that divine service !
From the work which impresses dead matter with ideas,
the monk passes uninterruptedly to that non-servile work
which is concerned with ideas in themselves. Study is the
most assiduous companion of monastic leisure. It is called
contemplation, because it is directed towards the source from
which issues all Truth and remains ceaselessly dependent upon
it : because its intent is to do " the work of the Word," as
St. Catherine of Siena put it.
The Word expresses God, and the Father communicates to
us this everflowing Word by study as He does by prayer.
When the monk drinks of it, he takes from it that which will
make him a Word by participation, a revealer animated by an
ardent inspiration, thanks to the Spirit of love which
enspheres the relations of the Father and the Son.
What mighty words have arisen from this interior inter
course extending the official and fundamental words of the
Scriptures, of the Fathers, and of the teaching Church !
Liturgical worship takes a place in the monk's Ufe which
has often been criticised, which must not be exaggerated,
but which is in any case a very large one.
There are sOme who make this worship an end, and the
principal matter of an activity which is entirely devoted to
adoration. What others give to study, to the apostolate, or
to bodily charity, these find it well to offer to the service of
the altar. They are beings of praise. They make all centre
in the chant, the psalmody, ceremonies, the varied rites by
which our interior religion is signified. They apply them
selves to the divine " pensum " and to its sublime childlike-
ness; they caU that their " work of God," opus Dei, and they
consecrate to it the moments that the " positives " would like
to see reserved for "serious" ends. They squander their
time before God.
And it is to these particularly that the Church confides her
liturgy, for since they belong entirely to God, they are the
best instruments of prayer. They make of it a more
continuous and more perfect praise. The liturgy, which
endeavours to gather all things into itself in order to offer
them to heaven, to unite all things to the Alpha and Omega
that It invokes, finds a fit intermediary in the monk ; like a piece
of iron, already itself magnetised, which attracts others to it,
^ Rule, chap. xxxi.

384 xrbe Cburcb
To him^ is granted the mission of giving a richer voice to
our material and moral universe, of learning from the heavens,
which tell the glory of God, the meaning of their song; of
acting as the representative of mankind, forgetful, distracted,
obsessed or refractory; of bending the knee by proxy and of
satisfying for all before the divine desires, for the Father
seeketh them that will adore Him in spirit and in truth
(John iv. 23).
On condition that their life itself be a liturgy — pulchra
cceremonia, as the Dominican constitutions say — the monks
wiU thus anticipate the holy occupations of eternity ; for the
words of eternal life will be on their lips and will be reflected
in their works. Thus they will have made all their being
accord, like the decachord, which harmonises acts, thoughts,
and voices. They will praise God by means of the acts of
God in themselves and the word of God in the Scriptures.
It is they who, by the Church's commission, compose for
the Eucharist that accompaniment which is most honourable
and most profitable for us. They surround it with the
glorious cortdge of the Hours. By means of the liturgical
cycle whose course has this very mystery for its centre, with
the Hours revolving about the Mass, the week about the
Sunday, the year about Easter, they prepare hearts for the
coming of grace and ensure the diffusion of the sacramental
idea. They desire to sanctify the night as they do the day. Con
tinuity is one of the qualities which prayer claims with the
most insistent spontaneity. Is it not meet and just, right and
healthful to give thanks to God at all times? Night is only
the other side of day; it is fitting that God should be praised
all over the earth.
Thus, too, do the monks mean to purify the night which is
defiled by so many others, to take from it its taint of sin, to
trust to it the seeds of good thoughts as to the dark soil, to
set it in a Christian sense towards the coming day, to make a
light of joy of its darkness : Et nox illuminatio mea in deliciis
meis. By breaking the nightly sleep and the sounder sleep of
forgetfulness, they hope to turn aside that sleep of death, sin,
the prelude to the everlasting death which lies in wait for us.
Walk while you have the light of life, lest the darkness of
death overtake you (John xii. 35).
It will be observed that liturgical feeling easily lifts monks
to poetry, and urges them to the closest communion with
nature. They love this ' ' sister ' ' earth of theirs, which is so
eminently religious. Religious in its beginning, which is
creation; religious in its progress, which is providence, and
in its end, the service of the elect, nature is sacred as is all

