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PARADOXES OF CATHOLICISM

F. THOS. BERGH, O.S.B. Censor Deputatus

Smisrimatur

EDMUND, CANON SURMONT Vic. Gen.

WESTMONASTERn die 21 Julii 19 13

PARADOXES of
CATHOLICISM

BY
ROBERT HUGH BENSON

LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON
NEW YORK, BOMBAY, AND CALCUTTA
I913

COPYRIGHT, I913, BY
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.

THE.PLIMPTON* PRESS
NORWOOD-MASS-U-S»A

These sermons (which the following pages contain in a much
abbreviated form) were delivered, partly in England in various
places and at various times, partly in New York in. the Lent
of igi2, and finally, as a complete course, in the church of
S. SUvestro-in-Capite, in Rome, in the Lent of IQ13. Some
of the ideas presented in this book have already been set out
in a former volume entitled "Christ in the Church" and a
few in the meditations upon the Seven Words, in another vol
ume, bid in altogether other connexions. The author thought
it better, therefore, to risk repetition rather than incoherency
in the present set of considerations. It is hoped that the
repetitions are comparatively few.
Italics have been used for all quotations, whether verbal or
substantial, from Holy Scripture and other literature.
ROBERT HUGH BENSON
Haee Street Hodse, Buntinctoed
Easter, 1913

CONTENTS PAGE
Introductory (i) Jesus Christ, God and Man .... 3
(ii) The Catholic Church, Divine and Human 12
I Peace and War  23
n Wealth and Poverty  35
in Sanctity and Sin  45
rv Joy and Sorrow  57
V Love of God and Love of Man ... 69
jVI Faith and Reason  83
Vn Authority and Liberty  97
Vin CORPORATENESS AND INDIVIDUALISM . . . IO9
DC Meekness and Violence  119
X The Seven Words  133
XI Life and Death  165

PARADOXES OF CATHOLICISM

PARADOXES OF CATHOLICISM

INTRODUCTORY
(i) JESUS CHRIST, GOD AND MAN
/ and My Father are one. — john x. 30.
My Father is greater than I. — john xiv. 20.
The mysteries of the Church, a materialistic scientist
once announced to an astonished world, are child's
play compared with the mysteries of nature.^ He
was completely wrong, of course, yet there was every
excuse for his mistake. For, as he himself tells us in
effect, he found everywhere in that created nature
which he knew so well, anomaly piled on anomaly and
paradox on paradox, and he knew no more of theology
than its simpler and more explicit statements.
We can be certain therefore — we who understand
that the mysteries of nature are, after aU, within the
limited circle of created life, while the mysteries of
grace run up into the supreme Mystery of the eternal
and imcreated Life of God — we can be certain that,
if nature is mysterious and paradoxical, grace will be
incalculably more mysterious. For every paradox in
' Professor Huxley.

4 PARADOXES OF CATHOLICISM
the world of matter, in whose environment our bodies
are confined, we shall find a hundred in that atmos
phere of spirit in which our spirits breathe and move —
those spirits of ours which, themselves, paradoxically
enough, are forced to energize imder material limi
tations. We need look no further, then, to find these mysteries
than to that tiny mirror of the Supernatural which we
call our self, to that little thread of experience which
we name the "spiritual life." How is it, for example,
that while in one mood our religion is the lamp of our
shadowy existence, in another it is the single dark spot
upon a world of pleasure — in one mood the single
thing that makes life worth living at aU, and in another
the one obstacle to our contentment? What are those
sorrowful and joyful mysteries of human life, mutually
contradictory yet together resultant (as in the Rosary
itself) in others that are glorious? Turn to that master
passion that underhes these mysteries — the passion
that is called love — and see if there be anything more
inexplicable than such an explanation. What is this
passion, then, that turns joy to sorrow and sorrow to
joy — this motive that drives a man to lose his life that
he may save it, that turns bitter to sweet and makes
the cross but a light yoke after all, that causes hm to
fimd his centre outside his own circle, and to please
himself best by depriving himself of pleasure? What
is that power that so often fills us with delights before

JESUS CHRIST, GOD AND MAN 5
we have begun to labour, and rewards our labour with
the darkness of dereUction?
I. If our interior life, then, is full of paradox and
apparent contradiction — ^and there is no soul that
has made any progress that does not find it so — we
should naturally expect that the Divine Life of Jesus
Christ on earth, which is the central Objective Light of
the World reflected in ourselves, should be full of yet
more amazing anomalies. Let us examine the records
of that Life and see if it be not so. And let us for
that purpose begin by imagining such an examination
to be made by an inquirer who has never received the
Christian tradition.
(i) He begins to read, of course, with the assumption
that this Life is as others and this Man as other men;
and as he reads he finds a himdred corroborations of
the theory. Here is one, bom of a woman, himgry
and thirsty by the wayside, increasing in wisdom; one
who works in a carpenter's shop; rejoices and sorrows;
one who has friends and enemies; who is forsaken by
the one and insulted by the other — who passes, in fact,
through all those experiences of human life to which
mankind is subject — one who dies like other men and
is laid in a grave.
Even the very marvels of that Life he seeks to explain
by the marvellous humanity of its hero. He can
imagine, as one such inquirer has said, how the magic
of His presence was so great — the magic of His simple

6 PARADOXES OF CATHOLICISM
yet perfect humanity — that the blind opened their
eyes to see the beauty of His face and the deaf their
ears to hear Him.
Yet, as he reads further, he begins to meet his prob
lems. If this Man were man only, however perfect and
sublime, how is it that His sanctity appears to run by
other lines than those of other saints? Other perfect
men as they approached perfection were most conscious
of imperfection; other saints as they were nearer God
lamented their distance from Him; other teachers of
the spiritual life pointed always away from themselves
and their shortcomings to that Eternal Law to which
they too aspired. Yet with this Man all seems reversed.
He, as He stood before the world, called on men to
imitate Him; not, as other leaders have done, to avoid
His sins: this Man, so far from pointing forward and up,
pointed to Himself as the Way to the Father; so far from
adoring a Truth to which He strove, named Himself
its very incarnation; so far from describing a Life to
which He too one day hoped to rise, bade His hearers
look on Himself Who was their Life; so far from deplor
ing to His friends the sins under which He laboured,
challenged His enemies to find within Him any sin at all.
There is an extraordinary Self-consciousness in Him
that has in it nothing of " self" as usually imderstood.
Then it may be, at last, that oxir inquirer approaches
the Gospel with a new assumption. He has been wrong,
he thinks, in his interpretation that such a Life as this

JESUS CHRIST, GOD AND MAN 7
was human at all. "Never man spake like this man."
He echoes from the Gospel, "What manner of man is
this that even the winds and the sea obey Him? How,
after all," he asks himself, "could a man be bom with
out a human father, how rise again from the dead upon
the third day?" Or, "How even could such marvels
be related at all of one who was no more than other
men?" So once more he begias. Here, he tells himself, is
the old fairy story come true; here is a God come down
to dwell among men; here is the solution of all his
problems. And once more he finds himself bewildered.
For how can God be weary by the wayside, labour in a
shop, and die upon a cross? How can the Eternal Word
be silent for thirty years? How can the Infinite lie in
a manger? How can the Source of Life be subject to
death? He turns in despair, flinging himself from theory to
theory — turns to the words of Christ HimseK, and
the perplexity deepens with every utterance. If Christ
be man, how can He say, My Father and I are one ? If
Christ be God, how can He proclaim that His Father
is greater than He? If Christ be Man, how can He say,
Before Abraham was, I am? If Christ be God, how can
He name Himself the Son of Man.
(ii) Turn to the spiritual teaching of Jesus Christ,
and once more problem follows problem, and paradox,
paradox.

8 PARADOXES OF CATHOLICISM
Here is He Who came to soothe men's sorrows and to
give rest to the weary. He Who offers a sweet yoke and
a light burden, teUing them that no man can be His
disciple who will not take up the heaviest of all burdens
and follow Him uphiU. Here is one, the Physician of
souls and bodies. Who went about doing good, Who set
the example of activity in God's service, pronoimcing
the silent passivity of Mary as the better part that
shall not be taken away from her. Here at one moment
He tums with the light of battle in His eyes, bidding
His friends who have not swords to sell their cloaks
and buy them; and at another bids those swords to be
sheathed, since His Kingdom is not of this world. Here
is the Peacemaker, at one time pronoimcing His bene
diction on those who make peace, and at another
crying that He came to bring not peace but a sword.
Here is He Who names as blessed those that mourn bid
ding His disciples to rejoice and be exceeding glad. Was
there ever such a Paradox, such perplexity, and such
problems? In His Person and His teaching alike there
seems no rest and no solution — What think ye of Christ?
Whose Son is He?
II. (i) The Catholic teaching alone, of course, offers
a key to these questions; yet it is a key that is itself,
like all keys, as complicated as the wards which it
alone can unlock. Heretic after heretic has sought for
simplification, and heretic after heretic has therefore
come to confusion. Christ is God, cried the Docetic;

JESUS CHRIST, GOD AJSTD MAN 9
therefore cut out from the Gospels all that speaks of
the reality of His Manhood! God cannot bleed and
suffer and die; God cannot weary; God cannot feel
the sorrows of man. Christ is Man, cries the modem
critic; therefore tear out from the Gospels His Virgin
Birth and His Resurrection! For none but a Catholic
can receive the Gospels as they were written; none but
a man who believes that Christ is both God and Man,
who is content to believe that and to bow before the
Paradox of paradoxes that we call the Incarnation, to
accept the blinding mystery that Infinite and Finite
Natures were united in one Person, that the Eternal
expresses Himself in Time, and that the Uncreated Crea
tor united to Himself Creation — none but a Catholic,
in a word, can meet, without exception, the mysterious
phenomena of Christ's Life.
(ii) Tum now again to the mysteries of our own
limited life and, as in a far-off phantom parallel, we
begin to understand.
For we too, in our measure, have a double nature.
As God and Man make one Christ, so soul and body make
one man : and, as the two natures of Christ — as His
Perfect Godhead united to His Perfect Manhood — •
lie at the heart of the problems which His Life presents,
so too our aflSnities with the clay from which our bodies
came, and with the Father of Spirits Who inbreathed
into us living souls, explain the contradictions of our
own experience.

lO PARADOXES OF CATHOLICISM
If we were but irrational beasts, we could be as happy
as the beasts; if we were but discamate spirits that
look on God, the joy of the angels would be ours. Yet
if we assume either of these two tmths as if it were the
only tmth, we come certainly to confusion. If we live
as the beasts, we cannot sink to their contentment,
for our immortal part will not let us be; if we neglect
or dispute the rightful claims of the body, that very
outraged body drags our immortal spirit down. The
acceptance of the two natures of Christ alone solves
the problems of the Gospel; the acceptance of the two
parts of our own nature alone enables us to live as God
intends. Our spiritual and physical moods, then, rise
and fall as the one side or the other gains the upper
hand: now our religion is a burden to the flesh, now
it is the exercise in which our soul delights; now it is
the one thing that makes life worth living, now the
one thing that checks our enjoyment of life. These
moods alternate, inevitably and irresistibly, according
as we allow the balance of our parts to be disturbed and
set swaying. And so, ultimately, there is reserved for us
the joy neither of beasts nor of angels, but the joy of
humanity. We are higher than the one, we are lower
than the other, that we may be crowned by Him Who
in that same Humanity sits on the Throne of God.
So much, then, for our introduction. We have seen
how the Paradox of the Incarnation alone is adequate

JESUS CHRIST, GOD AND MAN II
to the phenomena recorded in the Gospel — how that
supreme paradox is the key to all the rest. We will
proceed to see how it is also the key to other paradoxes
of religion, to the difficulties which the history of Cathol
icism presents. For the Catholic Church is the exten
sion of Christ's Life on earth; the Catholic Church,
therefore, that strange mingling of mystery and common-
sense, that union of earth and heaven, of clay and fire,
can alone be tmderstood by him who accepts her as both
Divine and Human, since she is nothing else but the
mystical presentment, in human terms, of Him Who,
though the Infinite God and the Eternal Creator, was
found in the form of a servant, of Him Who, dwelling
always in the Bosom of the Father, for our sakes came
down from heaven.

(ii) THE CATHOLIC CHURCH, DIVINE AND HUMAN
Blessed art thou Simon Bar-jona; because flesh and blood
hath not repealed it to thee, but My Father Who is in
heaven. . . . Go • behind me, satan, for thou savourest
not the things that are of God, but the things that are
of men. — ¦ matt. xvi. 17, 23.
We have seen how the only reconciliation of the
paradoxes of the Gospel lies in the Catholic doctrine
of the Incamation. It is only to him who believes that
Jesus Christ is perfect God and perfect Man that the
Gospel record is coherent and intelligible. The heretics
— men who for the most part either rejected or added
to the inspired record — were those who, on the one side,
accepted Christ's Divinity and rejected the proofs of
His Humanity, or accepted His Humanity and rejected
the proofs of His Divinity. In the early ages, for the
most part, these accepted His Divinity and, rejecting
His Humanity, invented childish miracles which they
thought appropriate to a God dwelling on earth in a
phantom manhood; at the present day, rejecting His
Divinity, they reject also those miracles for which His
Divinity alone is an adequate explanation.
Now the Catholic Church is an extension of the
Incamation. She too (though, as we shall see, the

THE CATHOLIC CHURCH, DIVINE AND HUMAN 13
parallel is not perfect) has her Divine and Human
Nature, which alone can account for the paradoxes of
her history; and these paradoxes are either predicted
by Christ — asserted, that is, as part of His spiritual
teaching — or actually manifested in His own life.
(We may take them as symbolised, so to speak, in those
words of our Lord to St. Peter in which He first commends
him as a man inspired by God and then, almost simul
taneously, rebukes him as one who can rise no further
than an earthly ideal at the best.)
I. (i) Just as we have already imagined a well-
disposed inquirer approaching for the first time the
problems of the Gospel, so let us now again imagine such
a man, in whom the dawn of faith has begun, encounter
ing the record of Catholicism.
At first all seems to him Divine. He sees, for example,
how singularly unique she is, how imlike to aU other
human societies. Other societies depend for their very
existence upon a congenial human environment; she
flourishes in the most imcongenial. Other societies
have their day and pass down to dissolution and cormp-
tion; she alone knows no corruption. Other dynasties
rise and fall; the dynasty of Peter the Fisherman
remains unmoved. Other causes wax and wane with
the worldly influence which they can command; she is
usually most effective when her earthly interest is at
the lowest ebb.
Or again, he falls in love with her Divine beauty and

14 paradoxes of CATHOLICISM
perceives even in her meanest acts a grace which he
cannot understand. He notices with wonder how she
takes human mortal things — a perishing pagan lan
guage, a debased architecture, an infant science or
philosophy — and infuses into them her own immor
tality. She takes the superstitions of a country-side
and, retaining their "accidents," transubstantiates them
into truth; the customs or rites of a pagan society, and
makes them the s)Tnbols of a living worship. And
into all she infuses a spirit that is aU her own — a spirit
of deMcate grace and beauty of which she alone has the
secret. It is her Divinity, then, that he sees, and rightly.
But, wrongly, he draws certain one-sided conclusions. If
she is so perfect, he argues (at least subconsciously), she
can be nothing else than perfect; if she is so Divine
she can be in no sense human. Her pontiffs must aU be
saints, her priests shining lights, her people stars in her
firmament. If she is Divine, her policy must be vm-
erring, her acts all gracious, her lightest movements
inspired. There must be no bmtality anywhere, no
self-seeking, no ambition, no instability. How should
there be, since she is Divine?
Such are his first instincts. And then, little by little,
his disillusionment begins.
For, as he studies her record more deeply, he begins
to encounter evidences of her Humanity. He reads
history, and he discovers here and there a pontiff who

THE CATHOUC CHURCH, DIVINE AND HUMAN 15
but Uttie in his moral character resembles Him Whose
Vicar he is. He meets an apostate priest; he hears of
some savagery committed in Christ's name; he talks
with a convert who has returned complacentiy to the
City of Confusion; there is gleefully related to him the
history of a family who has kept the faith all through
the period of persecution and lost it in the era of tolera
tion. And he is shaken and dismayed. "How can
these be in a Society that is Divine? I had trusted
that it had been She who should have redeemed Israel;
and now — !"
(ii) Another man approaches the record of Catholi
cism from the opposite direction. To him she is a
human society and nothing more; and he fimds, indeed,
a thousand corroborations of his theory. He views her
amazing success in the first ages of Christianity — the
rapid propagation of her tenets and the growth of her
influence — and sees behind these things nothing more
than the fortunate circumstance of the existence of the
Roman Empire. Or he notices the sudden and rapid
rise of the power of the Roman pontiff and explains
this by the happy chance that moved the centre of
empire to the east and left in Rome an old prestige
and an empty throne. He sees how the Church has
profited by the divisions in Europe; how she has in
herited the old Latin genius for law and order; and he
finds in these things an explanation of her unity and
of her claim to rule princes and kings. She is to him

1 6 PARADOXES OF CATHOLICISM
just human, and no more. There is not, at first sight, a
phenomenon of her life for which he cannot find a human
explanation. She is interesting, as a result of innumer
able complicated forces; she is venerable, as the oldest
coherent society in Europe; she has the advantage of
Italian diplomacy; she has been shrewd, unweary, and
persevering. But she is no more.
And then, as he goes deeper, he begins to encounter
phenomena which do not fall so easily under his com
pact Uttle theories. If she is merely human, why do
not the laws of all other human societies appear to
affect her too? Why is it that she alone shows no
incline towards dissolution and decay? Why has not
she too split up into the component parts of which she is
welded? How is it that she has preserved a unity of
which all earthly unities are but shadows? Or he meets
with the phenomena of her sanctity and begins to per
ceive that the difference between the character she
produces in her saints and the character of the noblest
of those who do not submit to her is one of kind and not
merely of degree. If she is merely mediaeval, how is it
that she commands such allegiance as that which is paid
to her in modem America? If she is merely European,
how is it that she alone can deal with the Oriental on
his own terms? If she is merely the result of temporal
circumstances, how is it that her spiritual influence
shows no sign of waning when the forces that helped to
build her are dispersed?

THE CATHOLIC CHURCH, DIVINE AND HUMAN 1 7
His theory too, then, becomes less confident. If she
is Human, why is she so evidently Divine? If she is
Divine, whence comes her obvious Humanity? So
years ago men asked. If Christ be God, how could He be
weary by the wayside and die upon the Cross? So men
ask now, If Christ be Man, how could He cast out
devils and rise from the dead?
n. We come back, then, to the CathoUc answer.
Treat the Catholic Church as Divine only and you will
stumble over her scandals, her failures, and her short
comings. Treat her as Human only and you wUl be
silenced by her miracles, her sanctity, and her eternal
resurrections. (i) Of course the CathoHc Church is Hmnan. She
consists of fallible men, and her Humanity is not even
safeguarded as was that of Christ against the incursions
of sin. Always, therefore, there have been scandals,
and always wiU be. Popes may betray their tmst, in
aU human matters; priests their flocks; laymen their
faith. No man is secure. And, again, since she is
human it is perfectly true that she has profited by human
circumstances for the increase of her power. Undoubt
edly it was the existence of the Roman Empire, with its
roads, its rapid means of transit, and its organization,
that made possible the swift propagation of the Gospel
in the first centuries. Undoubtedly it was the empty
throne of Caesar and the prestige of Rome that developed
the world's acceptance of the authority of Peter's Chair.