xrbe /Ibonastic ©rber 385
reality, when liberty does not misdirect it. God saw that all
was good, says the Scripture; and the goodness of beings
flowing back to its origin, the stream which sings of its source
as it flows, is religion. From hence the monk takes his
lessons, as we have seen that he gives them thence. He
wishes to be with God as nature is with God ; obedient, full
of harmony and praise, a word of action, a self-uttered poem',
a liturgy of the twofold infinities of greatness. He is at the
same time its pupil and its priest, hearing therein his Lord's
voice and lending to it his own. ^
But if the monks have as their end anything other than
worship, such as charity or the apostolate, worship will none
the less, though in this case as a means — and we may add as
a partial end with which none can dispense — be a treasure of
the highest rank. Sources cannot be neglected. And who is
there that does not realise that in worship is the source of
self-sacrifice and conquering activity, in that mystical com
munion of the alone with the Alone nourished by a public and
active profession of love?
It must be understood that solemn worship is charity and
a very precious act of apostolate in itself. It is the fact that
the whole of Christian antiquity was nourished on it, and that
this " music," this harmony of act and voice was a kind of
Orphean lyre, especially for the barbarian world. A civilised
world can only carry to a higher pitch the acts of the har
mony of prayer.
Calm, edification, a feeling of mystery, instruction by
speech and symbolism, enthusiasm in rhythm and gesture,
and a close invitation to mutual unity, when, in the name of
the Universal Church and before God who affords us His real
Presence, we proclaim publicly and in common the change
less truth and the highest good ; these are the results we hope
to reap from the loving drama of the liturgy.
Again, the apostle or the being whose life is in charity,
the beneficent angel whom God sends us to heal the wounds
of body or soul, is a human angel. To succeed, and even to
persevere, he has need of divine strength. Whence will he
draw it, if not from the altar, or from the kindred ritual action
over which falls the shadow of the Eucharist ?
In the case of preaching reUgious, particularly, the apos
tolate is evidently based on contemplation and observance.
Contemplata aliis tradere, to hand on the fruits of one's con
templation, is the device of one great Order, and the others
agree with it.^ '
1 The old-time liturgists, often monks, or with the feelings of monks, are
the most poetical of all. Cf. Cabrol, Liturgical Prayer.
^ This formula is from St. Thomas Aquinas {Summa Theologica, i^ 2^,
q. 138), and it has been adopted by the religious family of which he was a
member. 25

386 xrbe Cburcb
The reason for this is that action is one thing with the
interior Ufe; expansion begins with concentration. Those
who think that it would be better to devote to exterior action
the time and spiritual energy which is bestowed on contem
plation or religious observances reason like a man who would
employ the time necessary for filling a reservoir in emptying-
it. It is merely a question of degree. An apostolic order is
not conducted as if it were exclusively contemplative. But
by wishing to solve the question in favour of outward action
exclusively, we make way for anaemia of soul, waste, useless
disturbance, and the dangers which they run who do not retain
their connection with their sources of refreshment.
Choir office, with its rigorous orderliness, its rhythm and
relative slowness, seems a very useful remedy for our modern
anxiety and nervousness. An epoch which suffers more than
any has done from nerves and overwork ought to appreciate
this purifying peace, and trust to the results of an activity
hardly at all narrower in scope, but otherwise more intense,
going closer to the roots of things, and riper.
Does not Nature work in infinite silence? Is it not from
the warm darkness of the crypt that mighty monuments soar
upward into daylight? Solitude is an exile which makes
return to one's fatherland more keenly felt and more bountiful.
It is not the monks who are in reaUty the lazy folk, although
that insult is flung at them; but rather the restless. Ex
pressionless souls, making their little successive daily tasks
ends in themselves, without patience, without sense of rela
tivity of values, ignorant of the fact that unhurried peace is
itself a strength, the non-contemplatives are shut out from
far-reaching activity as they are from high-soaring thought.
The seaman, the peasant and the monk know that the best
work is done by avoiding all hurry.
Can we fail, moreover, to realise that solemn worship,
since it has the value of prayer, transfers its effects to all
the undertakings with which it is connected by the spirit of
faith ? God does not keep for Himself what we give Him ;
He pours it back at once on us who thus become better tools
for His work, and on those whom our zeal offers Him as a
conquest that we hope as brothers to make. We must not
forget that if we plant and water, it is God who gives the
increase. That is why the greatest monastic apostles have invariably
been most zealous in the divine service and most attached to
all the duties of conventual life. From St. Bernard or St.
Francis and St. Dominic to Lacordaire, that modern among
the moderns, they have all dwelt upon the application of the
proverb : Physician, heal thyself. They have sanctified them
selves in order to sanctify others; they have consecrated to
God their own personal worship before offering Him even-