1 8 PARADOXES OF CATHOLICISM
Undoubtedly it was the divisions of Europe that cemented
the Church's unity and led men to look to a Supreme
Authority that might compose their differences. There
is scarcely an opening in human affairs into which
she has not plunged; hardly an opportunity she has
missed. Human affairs, human sins and weaknesses
as well as hiunan virtues, have all contributed to her
power. So grows a tree, even in imcongenial soil.
The rocks that impede the roots later become their
support; the rich soil, waiting for an occupant, has been
drawn up into the life of the leaves; the very winds that
imperilled the young sapUng have developed too its
power of resistance. Yet these things do not make the
tree. (ii) For her Humanity, though it is the body in which
her Divinity dwells, does not create that Divinity.
Certainly human circumstances have developed her,
yet what but Divine Providence ordered and developed
those human circumstances? What but that same
power, which indv/ells in the Church, dwelt without her
too and caused her to take root at that time and in
that place which most favored her growth? Certainly
she is Human. It may well be that her rulers have
contradicted one another in human matters — in
science, in policy, and in discipline; but how is it, then,
that they have not contradicted one another in matters
that are Divine? Granted that one Pope has reversed
the policy of his predecessor, then what has saved him

THE CATHOLIC CHURCH, DIVINE AND HUMAN 1 9
from reversing his theology also? Certainly there have
been appalling scandals, outrageous sinners, blaspheming
apostates — but what of her saints?
And, above aU, she gives proof of her Divinity by that
very sign to which Christ Himself pointed as a proof of
His own. Granted that she dies daily — that her cause
fails in this century and in that country; that her
science is discredited in this generation and her active
morality in that and her ideals in a third — how comes
it that she also rises daily from the dead; that her old
symbols rise again from their ruins; that her virtues are
acclaimed by the children of the men who renounced
her; that her bells and her music sound again where
once her churches and houses were laid waste?
Here, then, is the Catholic answer and it is this alone
that makes sense of history, as it is Catholic doctrine
which alone makes sense of the Gospel record. The
answer is identical in both cases alike, and it is this
— that the only explanation of the phenomena of the
Gospels and of Church history is that the Life which
produces them is both Human and Divine.

I
PEACE AND WAR

I
PEACE AND WAR
Blessed are the peacemakers; for they shall be called the
children of God. — matt. v. 9.
Do not think that I am come to send peace on earth; I
came not to send peace but the sword. — matt. x. 34.
We have considered how the key to the Paradoxes of
the Gospel and the key to the Paradoxes of Catholicism
is one and the same — that the Life that produces
them is at once Divine and Human. Let us go on
to consider how this resolves those of Catholicism,
especially those charged against us by our adversaries.
For we live in a day when Catholicism is no longer
considered by intelligent men to be too evidently absurd
to be argued with. Definite reasons are given by those
who stand outside our borders for the attitude they
maintain; definite accusations are made which must
either be allowed or refuted.
Now those who stand without the walls of the City of
Peace know nothing, it is true, of the life that its citizens
lead within, nothing of the harmony and consolation that
Catholicism alone can give. Yet of certain points, it

24 PARADOXES OF CATHOLICISM
may be, in the large outlines of that city against the sky,
of the place it occupies in the world, of its wide effect
upon human Hf e in general, it may very well be that
these detached observers may know more than the devout
who dwell at peace within. Let us, then, consider their
reflections not necessarily as whoUy false; it may be
that they have caught glimpses which we have missed
and relations which either we take too much for granted
or have failed altogether to see. It may be that these
accusations will tum out to be our credentials in
disguise. I. Every world-religion, we are told, worthy of the
name has as its principal object and its chief claim to
consideration its establishing or its fostering of peace
among men. Supremely this was so in the first days
of Christianity. It was this that its great prophet
predicted of its work when its Divine Foimder should
come on earth. Nature shall -recover its lost harmony
and the dissensions of men shall cease when He, the
Prince of Peace, shall approach. The very beasts shall
lie down together in amity, the lion and the lamb and
the leopard and the kid. Further, it was the Message of
Peace that the angels proclaimed over His cradle in
Bethlehem; it was the Gift of Peace which He Himself
promised to His disciples; it was the Peace of God which
passeth knowledge to which the great Apostle com
mended his converts. This then, we are told, is of the
very essence of Christianity; this is the supreme bene-

PEACE AND WAR 25
diction on the peacemakers that they shall be coiled the
children of God.
Yet, when we tum to Catholicism, we are bidden to
see in it not a gatherer but a scatterer, not the daughter
of peace but the mother of disunion. Is there a single
tormented coimtry in Europe to-day, it is rhetorically
demanded, that does not .owe at least part of its misery
to the claims of Catholicism? What is it but Catholi
cism that lies at the heart of the divided allegiance of
France, of the miseries of Portugal, and of the dissensions
of Italy? Look back through history and you will
find the same tale ever3^where. What was it that dis
turbed the poUtics of England so often from the twelfth
to the fifteenth century, and tore her in two in the six
teenth, but the determined resistance of an adolescent
nation to the tyranny of Rome? What lay behind the
rehgious wars of Europe, behind the fires of Smith-
field, the rack of Elizabeth, and the blood of St. Barthol
omew's Day but this intolerant and intolerable religion
which would come to no terms even with the most
reasonable of its adversaries? It is impossible, of course,
altogether to apportion blame, to say that in each several
instance it was the Catholic that was the aggressor;
but at least it is tme to say that it was Catholic prin
ciples that were the occasion and Catholic claims the
unhappy cause of all this incalculable flood of human
misery. How singularly unlike, then, we are told, is this reHgion

26 PARADOXES OF CATHOLICISM
of dissension to the religion of Jesus Christ, of aU these
dogmatic and disciplinary claims and assertions to the
meekness of the Poor Man of Nazareth! If tme Chris
tianity is anywhere in the world to-day it is not among
such as these that it lies hid; rather it must be sought
among the gentle humanitarians of our own and every
coimtry — men who strive for peace at all cost, men
whose principal virtues are those of toleration and
charity, men who, if any, have eamed the beatitude of
being called the children of God.
II. We tum to the Life of Jesus Christ from the Life
of Catholicism, and at first indeed it does seem as if the
contrast were justified. We cannot deny our critic's
charges; every one of his historical assertions is true:
it is indeed true that Catholicism has been the occasion
of more bloodshedding than has any of the ambitions
or jealousies of man.
And it is, further, tme that Jesus Christ pronoimced
this benediction; that He bade His followers seek after
peace, and that He commended them, in the very
climax of His exaltation, to the Peace which He alone
could bestow.
Yet, when we look closer, the case is not so simple.
For, first, what was, as a matter of fact, the direct im
mediate effect of the Life and Personality of Jesus Christ
upon the society in which He lived but this very dis
sension, this very bloodshedding and misery that are
charged against His Church? It was precisely on this

PEACE AND WAR 27
account that He was given into the hands of Pilate. He
stirreth up the people. He makes Himself a King. He
is a contentious demagogue, a disloyal citizen, a danger
to the Roman Peace.
And indeed there seem to have been excuses for these
charges. It was not the language of a modem " humani
tarian," of the modem tolerant "Christian," that fell
from the Divine Lips of Jesus Christ. Go and tell that
fox, He cries of the ruler of His people. O you ubhited
sepulchres full of dead men's bones! You vipers! You
hypocrites! This is the language He uses to the repre
sentatives of Israel's reUgion. Is this the kind of talk
that we hear from modem leaders of reKgious thought?
Would such language as this be tolerated for a moment
from the humanitarian Christian pulpits of to-day? Is
it possible to imagine more inflammatory speech, more
"unchristian sentiments," as they would be called to
day, than those words uttered by none other but the
Divine Founder of Christianity? What of that amazing
scene when He threw the furniture about the temple
courts? And as for the effect of such words and methods,
our Lord Himself is quite explicit. "Make no mistake,"
He cries to the modem humanitarian who claims alone
to represent Him. "Make no mistake. I am not come
to bring peace at any price; there are worse things than
war and bloodshed. I am come to bring not peace but a
sword. I am come to divide families, not to unite them;

28 PARADOXES OF CATHOLICISM
to rend kingdoms, not to knit them up; I am come to
set mother against daughter and daughter against mother;
I am come not to establish universal toleration, but
universal Truth."
What, then, is the reconciliation of the Paradox? In
what sense can it be possible that the effect of the Per
sonality of the Prince of Peace, and therefore the effect
of His Church, in spite of their claims to be the friends
of peace, should be not peace, but the sword?
III. Now (i) the Catholic Church is a Human
Society. She is constituted, that is to say, of hu
man beings; she depends, humanly speaking, upon
human circumstances; she can be "assaulted, weak
ened, and disarmed by human enemies. She dwells
in the midst of human society, and it is with human
society that she has to deal.
Now if she were not human — if she were merely a
Divine Society, a far-off city in the heavens, a future
distant ideal to which human society is approximating,
there would be no conflict at aU. She would never meet
in a face-to-face shock the passions and antagonisms of
men; she could suppress, now and again, her Counsels of
Perfection, her calls to a higher life, if it were not that
these are vital and present principles which she is
bound to propagate among men.
And again, if she were merely human, there would be
no conflict. If she were merely ascended from below,
merely the result of the fiinest religious thought of the

PEACE AND WAR 29
world, the high-water mark of spiritual attainment,
again she could compromise, could suppress, could be
silent. But she is both human and divine, and therefore her
warfare is certain and inevitable. For she dwells in the
midst of the kingdoms of this w6rld, and these are con
stituted, at any rate at the present day, on wholly human
bases. Statesmen and kings, at the present day, do
not foimd their policies upon supernatural considera
tions; their object is to govern their subjects, to promote
the peace and union of their subjects, to make war, if
need be, on behaff of the peace of their subjects, wholly
on natural grounds. Commerce, finance, agriculture,
education in the things of this world, science, art, ex
ploration — human activities generally — these, in their
purely natural aspect, are the objects of nearly all modem
statesmanship. Our rulers are professedly, in their
public capacity, neither for religion nor against it;
religion is a private matter for the individual, and
governments stand aside — or at any rate profess to
do so.
And it is in this kind of world, in this fashion of human
society, that the Catholic Chmrch, in virtue of her
humanity, is boimd to dwell. She too is a kingdom,
though not of this world, yet in it.
(2) For she is also Divine. Her message contains,
that is to say, a number of supematural principles
revealed to her by God; she is supematurally. consti-

30 PARADOXES OF CATHOLICISM
tuted; she rests on a supematural basis; she is not
organized as if this world were all. On the contrary
she puts the kingdom of God definitely first and the
kingdoms of the world definitely second; the Peace of
God first and the harmony of men second.
Therefore she is bound, when her supematural prin
ciples clash with human natural principles, to be the
occasion of disunion. Her marriage laws, as a single
example, are at conflict with the marriage laws of the
majority of modem States. It is of no use to teU her to
modify these principles; it would be to tell her to cease
to be supematural, to cease to be herself. How can she
modify what she believes to be her Divine Message?
Again, since she is organized on a supematural basis,
there are supematural elements in her own constitution
which she can no more modify than her dogmas. Re
cently, in France, she was offered the kingdom of this
world if she would do so; it was proposed to her that she
actually retain her own wealth, her churches and her
houses, and yield up her principle of spiritual appeal to
the Vicar of Christ. If she had been but human, how
evident would have been her duty! How inevitable
that she should modify her constitution in accordance
with human ideas and preserve her property intact!
And how entirely impossible such a bargain must be
for a Society that is divine as well as human !
Take courage then! We desire peace above aU
things — that is to say, the Peace of God, not that peace

PEACE AND WAR 3 1
which the world, since it can give it, can also take away;
not that peace which depends on the harmony of nature
with nature, but of nature with grace.
Yet, so long as the world is divided in allegiance; so
long as the world, or a country, or a family, or even an
individual soul bases itself upon natural principles
divorced from divine, so long to that world, that coimtry,
that family, and that human heart will the supematural
reHgion of CathoHcism bring not peace, but a sword.
And it wiU do so to the end, up to the final world-
shattering catastrophe of Armageddon itself.
"I come," cries the Rider on the White Horse, "to
bring Peace indeed, but a peace of which the world
cannot even dream; a peace bvdlt upon the eternal
foimdations of God Himself, not upon the shifting sands
of human agreement. And until that Vision dawns
there must be war; until God's Peace descends indeed
and is accepted, tiU then My Garments must be splashed
in blood and from My Mouth comes forth not peace,
but a two-edged sword."

n
WEALTH AND POVERTY

II
WEALTH AND POVERTY
Make to yourselves friends of the Mammon of iniquity.
You cannot serve God and Mammon. — luke xvi. 9, 13.
We have seen how the Church of the Prince of Peace
must continually be the centre of war. Let us go on to
consider how, as a Human Society dwelUng in this world,
she must continuaUy have her eyes fixed upon the next,
and how, as a Divine Society, she must be open to the
charge of worldHness.
I. (i) The charge is a very common one: "Look at
the extraordinary wealth and splendour that this Church
of the Poor Man of Nazareth constantly gathers around
her and ask yourself how she can dare to claim to repre
sent Him! Go through Holy Rome and see how the
richest and most elaborate buildings bear over their
gateways the heraldic emblems of Christ's Vicar! Go
through any country which has not risen in disgust and
cast off the sham that caUs herself 'Christ's Church'
and you wiU find that no worldly official is so splendid
as these heavenly delegates of Jesus Christ, no palaces
more glorious than those in which they dweU who pre
tend to preach Him who had not where to lay His head!

36 PARADOXES OF CATHOLICISM
"Above aU, tum from that simple poverty-stricken
figure that the Gospels present to us, to the man who
claims to be His Vicegerent on earth. See him go,
crowned three times over, on a throne borne on men's
shoulders, with the silver trumpets shriUing before him
and the ostrich fans coming on behind, and you wiU
imderstand why the world cannot take the Church
seriously. Look at the court that is about him, aU
purple and scarlet, and set by that the Uttle band of
weather-beaten fishermen!
"No; if this Church were truly of Christ, she would
imitate Him better. It was His supreme mission to
point to things that are above; to Uft men's thoughts
above dross and gold and jewels and worldly influence
and high places and power; to point to a Heavenly Jeru
salem, not made with hands; to comfort the sorrowful
with a vision of future peace, not to dabble with tem
poral matters; to speak of grace and heaven and things
to come, and to let the dead bury their dead! The best we
can do for her, then, is to disembarrass her of her riches;
to tum her temporal possessions to frankly temporal
ends; to release her from the slavery of her own ambition
into the liberty of the poor and the children of God!"
(ii) In a word, then, the Church is too worldly to be
the Church of Christ! You cannot serve God and Mam
mon. Yet in another mood our critic will teU us that we
are too otherworldly to be the Church of Christ. "The
chief charge I have against CathoHcism," says such a

WEALTH AND POVERTY 37
man, "is that the Church is too unpractical. If she
were truly the Church of Jesus Christ, she would surely
imitate Him better in that which, after all, was the
mark of His highest Divinity — namely in His Humanity
towards men. Christ did not come into the world to
preach metaphysics and talk forever of a heaven that
is to come; He came rather to attend to men's simplest
needs, to feed the hungry, to clothe the naked, to reform
society on better lines. It was not by His dogma that
He won men's hearts; it was by His simple, natural
sympathy with their common needs. He came, in a
word, to make the best of this world, to use the elements
that lay ready to His hand, to sanctify aU the plain
things of earth with which He came in contact.
"These otherworldly CathoUcs, then, are too much
apart from common Hfe and common needs. Their
dogmas and their aspirations and their metaphysics are
useless to a world which wants bread. Let them act
more and dream less! Let them show, for example, by
the prosperity of CathoHc countries that CathoHcism is
practical and not a vision. Let them preach less and
philanthropize more. Let them show that they have
the key to this world's progress, and perhaps we wiU
Hsten more patiently to their claim to hold the key to
the world that is to come!"
But, surely, this is a Httle hard upon CathoHcs!
When we make ourselves at home in this world, we are
informed that Jesus Christ had not where to lay His Head.

38 PARADOXES OF CATHOLICISM
When we preach the world that is to come, we are re
minded that Jesus Christ after all came down from that
world into this to make it better. When we build a
comfortable church, we are told that we are too luxurious.
When we build an uncomfortable one we are asked how
we expect to do any good unless we are practical.
II. Now, of course, both these charges were also
objected against our Blessed Lord. For He too had His
double activities. It is true that there were times when
He gave men earthly bread; it is also tme that He
offered them heavenly bread. There were times when
He cared for men's bodies; there were other times when
He bade them sacrifice aU that makes bodily life worth
Hving; times when He sat at meat in the house of a
rich man, and times when He starved, voluntarily, in
the desert.
And the world foimd Him wrong whichever He did.
He was too worldly when He healed men on the Sabbath;
for is not the Law of God of more value than a man's
bodily ease? Why can He not wait tiU to-morrow?
He was too worldly when He aUowed His disciples to
rub com in their hands; for does not the Law of God
forbid a man to make bread on the Sabbath? He was
too worldly, too impractical, too sense-loving when He
permitted the precious ointment to be spiUed on His
feet; for might not this ointment have been sold for much
and given to the poor ? Is not spirituaUty enough, and
the incense of adoration?

WEALTH AND POVERTY 39
And He was too otherworldly when He preached the
Sermon on the Mount. What is the use of saying.
Blessed are the Meek, when the whole world knows that
"Blessed are the Self-Assertive"? He was too other
worldly when He spoke of Heavenly Bread. What is
the use of speaking of Heavenly Bread when it is earthly
food that men need first of all? He was too otherworldly
when He remained in the country on the feast day. If
He be the Christ, let Him be practical and say so!
It was, in fact, on these very two charges that He was
arraigned for death. He was too worldly for Pilate, in
that He was Son of Man and therefore a rival to Caesar;
and too otherworldly for Caiphas, since He made Himself
Son of God and therefore a rival to Jehovah.
ni. The solution, then, of this CathoHc Paradox
is very simple, (i) First, the Church is a Heavenly
Society come down from above — heavenly in her origin
and her birth. She is the kingdom of God, first and fore
most, and exists for His glory solely and entirely. She
seeks, then, first the extension of His kingdom; and com
pared with this, nothing is of any value in her eyes.
Never, then, must she sacrifice God to Mammon; never
hesitate for one instant if the choice Hes between them.
For she considers that eternity is greater than time
and the soul of man of more value than his body. The
sacraments therefore, in her eyes, come before an ade
quate tram-service; and that a man's soul should be
in grace is, to her, of more importance than that his

40 PARADOXES OF CATHOLICISM
body should be in health — if the choice is between
them. She prefers, therefore, the priest to the doctor,
if there is not time for both, and Holy Communion to
a good breakfast.
Therefore, of course, she appears too otherworldly to
the stockbroker and the provincial mayor, since she
actuaUy places the things of God before the things of
man and "seeks first His Kingdom."
(ii) "AndaUthese things shaU be added" to her. For
she is Human also, in that she dweUs in this world where
God has placed her, and uses therefore the things with
which He has surrounded her. To say that she is super
natural is not to deny her humanity any more than to
assert that man has an immortal soul is to exclude the
tmth that he also has a body. It is this Body of hers,
then — this humanity of hers which enshrines her
Divinity — that claims and uses earthly things; it is
this Body that dwells in houses made with hands and that
claims too, in honour to herself and her Bridegroom,
that, so long as her spirituaUty is not tarnished, these
houses shaU be as splendid as art can make them. For
she is not a Puritan nor a Manichee; she does not say
that any single thing which God has made can conceiv
ably be of itself evil, however grievously it may have
been abused; on the contrary, she has His own authority
for saying that all is very good.
She uses, then, every earthly beauty that the world
wiU yield to her, to honour her own Majesty. It may