xrbe /Ibonastic ©rber 387
tually the worship of others. The apostolate is an addition,
and as it were an overflowing, of their rich offering. The
liturgy praises St. Dominic because he caused the canoriical
man in him to grow into an apostolic man {Virum canonicum
auget in apostolicum); it does not praise him on the ground
that he had abandoned God for man.
We may consider, then, that the liturgical revival
inaugurated by Dom Gudranger and continuing among us is
in natural relation with the apostolic viewpoints of the greatest
souls. It was a very opportune campaign. Far from weak
ening the soul with regard to preaching and teaching, the
liturgy prepares it for these duties; far from deserting the
people, it gathers them up and inclines them, through visible
unity, to mystical unity in the Lord.
The religious usefulness of monks is already implied in what
they are, if it be true that they achieve in themselves the
Church's proper work, and it is evident moreover from their
work, even though it be in extra-religious domains, as when
they become husbandmen, manufacturers or administrators,
or devoted to studies secular in themselves. All these forms
of work pour their values into the Church's treasury, in the
first place by sanctifying their authors, holding them to the
holy laws of their institutions and the general law of effort
that is imposed on mankind ; in the second, because the recog
nition of the people, most sensible of that which makes itself
outwardly manifest, benefits religious feeling represented by
the benefactor.
It is unnecessar}- to recall all that the monks have done for
civilisation. Although some people find it convenient to
forget it, none dare to despise it. Their labour has produced
more result than any temporal institution, and has done so
more profitably, because it was closer to its source.
As an expansive force in the Church, as a valuable institu
tion for internal growth and progress, the monastic order
offers services which, humanly speaking, can be supplied by
no other body. The monks instruct the Church, just as they
edify it. They keep it in touch with the sources of its doc
trine, which they make their constant study. They prin
cipally, though not solely, are the undertakers of great works,
such as require solitude, collaboration and ample time. The
" broken cisterns ' ' of premature information and petty pub
licity are not their affair. Usually they have deep insight
and shape work on a broad scale.
The ministry of the word, so essential to the Church, has
been committed to their care to an ever-increasing extent.
We might say that it is they in particular who have obeyed
the command : Go and teach all nations, although they have
done this alongside of the bishops, whose proper office preach-