WEALTH AND POVERTY 41
be right to set diamonds round the neck of a woman,
but it is certainly right to set them round the ChaUce
of the Blood of God. If an earthly king wears vestments
of doth of gold, must not a heavenly King yet more
wear them? If music is used by the world to destroy
men's souls, may not she use it to save their souls? If
a marble palace is fit for the President of the French
RepubUc, by what right do men withhold it from the
King of kings?
But the world does withhold its wealth sometimes?
Very weU then, she can serve God without it, in spite of
her rights. If men whine and cringe, or buUy and shout,
for the jewels with which their forefathers honoured God,
she wfll fling them back again down her altar stairs and
worship God in a bam or a catacomb without them.
For, though she does not serve God and Mammon, she yet
makes to herself friends of the Mammon of iniquity. Though
she does not and never can serve God and Mammon,
she wiU and can, when the world permits it, make Mam
mon serve her. For the Church is the Majesty of God
dwelUng on earth. She is there, in herseK, utterly inde
pendent of her reception. If it is her own to whom she
comes, and her own do not receive her, they are none the
less hers by every right. For, though she wiU use every
earthly thing to her honour, though she considers no
ointment wasted, however precious, that is spiUed by
love over her feet, yet her essential glory does not He
in these things. She is all glorious within, whether or

42 PARADOXES OF CATHOLICISM
not her vesture is of gold, for she is a King's Daughter.
She is, essentiaUy, as glorious in the Catacombs as in the
Roman basiUcas; as lovely in the barefooted friar as
in the robed and sceptred Vicar of Christ; as majestic
in Christ naked on the Cross as in Christ ascended and
enthroned in heaven.
Yet, since she is His Majesty on earth, she has a right
to aU that earth can give. AU the beasts of the field are
hers, and the cattle on a thousand hills, aU the stars of
heaven and the jewels of earth; aU the things in the
world are hers by Divine right.
All things are hers, for she is Christ's. Yet, never
theless, she will suffer the loss of all things sooner than
lose Him.

in
SANCTITY AND SIN

m
SANCTITY AND SIN
Holy, Holy, Holy! — is. vi. 3.
Christ Jesus came into this world to save sinners.
I TIM. I. 15.
A VERY different pair of charges — and far more vital
— than those more or less economic accusations of
worldHness and otherworldliness which we have just
considered, concern the standards of goodness preached
by the Church and her own aUeged incapacity to Uve up
to them. These may be briefly summed up by saying
that one-half the world considers the Church too holy
for human life, and the other half, not holy enough.
We may name these critics, respectively, the Pagan and
the Puritan.
I. It is the Pagan who charges her with excessive
HoHness. "You CathoUcs," he teUs us, "are far too hard on sin
and not nearly indulgent enough towards poor human
nature. Let me take as an instance the sins of the
flesh. Now here is a set of desires implanted by God or
Nature (as you choose to name the Power behind Ufe)

46 PARADOXES OF CATHOLICISM
for wise and indeed essential purposes. These desires
are probably the very fiercest known to man and certainly
the most aUuring; and human nature is, as we know, an
extraordinarily inconsistent and vacillating thing. Now
I am aware that l!he abuse of these passions leads to
disaster and that Nature has her inexorable laws and
penalties; but you CathoUcs add a new horror to Hfe
by an absurd and irrational insistence on the offence
that this abuse causes before God. For not only do you
fiercely denounce the "acts of sin," as you name them,
but you presume to go deeper stiU to the very desire
itself, as it would seem. You are unpractical and cruel
enough to say that the very thought of sin deUberately
entertained can cut off the soul that indulges in it from
the favour of God.
"Or, to go further, consider the impossible ideals
which you hold up with regard to matrimony. These
ideals have a certain beauty of their own to persons who
can embrace them; they may perhaps be, to use a
CathoHc phrase, Counsels of Perfection; but it is merely
ludicrous to insist upon them as rules of conduct for aU
mankind. Human Nature is human nature. You can
not bind the many by the dreams of the few.
"Or, to take a wider view altogether, consider the
general standards you hold up to us in the Uves of your
saints. These saints appear to the ordinary common
place man as simply not admirable at all. It does not
seem to us admirable that St. Aloysius should scarcely

SANCTITY AND SIN 47
Uft his eyes from the ground, or that St. Teresa should
shut herseK up in a ceU, or that St. Francis should
scourge himseK with briers for fear of committing sin.
That kind of attitude is too fantasticaUy fastidious alto
gether. You CathoUcs seem to aim at a standard that
is simply not desirable; both your ends and your methods
are equaUy inhuman and equaUy unsuitable for the world
we have to Uve in. True reUgion is surely something
far more sensible than this; true reHgion should not
strain and strive after the impossible, should not seek
to improve human nature by a process of mutilation.
You have exceUent aims in some respects and exceUent
methods in others, but in supreme demands you go
beyond the mark altogether. We Pagans neither agree
with your moraUty nor admire those whom you claim
as your successes. If you were less holy and more
natural, less ideaUstic and more practical, you would be
of a greater service to the world which you desire to
help. ReHgion should be a sturdy, virUe growth; not
the deUcate hot-house blossom which you make it."
The second charge comes from the Puritan. " Cathol
icism is not holy enough to be the Church of Jesus
Christ; for see how terribly easy she is to those who
outrage and crucify Him afresh! Perhaps it may not
be tme after aU, as we used to think, that the CathoUc
priest actuaUy gives leave to his penitents to commit sin;
but the extraordinary ease with which absolution is
given comes very nearly to the same thing. So far from

48 PARADOXES OF CATHOLICISM
this Church having elevated the human race, she has
actuaUy lowered its standards by her attitude towards
those of her children who disobey God's Laws.
"And consider what some of these children of hers
have been! Are there any criminals in history so
monumental as CathoHc criminals? Have any men ever
faUen so low as, let us say, the Borgia family of the
Middle Ages, as GiUes de Rais and a score of others, as
men and women who were perhaps in their faith 'good
CathoUcs' enough, yet in their Uves a mere disgrace to
humanity? Look at the Latin countries with their
passionate records of crime, at the sexual immoraUty of
France or Spain; the turbulence and thriftlessness of
Ireland, the ignorant brutaUty of CathoHc England.
Are there any other denominations of Christendom that
exhibit such deplorable specimens as the nmaway nuns,
the apostate priests, the vicious Popes of CathoHcism?
How is it that tales are told of the iniquities of Cathol
icism such as are told of no other of the sects of Christen
dom? AUow for aU the exaggeration you like, aU the
prejudice of historians, aU the spitefulness of enemies,
yet there surely remains sufficient CathoUc criminaUty
to show that at the best the Church is no better than
any other reUgious body, and at the worst, infinitely
worse. The CathoHc Church, then, is not holy enough
to be the Church of Jesus Christ."
II. When we tum to the Gospels we find that
these two charges are, as a matter of fact, precisely

SANCTITY AND SIN 49
among those which were brought against our Divine
Lord. First, imdoubtedly. He was hated for His Holiness.
Who can doubt that the terrific standard of moraUty
which He preached — the CathoUc preaching of which
also is one of the charges of the Pagan — was a principal
cause of His rejection. For it was He, after all, who first
proclaimed that the laws of God bind not only action
but thought; it was He who first pronoimced that man
to be a murderer and an adulterer who in his heart
wiUed these sins; it was He who summed up the stand
ard of Christianity as a standard of perfection, Be you
perfect, as your Father in Heaven is perfect; who bade
men aspire to be as good as God!
It was His HoHness, then, that first drew on Him the
hostiUty of the world — that radiant white-hot sanctity
in which His Sacred Humanity went clothed. Which of
you convinceth me of sin ? . . . Let him that is without sin
amongst you cast the first stone at her! These were words
that pierced the smooth formaUsm of the Scribe and
the Pharisee and awoke an vmdying hatred. It was this,
surely, that led up irresistibly to the fijial rejection of
Him at the bar of Pilate and the choice of Barabbas in
His place. "Not this man! not this piece of stainless
Perfection! Not this Sanctity that reveals aU hearts,
but Barabbas, that comfortable sinner so like ourselves!
This robber in whose company we feel at ease! This
murderer whose Ufe, at any rate, is in no reproachful

50 PARADOXES OF CATHOLICISM
contrast to our own!" Jesus Christ was found too holy
for the world.
But He was found, too, not holy enough. And it is
this expHcit charge that is brought against Him again
and again. It was dreadful to those keepers of the Law
that this Preacher of Righteousness should sit with
pubHcans and sinners; that this Prophet should aUow
such a woman as Magdalen to touch Him. If this man
were indeed a Prophet, He could not bear the contact
of sinners; if He were indeed zealous for God's Kingdom,
He could not suffer the presence of so many who were
its enemies. Yet He sits there at Zacchaeus' table, silent
and smiUng, instead of crying on the roof to faU in; He
caUs Matthew from the tax-office instead of blasting him
and it together; He handles the leper whom God's own
Law pronounces unclean.
III. These, then, are the charges brought against
the disciples of Christ, as against the Master, and it is
undeniable that there is truth in them both.
It is tme that the CathoHc Church preaches a moraUty
that is utterly beyond the reach of human nature left
to itself; that her standards are standards of perfection,
and that she prefers even the lowest rung of the super
natural ladder to the highest rung of the natural.
And it is also tme, without doubt, that the faUen or
the imfaithful CathoUc is an infinitely more degraded
member of humanity than the faUen Pagan or Prot
estant; that the monumental criminals of history are