388 xrbe Cburcb
ing is, as we have said. Eager to seize for themselves the
divine light, they have been no less concerned for its diffusion ;
they say with the Psalmist, / have not hid Thy justice within
my heart; I have declared Thy truth and Thy salvation
(Ps. xxxix. ii).
The love of souls is not peculiar to them; but they urge
their effort further and cover more ground therewith be
cause they are not confined within the bounds of a diocese
or even a parish. Since the thirteenth century particularly,
after the foundation of the great apostolic orders, so called
because they were sent by the Holy See and have traversed
the world, their zeal has extended throughout, the whole of
the Lord's field in which their seed is cast. We have seen
the image of the first ages reborn in them with renewed
vigour; they have emulated the travels of Paul, the great
inroads which had to precede those regular establishments to
which the main work of the Church aspires.
The decisive work in the spiritual sphere is done by the
hierarchy, and consequently within the limits where the hier
archy operates. The monk-apostle does not find his task
there. Like Paul, he " does not baptise," he preaches. But
in order that baptism may follow, he does the work of a beater-
up of souls ; and he supplies also the help necessary for internal
missions, for those new stimulants, insistent and periodical,
for which a single diocese or parish is far from being able
to supply all the means. These renewals of life, following
on the preparations for it, are the twofold task of a central
body which is essential to the Church.
We would readily impart to you not the Gospel only, but
also our own soul, wrote Paul to the Thessalonians (i Thess.
ii. 8). Might not these words be used to evoke, nay, to
express the apostolic action of the religious Orders? " To
impart one's soul" is to give one's life; every apostle must
be ready at need to do this; but is it not also to offer it as
a model, at least to deserve that it may be considered so;
like the light on the candlestick and the city set on a hill in
the Saviour's parables?
The monks evangelise life by living it. They go beyond
what they ask of the multitudes; but it is thereby that they
are able to draw the multitudes after them, to become stan
dard-bearers of moral victories. Themselves, faithful to God
in an exceptional degree, they dissuade others from betray
ing Him; and is not the fact that they increase His rights
over themselves a pressing invitation to the keeping of His
precepts ?
The monks start on their pilgrimage to God more hastily,
with less luggage, their loins better girt, their soul's garment
not dragging behind them, lantern in hand, for the dark

xrbe /Ibonastic ©rber 389
parts of the road, filled with noble concern to reach Him who
calls us. While they outstrip us on the path, they set land
marks in it, so that none may forget or go astray. Their
shadows on the crests of the soaring mountains are cast in
profile against the sky. j. ^ . .
To walk before God, that is, in the presence of God and
under His direction, is in the Scriptures the supreme praise
accorded to the just. And do not the existence of monastic
Uves and the brightness that issues from them help us to per
ceive the divine presence, to overcome the terrible unawareness
which holds us in its clutches, to become conscious of God,
so that His will may be clear to us, as well as those desires
of our own, whereof He is the rule and the inspiration, and
in short to walk in that gaze whose dazzling beauty wiU grant
us on high freedom from sin for ever?
In our trials, their voluntary trials are an encouragement
and an indication of how we may use our own. They teach
us to endure the Lord, these souls who provoke Him
(Ps. xxvi. 14). They tame suffering for us. They sanctify
separations in our eyes. By their detachment they undergo
a repeated death, and show us that, thanks to love, it is
enviable and welcoming. That which comes " but once "
comes from a fatherly ruler; they display it to us, and per
haps, because they have made us accustomed to it, we shall
have less fear when we come to behold its face in the darkness.
For the advantage of souls desirous of the greatest things,
the monks have gained experience of the inner life on the
grand scale. They are uncontested masters of it, by the side
of the Scriptures and the Fathers of the Church, several of
whom have belonged to their order. Their soUtude has heard
more attentively the voice of God which is a whistling of a
gentle air (3 Kings xix. 12) ; it has hearkened to the silence
heard of none.
Thanks to them, God is not discouraged from speaking to
us, the interior Word is outpoured. Their forsaking of the
world makes the chosen of the world turn to higher peaks to
behold them. The world, thus defied and divided, is often
angered at the choice that this enticement provokes; but the
monks know well that they are doing it service by exasper
ating it thus. And if after that they are the first to be per
secuted, that is their reward.
For those who hear their silent appeal they have already
prepared a place. A nest warm and well built for the soul
will receive them, among the branches of the hierarchy, on
the trunk of the Church. For those who do not come and
who insult their Master, they have also made ready in advance
a loving compensation; in their brotherly and filial sadness
they will find it sweet to hear the words : You are they who
have continued with Me in My temptations (Luke xxii. 28).