SANCTITY AND SIN 51
CathoUc criminals, and that the monsters of the world — ¦
Henry VHI for example, sacrilegious, murderer, and
adulterer; Martin Luther, whose printed table-talk is
unfit for any respectable house; Queen Elizabeth, per
jurer, tyrant, and unchaste — were persons who had had
aU that tiie CathoHc Church could give them: the
standards of her teaching, the guidance of her discipUne,
and the grace of her sacraments. What, then, is the
reconciUation of this Paradox?
(i) First the CathoUc Church is Divine. She dweUs,
that is to say, in heavenly places; she looks always upon
the Face of God; she holds enshrined in her heart the
Sacred Humanity of Jesus Christ and the stainless per
fection of that Immaculate Mother from whom that
Humanity was drawn. How is it conceivable, then, that
she should be content with any standard short of per
fection? If she were a Society evolved from below — a
merely human Society that is to say — she could never
advance beyond those standards to which in the past
her noblest children have climbed. But since there
dweUs in her the Supematural — since Mary was en
dowed from on high with a gift to which no human being
could ascend, since the Sim of Justice Himself came down
from the heavens to lead a human Hfe under human
terms — how can she ever again be content with any
thing short of that height from which these came?
(2) But she is also human, dwelUng herseK in the
midst of humanity, placed here in the world for the

52 PARADOXES OF CATHOLICISM
express object of gathering into herseK and of sanctKying
by her graces that very world which has^^faUen from
God. These outcasts and these sinners are the very
material on which she has to work; these waste pro
ducts of hiunan Ufe, these marred types and specimens
of humanity have no hope at aU except in her.
For, first, she desires if she can — and she has often
been able — actuaUy to raise these, first to sanctity and
then to her own altars; it is for her and her only to raise
the poor from the dunghill and to set them with the princes.
She sets before the Magdalen and the thief, then, nothing
less but her own standard of perfection.
Yet though in one sense she is satisfied with nothing
lower than this, in another sense she is satisfied with
almost uffinitely nothing. If she can but bring the
sinner within the very edge of grace; if she can but
draw from the dying murderer one cry of contrition; if
she can but tum his eyes with one look of love to the
cmcifix, her labours are a thousand times repaid; for,
if she has not brought him to the head of sanctity, she
has at least brought him to its foot and set him there
beneath that ladder of the supematural which reaches
from heU to heaven.
For she alone has this power. She alone is so utterly
confident in the presence of the sinner because she alone
has the secret of his cure. There in her confessional is
the Blood of Christ that can make his soul clean again,
and in her Tabemacle the Body of Christ that wiU

SANCTITY AND SIN 53
be his food of eternal Hfe. She alone dares be his
friend because she alone can be his Saviour. If, then,
her saints are one sign of her identity, no less are her
sinners another.
For not only is she the Majesty of God dwelUng on
earth, she is also His Love; and therefore its Umitations,
and they only, are hers. That Sun of mercy that shines
and that Rain of charity that streams, on just and unjust
alike, are the very Sun and Rain that give her Ufe. // 1
go up to Heaven she is there, enthroned in Christ, on the
Right Hand of God; if I go down to Hell she is there
also, drawing back souls from the brink from which she
alone can rescue them. For she is that very ladder
which Jacob saw so long ago, that staircase planted here
in the blood and the slime of earth, rising there into the
stainless Light of the Lamb. HoHness and unhoUness
are both alike hers and she is ashamed of neither — the
holiness of her own Divinity which is Christ's and the
unhoUness of those outcast members of her Humanity
to whom she ministers.
By her power, then, which again is Christ's, the
Magdalen becomes the Penitent; the thief the first of
the redeemed; and Peter, the yielding sand of humanity,
the Rock on which Herself is built.

IV
JOY AND SORROW

IV
JOY AND SORROW
Rejoice and be eocceeding glad. . . . Blessed are they that
mourn. — matt. v. 12, 5.
The CathoUc Church, as has been seen, is always too
"extreme" for the world. She is content with nothing
but a Divine Peace, and in its cause is the occasion of
bloodier wars than any waged from merely human
motives. She is not content with mere goodness, but
urges always Sanctity upon her children; yet simul
taneously tolerates sinners whom even the world casts
out. Let us consider now how, in fulfilling these two
apparentiy mutuaUy contradictory precepts of our Lord,.
to rejoice and to mourn, once more she appears to the
world extravagant in both directions at once.
I. It is a common charge against her that she rejoices
too exceedingly; is arrogant, confident, and optimistic
where she ought to be quiet, subdued, and tender.
"This world," exclaims her critic, "is on the whole a
very sad and uncertain place. There is no silver lining
that has not a cloud before it; there is no hope that may
not, after aU, be disappointed. Any reHgion, then, that

58 PARADOXES OF CATHOLICISM
claims to be adequate to human nature must always
have something of sadness and even hesitancy about it.
ReUgion must walk softly aU her days ^ if she is to walk
hand in hand with experience. Death is certain; is Ufe
as certain? The function of reHgion, then, is certainly
to help to Ughten this darkness, yet not by too great
a blaze of Ught. She may hope and aspire and guess
and hint; in fact, that is her duty.^ But she must not
proclaim and denounce and command. She must be
suggestive rather than exhaustive; tender rather than
virile; hopeful rather than positive; experimental
rather than dogmatic.
"Now CathoHcism is too noisy and confident alto
gether. See a CathoHc Uturgical function on some high
day! Was there ever anything more arrogant? What
has this blaze of colour, this shouting of voices, this
blowing of trumpets to do with the soft haK-Ughts of
the world and the mystery of the darkness from which
we came and to which we return? What has this clear-
cut dogma to do with the gentie guesses of philosophy,
this optimism with the uncertainty of Hfe and the
future — above aU, what sympathy has this preposterous
exultation with the misery of the world?
"And how unUke, too, aU this is to the spirit of the
Man of Sorrows! We read that Jesus wept, but never
that He laughed. His was a sad Ufe, from the dark
stable of Bethlehem to the darker hiU of Calvary. He
was what He was because He knew what sorrow meant;

JOY AND SORROW 59
it was in His sorrows that He has touched the heart of
humanity. 'Blessed,' he says, 'are those that mourn.'
Blessed are they that expect nothing, for they shall not
be disappointed."
In another mood, however, our critic wiU find fault
with our sadness.
"Why is not the reUgion of you CathoHcs more in
accord with the happy world in which we Uve? Surely
the supreme function of reUgion is to hearten and encour
age and lay stress on the bright side of Ufe! It should
be brief, bright, and brotherly. For, after aU, this is a
lovely world and fuU of gaiety. It is true that it has its
shadows, yet there can be no shadows without a sun;
there is death, but see how Hfe continuaUy springs again
from the grave. Since aU things, therefore, work to
gether for good; since God has taken pains to make the
world so sweet, it is but a poor compliment to the Creator
to treat it as a vale of misery. Let us, then, make the
best of things and forget the worst. Let us leave the
things that are behind and press forward to the things
that are before. Let us insist that the world is white
with a few black spots upon it, be optimistic, happy,
and confident.
"You CathoUcs, however, are but a poor-spirited,
miserable race. While other denominations are, Httle
by Uttle, eliminating melancholy, you are insisting upon
it. While the rest of us are agreeing that HeU is but a
bogy, and sin a mistake, and suffering no more than

6o PARADOXES OF CATHOLICISM
remedial, you CathoHcs are stiU insisting upon their
reaUty — that HeU is eternal, that sin is the deUberate
opposition of the human wiU to the Divine, and that
suffering therefore is judicial. Sin, Penance, Sacrifice,
Purgatory, and HeU — these are the old nightmares of
dogma; and their fruits are tears, pain, and terror.
What is wrong with CathoHcism, then, is its gloom and
its sorrow; for this is surely not the Christianity of
Christ as we are now learning to understand it. Christ,
rightly understood, is the Man of Joy, not of Grief. He
is more characteristic of HimseK, so to speak, as the
smiUng shepherd of GaUlee, surrounded by His sheep;
as the lover of children and flowers and birds; as the
Preacher of Life and Resurrection — He is more charac
teristic of Himself as crownedj ascended, and glorified,
than as the blodd-stained martyr of the Cross whom
you set above your altars. Rejoice, then, and be exceeding
glad, and you wiU please Him best."
Once more, then, we appear to be in the wrong, to
whatever side we tum. The happy red-faced monk with
his barrel of beer is a caricature of our joy. Can this, it
is asked, be a follower of the Man of Sorrows? And the
long-faced ascetic with his eyes turned up to heaven is
the world's conception of our sorrow. CathoUc joy and
CathoUc sorrow are alike too ardent and extreme for a
world that deUghts in moderation in both sorrow and
joy — a Uttle melancholy, but not too much; a Uttie
cheerfulness, but not excessive.

JOY AND SORROW 6 1
n. First, then, it is interesting to remember that
these charges are not now being made against us for
the first time. In the days even of the Roman Empire
they were thought to be signs of Christian inhumanity.
"These Christians," it was said, " must surely be be
witched. See how they laugh at the rack and the whip
and go to the arena as to a bridal bed! See how Lawrence
jests upon his gridiron." And yet again, "They must be
bewitched, because of their morbidity and their love of
darkness, the enemies of joy and human mirth and com
mon pleasure. In either case they are not true men at
aU." Their extravagance of joy when others would be
weeping, and their extravagance of sorrow when aU the
world is glad — these are the very signs to which their
enemies appealed as proofs that a power other than that
of this world was inspiring them, as proofs that they
could not be the simple friends of the human race that
they dared to pretend.
It is even more interesting to remember that our
Divine Lord HimseK calls attention to these charges.
" The Son of Man comes eating and drinking. The Son
of Man sits at the wedding feast at Cana and at meat
in the rich man's house and you say. Behold a glutton
and a winebibber ! The Son of Man comes rejoicing
and you bid Him to be sad. And John the Baptist came
neither eating nor drinking. John the Baptist comes
from the desert, an ascetic with his camel-hair about
him and words of penance and wrath in his mouth, and

62 PARADOXES OF CATHOLICISM
you say, He hath a devil. . . . We have piped unto you and
you have not danced. We have, played at weddings like
children in a market-place, and you have told us to be
quiet and think about our sins. We have mourned unto
you, we have asked you to play at funerals instead,
and you have told us that it was morbid to think about
death. We have mourned and you would not lament."
III. The fact is, of course, that both joy and sorrow
must be an element in aU reUgion, since joy and sorrow
together make up experience. The world is neither
white with black spots nor black with white spots; it
is black and white. It is quite as true that autumn
foUows summer as that spring foUows winter. It is no
less tme that Ufe arises out of death than that death
foUows Ufe.
ReHgion then cannot, if it is to be adequate to experi
ence, be a passionless thing. On the contrary it must be
passionate, since human nature is passionate too; and
it must be a great deal more passionate. It must not
moderate grief, but deepen it; not banish joy, but exalt
it. It must weep — and bitterer tears than any that
the world can shed — with them that weep; and rejoice
too — with a joy which no man can take away — with
them that rejoice. It must sink deeper and rise higher,
it must feel more acutely, it must agonize and triumph
more abundantly, if it truly comes from God and is to
minister to men, since His thoughts are higher than
ours and His Love more burning.

JOY AND SORROW 63
For SO did Christ Uve on earth. At one hour He re
joiced greatly in spirit so that those that watched Him
were astonished; at another He sweated blood for
anguish. In one hour He is exalted high on the blazing
Mount of Transfiguration; in another He is plunged
deeper than any human heart can fathom in the low-
lying garden of Gethsemane. Behold and see if there
be any sorrow like to My Sorrow.
ni. For, again, the Church, Uke her Lord, is both
Divine and Human.
She is Divine and therefore she rejoices — so fiUed
with the New Wine of the Kingdom of her Father that
men stare at her in contempt.
It is true enough that the world is unhappy; that
hearts are broken; that famiUes, countries, and centuries
are laid waste by sin. Yet since the Church is Divine,
she knows, not merely guesses or hopes or desires, but
knows, that although all things come to an end, God's com
mandment is exceeding broad. Years ago, she knows —
and therefore not aU the criticism in the world can shakei
her — that her Lord came down from heaven, was bom,
died, rose, and ascended, and that He reigns in uncon
querable power. She knows that He wUl return again
and take the kingdom and reign; she knows, because
she is Divine, that in every tabemacle of hers on earth
the Lord of Joy Ues hidden; that Mary intercedes; that
the saints are with God; that the Blood of Jesus Christ
cleanseth from all sin. Look round her earthly buildings,

64 PARADOXES OF CATHOLICISM
then, and there are the symbols and images of these
things. There is the merry Ught before her altar; there
are the saints stiff with gold and gems; there is Mary,
"Cause of our Joy," radiant, with her radiant Child in
her arms. If she were but human, she would dare but
to shadow these things forth — shadows of her own de
sires; she would whisper her creed; murmur her prayers;
darken her windows. But she is Divine and has herseK
come down from heaven; so she does not guess, or
think, or hope — she knows.
But she is human too and dweUs in the midst of a
human race that does not know and therefore wiU not
whoUy take her at her word, and the very height of her
exaltation must also be, then, the measure of her despair.
The fact that she knows so certainly intensffies a thou
sandfold her human sorrow, as she, who has come that
they may have life, sees how they will not come to her
and find it, as she sees how long the triumph which is
certain is yet delayed through their faithlessness, "if
thou hadst known," she cries in the heart-broken words
of Jesus HimseK over Jemsalem, "if thou hadst but known
the things that belong to thy peace ! Behold and see, then,
if there be any sorrow like to mine, K there be any grief
so profound and so piercing as mine, who hold the Keys
of Heaven and watch men tum away from the Door."
So, then, in church after church stand symboUc groups
of statuary, representing joy and tragedy, compared
with which Venus and Adonis are but childish and haK-

JOY AND SORROW 65
civilized images — Mary as triumphant Queen, with the
gold-crowned Child in her arms, and Mary the tormented
Mother, with her dead Son across her knees. For she
who is both Divine and Human alone understands what
it is that Humanity has done to Divinity.
Is it any wonder, then, that the world thinks her ex
travagant in both directions at once; that the world
tums away on Good Friday from the unutterable depths
of her sorrow, and on Easter Day from the unscalable
heights of her joy, caUing the one morbid and the other
hysterical? For what does the world know of such
passions as these? What, after aU, can the sensuaUst
know of joy, or the ruined financier of sorrow? And
what can the moderate, seK-controUed, seK-respecting
man of the world know of either?
Lastiy, then, in the Paradox of Love, the Church holds
both these passions, at fuU blast, both at once. As
human love tums joy into pain and suffers in the midst
of ecstasy, so Divine Love tums pain into joy and
exults and reigns upon the Cross. For the Church is
more than the Majesty of God reigning on earth, more
than the passionless love of the Etemal; she is the Very
Sacred Heart of Christ HimseK, the Etemal united with
Man, and both suffering and rejoicing through that
union. It is His bUss which she at once experiences
and extends, in virtue of her identity with Him; and in
the midst of a faUen world it is the supremest bUss of
that Sacred Heart to suffer pain.

V
LOVE OF GOD AND LOVE OF MAN

V
LOVE OF GOD AND LOVE OF MAN
Thou shall love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart . . .
and thy neighbour as thyself. — luke x. 27.
We have already considered two charges brought
against CathoHcism from opposite quarters; namely,
that we are too worldly and too otherworldly, too much
busied with temporal concerns to be truly spiritual, and
too metaphysical and remote and dogmatic to be truly
practical. Let us go on to consider these same two
charges produced, so to speak, a Uttie further into a
more definitely spiritual plane; charges that now accuse
us of too great activities in our ministry to men and
too many attentions paid to God.
I. (i) It is a very common complaint against Catho
Ucs, laymen as weU as clergy, that they are overzealous in
their attempts to proselytize. True and spiritual reU
gion, we are told, is as intimate and personal an affair as
the love between husband and wife; it is essentiaUy pri
vate and individual. "The reUgion of aU sensible men,"
it has been said, "is precisely that which they always
keep to themselves." Tolerance, therefore, is a mark

70 paradoxes of CATHOLICISM
of spirituaUty, for if I am truly reUgious I shaU have
as much respect for the reUgion of my neighbour as
for my own. I shaU no more seek to interfere in his
relations with God than I shaU aUow him to interfere
with mine.
Now CathoUcs are notoriously intolerant. It is not
merely that there are intolerant CathoHcs, for intoler
ance is of course to be found in aU narrow-minded per
sons, but it is CathoHc principles themselves that are
intolerant; and every CathoUc who Uves up to them
is bound to be so also. And we can see this iUustrated
every day.
First, there is the matter of CathoUc missions to the
heathen. There are no missionaries, we are told, so
untiring and so devoted as those of the Church. Their
zeal, of course, is a proof of their sincerity; but it is also
a proof of their intolerance: for why, after all, cannot
they leave the heathen alone, since reHgion is, in its
essence, a private and individual matter? Beautiful
pictures, accordingly, are suggested to us of the domestic
peace and happiness reigning amongst the tribes of
Central Africa until the arrival of the Preaching Friar
with his destmctive dogmas. We are bidden to observe
the high doctrines and the ascetic Ufe of the Brahmin,
the sigruficant symboHsm of the Hindu, and the philo
sophical attitudes of the Confucian. AU these various
relationships to God are, we are informed, entirely the
private affairs of those who Uve by them; and U. Catho-

LOVE OP GOD AND LOVE OF MAN 71
Hcs were truly spiritual they would understand that
this was so and not seek to supplant by a system which
is now, at any rate, become an essentiaUy European
way of looking at things, these ancient creeds and
philosophies that are far better suited to the Oriental
temperament. But the matter is worse, even, than this. It may con
ceivably be argued, says the modem man of the world,
that after aU those Oriental reUgions have not developed
such virtues and graces as has Christianity. It may
perhaps be argued that in time the reUgion of the West,
if missionaries wiU persevere, wiU raise the Hindu higher
than his own obscenities have succeeded in doing, and
that the civilization produced by Christianity is actuaUy
of a higher type, in spite of its evil by-products, than
that of the head-hunters of Borneo and the bloody
savages of Africa. But at any rate there is no excuse
whatever for the intolerant CathoUc proselytizer in Eng-
Ush homes. For, roughly speaking, it is only the Catho
Uc whom you cannot trust in your own home circle;
sooner or later you wiU find him, if he at aU Uves up to
his principles, insinuating the praises of his own faith
and the weaknesses of your own ; your sons and daugliters
he considers to be fair game; he thinks nothing of your
domestic peace in comparison with the propagation of
his own tenets. He is characterized, first and last, by
that dogmatic and intolerant spirit that is the exact
contrary of aU that the modem world deems to be the

72 PARADOXES OF CATHOLICISM
spirit of tme Christianity. Tme Christianity, then, as
has been said, is essentiaUy a private, personal, and
individual matter between each soul and her God.
(u) The second charge brought against CathoUcs is
that they make reHgion far too personal, too private, and
too intimate for it to be considered the reUgion of Jesus
Christ. And this is iUustrated by the supreme value
which the Church places upon what is known as the
Contemplative Life.
For K there is one element in CathoHcism that the
man-in-the-street especiaUy selects for reprobation it
is the Ufe of the Enclosed ReUgious. It is supposed
to be seffish, morbid, introspective, unreal; it is set
in violent dramatic contrast with the ministerial Life
of Jesus Christ. A quantity of famiUar eloquence is
solemnly poured out upon it as if nothing of the kind
had ever been said before: it is said that "a man cannot
get away from the world by shutting himseK up in a
monastery"; that "a man should not think about his
own soul so much, but rather of what good he can do in
the world in which God has placed him"; that "four
whitewashed waUs" are not the proper environment for
a philanthropic Christian.
And yet, after aU, what is the Contemplative Life
except precisely that which the world just now recom
mended? And could reUgion possibly be made a more
intimate, private, and personal matter between the soul
and God than the Carthusian or CarmeUte makes it?