390 xrbe Cburcb
Instead of our joyless religious ways, our echoless faith,
our gloomy hope, our inactive charity, the holy monks give to
the Church for their part an active and mystical effort of
health which perfects its value; they are the jewel of the
hierarchical crown, though the hierarchy remains and must
always remain the deathless diadem.
There is nothing surprising, then, in the fact that the
monastic Order has at all times repaired the Church's waver
ings, saved compromising situations by its intervention, and
found in its own bosom, by making fresh starts with energy,
the means of remedying its own waverings.
In all this there is a striking history, which has continued
from the Church's beginnings to our own day.
The weight of the matter wherewith it is burdened, and its
own very success, expose the Church to the danger of falling
into the sloughs of this world, rich in life, but capable of soon
submerging her. Her moral building may fall, deprived of
its essential bases, humility, detachment, separation from the
things of sense. And so collective saviours become neces
sary, coming usually under the leadership of generals of out
standing sanctity, like Francis and Dominic in the dream of
Innocent III., to uphold the building human and divine.
In the canonical order alone the Church might not find suffi
cient reaction. It happens that " the shepherds sleep," as an
illustrious monk boldly said at the Council of Trent. " It is
necessary then that the dogs should bay." They bay, nay,
more, they bite, as the shepherd's dog bites; they arouse, if
we may venture so to say, the Holy Spirit asleep in souls,
even though it be in the souls of the Church's chiefs, and
they make the evangelic flock quicken its lagging steps.
Does it not indeed belong to the apostolate to maintain,
and at need to restore, what in the first days the apostolate
established? The Holy Spirit, as we have said again and
again, is not entirely in the hierarchy. In Him are the
graces of government and control; from elsewhere, often,
come the graces of initiative and renewal, even of authority
itself so far as it is human. The Spirit of God is Himself an
apostle too. Through His elect he traverses the world, like
the clouds to which the ministers of the Word are compared
in the liturgy, like the purifying, seed-bearing winds.
Thanks to this effusion which is perpetually being renewed
in the eternal work, the Church's evils are an opportunity for
her to demonstrate her inexhaustible vitality; her maladies
are crises from which she sets out once more for new laps
of her race; her remedies are her elixirs of Ufe.
In the future as in the past, then, the monks' work must
be done. There is no more adaptable means than they afford
of seeing the Gospel fit new situations and solve the crises in

xrbe /Ibonastic ©rber 391
the future which we are led to expect by all that is human
and divine.
From the point of view of usefulness, as on higher ground
from the organic point of view, we must affirm the indis
soluble union of the canonical order and its auxiliary in the
Church. Both share the duties and extend the possibilities
of the Christian spiritual society ; both manifest the essence
of its being, human and divine.

CONCLUSION
SUCH, then, is our Church, such her necessity, such
her intimate being, such her characters, her attitudes
and her organisation.
The whole is coherent as God is coherent, for His
life in the Trinity is reflected in the Holy Church; all
is coherent as manhood is eternally coherent, for through
man God has willed to bind all that is passing to His own
Eternity. This wondrous life is here under our eyes, with its weak
nesses and imperfections, the offspring of its existence in
time, with its energies and untold beauties, visible or unseen.
Study it, as we would fain have done with more thorough
ness; bring to it, if you can, more penetration and more
religious affection to the Truth which saves us; turn over
again and again this permanent problem which is offered to
the world with its elements of clarity and mystery. If the
due conditions be furnished, and the inveterate delusion of
mankind does not overpower you, you will approve in the
end the proud declaration of the Council of Trent, which
caUs the Church " a standard raised above the nations," in
order that by it be made manifest the presence of God.
The Church must not be studied with the superficial glance
of a passer-by; still less with the prejudiced gaze that sees
nothing but faults everywhere in what it fears to see claim
ing its allegiance; but with a regard as wide as the horizon
of humanity that must be embraced, as the infinite perspectives
that must be encountered, and moreover with a determina
tion to adhere eventually to all that is found to be true,
beneficial and binding.
The truth is mighty enough to give itself to none but him
who has beforehand consecrated his heart to it. May he
who approaches the truths which have been stated here give
himself, as he approves them, to that Truth which enfolds us
all, and desires one day to be displayed in us aU.

392

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