LOVE OF GOD AND LOVE OF MAN 73
The fact is, of course, that CathoUcs are wrong what
ever they do — too extreme in everything which they
imdertake. They are too active and not retired enough
in their proselytism; too retired and not active enough
in their Contemplation.
n. Now the LKe of our Divine Lord exhibits, of
course, both the Active and the Contemplative elements
that have always distinguished the LKe of His Church.
For three years He set HimseK to the work of preach
ing His Revelation and estabUshing the Church that
was to be its organ through aU the centuries. He went
about, therefore, freely and swKtly, now in town, now
in country. He laid down His Divine principles and
presented His Divine credentials, at marriage feasts, in
market-places, in country roads, in crowded streets, and
in private houses. He wrought the works of mercy,
spiritual and corporal, that were to be the types of aU
works of mercy ever afterwards. He gave spiritual and
ascetic teaching on the Mount of Beatitudes, dogmatic
instructions in Caphamaum and the wilderness to the
east of GaUlee, and mystical discourses in the Upper
Chamber of Jemsalem and the temple courts. His
activities and His proselytisms were unbounded. He
broke up domestic circles and the routine of offices. He
caUed the young man from his estates and Matthew
from custom-house and James and John from their
father's fishing business. He made a final demonstra
tion of His unlimited claim on humanity in His Proces-

74 PARADOXES OF CATHOLiaSM
sion on Pahn Sunday, and on Ascension Day ratified
and commissioned the proselytizing activities of His
Church for ever in His tremendous charge to the Apos-
toUc band. Going, therefore, teach ye all nations . . .
teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have com
manded you; and behold I am with you all the days, even
to the consummation of the world.
Yet this, it must be remembered, was not only not
the whole of His Life on earth, it was not even a very
considerable part of it, if reckoned by years. For three
years He was active, but for thirty He was retired in
the house of Nazareth; and even those three years are
again and again broken by retirement. He is now in
the wilderness for forty days, now on the mountain aU
night in prayer, now bidding His disciples come apart
and rest themselves. The very cUmax of His ministry
too was wrought in silence and soUtude. He removed
HimseK about a stone's throw in the garden of Gethsemane
from those who loved Him best; He broke His silence
on the Cross to bid fareweU even to His holy Mother
herseK. Above aU, he expUcitly and emphaticaUy com
mended the Life of Contemplative Prayer as the highest
that can be Hved on earth, teUing Martha that activity,
even in the most necessary duties, was not after aU the
best use to which time and love could be put, but rather
that Mary had chosen the best part . . . the one thing that
is necessary, and that it shall not be taken away from her
even by a sister's loving zeal.

LOVE OF GOD AND LOVE OF MAN 75
FinaUy, fault was found with Jesus Christ, as with
His Church, on precisely these two points. When He
was Hving the Ufe of retirement in the country He was
rebuked that He did not go up to the feast and state His
claims plainly — justKy, that is, by activity. His pre
tensions to the Messiahship; and when He did so. He
was entreated to bid his acclaimants to hold their peace
— to justify, that is, by humiUty and retirement. His
pretensions to spirituaUty.
HI. The recondUation, therefore, of these two ele
ments in the CathoHc system is very easy to find.
(i) First, it is the Church's Divinity that accounts
for her passion for Gk)d. To her as to none else on earth
is the very face of God revealed as the Absolute and
Final Beauty that Ues beyond the Hmits of aU Creation.
She in her Divinity enjoys it may be said, even in her
sojourn on earth, that very Beatffic Vision that enrap
tured always the Sacred Humamty of Jesus Christ.
With aU the company of heaven then, with Mary
Immaculate, with the Seraphim and with the glorified
saints of God, she endures, seeing Him Who is invisible.
Even while the eyes of her humanity are held, while her
human members walk by faith and not by sight, she, in
her Divinity, which is the guaranteed Presence of Jesus
Christ in her midst, already dwells in heavenly places and
is already come to Mount Zion and the City of the living
God and to God Himself, Who is the Light in which aU
fair things are seen to be fair.

76 PARADOXES OF CATHOLiaSM
Is it any wonder then that, now and again, some
chosen child of hers catches a mirrored gUmpse of what
she herseK beholds with unveiled face; that some
CathoUc soul, now and again, chosen and caUed by God
to this amazing privilege, should suddenly perceive, as
never before, that God is the one and only Absolute
Beauty, and that, compared with the contemplation of
this Beauty — which contemplation is, after aU, the
final Hfe of Eternity to which every redeemed soul shaU
come — aU the activities of earthly Hfe are nothing;
and that, in her passion for this adorable God, she should
run into a secret room a.nd shut the door and pray to her
Father Who is in secret, and so remain praying, a hidden
channel of Hfe to the whole of that Body of which she is
a member, an intercessor for the whole of that Society of
which she is one unit? There in silence, then, she sits at
Jesus' feet and Hstens to the Voice which is as the sound
of many waters; in the whiteness of her ceU watches
Him Whose Face is as a Flame of Fire, and in austerity
and fasting tastes and finds that the Lord is gracious.
Of course this is but madness and foUy to those who
know God only in His Creation, who imagine Him
merely as the Soul of the World and the VitaUty of
Created Life. To such as these earth is His highest
Heaven and the beauty of the world the noblest vision
that can be conceived. Yet to that soul that is CathoHc,
who understands that the Etemal Throne is indeed above
the stars and that the Transcendence of God is as fuUy

LOVE OF GOD AND LOVE OF MAN 77
a truth as His Immanence — that God in Himself, apart
from aU that He has made, is aU-fair and aU-sufficient
in His own Beauty — to such a soul as this, if caUed to
such a Hfe, there is no need that the Church should
declare expUcitiy that the Contemplative Life is the
highest. She knows it already.
(u) The First Great Commandment of the Law, then,
is inevitably foUowed by the Second, and the CathoUc
interpretation of the Second is thought by the world,
which understands neither, to be as extravagant as her
interpretation of the First.
For this Divine Church that knows God is also a
Human Society that dweUs among men, and since she
in herseK unites Divinity and Humanity, she cannot
rest until she has united them everywhere else.
For, as she tums her eyes from God to men, she sees
there immortal souls, made in the image of God and
made for Him and Him alone, seeking to satisfy them
selves with Creation instead of with the Creator. She
hears how the world preaches the sanctity of the tem
perament, and the holiness of the individual point of
view, as K there were no Transcendent God at aU and
no objective external Revelation ever made by Him.
She sees how men, instead of seeking to conform them
selves to God's Revelation of HimseK, attempt rather
to conform such fragments of that Revelation as have
reached them to their own points of view; she Hstens to
talk about "aspects of tmth" and "schools of thought"

78 PARADOXES OF CATHOLICISM
and the "values of experience" as if God had never
spoken either in the thunders of Sinai or the stiU
voice of Galilee.
Is it any wonder, then, that her Proselytism appears to
such a world as extravagant as her Contemplation, her
passion for men as unreasonable as her passion for God,
when that world sees her bring herself from her cloisters
and her secret places to proclaim as with a trumpet
those demands of God which He has made known, those
Laws which He has promulgated, and those rewards
which He has promised? For how can she do otherwise
who has looked on the aU-glorious Face of God and then
on the vacant and complacent faces of men — she who
knows God's infinite capacity for satisfying men and
men's aU but infinite incapacity for seeking God — when
she sees some poor soul shutting herseK up indeed
within the deadly and chiUy waUs of her own " tempera
ment" and "individual point of view," when earth and
heaven and the Lord of them both is waiting for her
outside? The Church, then, is too much interested in men and
too much absorbed in God. Of course she is too much
interested and too much absorbed, for she alone knows
the value and capacity of both; she who is herself both
Divine and Human. For ReUgion, to her, is not an
elegant accompHshment or a graceful philosophy or a
pleasing scheme of conjectures. It is the fiery bond
between God and man, neither of whom can be satis-

LOVE OF GOD AND LOVE OF MAN 79
fied without the other, the One in virtue of His Love and
the other in virtue of his createdness. She alone, then,
understands and reconciles the tremendous Paradox of
the Law that is Old as weU as New. Thou shall love
the Lord thy God with thy whole heart . . . and thy neigh
bour as thyself.

VI
FAITH AND REASON

VI
FAITH AND REASON
Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little
child shall not enter into it. — mark x. 15.
Some things hard to be understood, which the unlearned
and the unstable wrest, as also the other Scriptures, to
their own perdition. — n pet. in. 16.
There are two great gifts, or faculties, by which men
attain to tmth: faith and reason. From these two sides,
therefore, come two more assaults upon the CathoHc
position, a position which itseK faces in both these direc
tions. On the one side we are told that we beUeve too
simply, on the other that we do not beUeve simply
enough; on the one side that we reason too Uttle, on
the other that we do not reason enough. Let us set
out these attacks in order.
I. (i) "You CathoHcs," says one critic, "are far too
credulous in matters of reHgion. You beUeve, not as
reasonable men beUeve, because you have verified or
experienced the truths you profess, but simply because
these dogmas are presented to you by the Church. If
reason and common-sense are gifts of God and intended

84 PARADOXES OF CATHOLICISM
for use, surely it is very strange to silence them in your
search for the supreme tmth. Faith, of course, has its
place, but it must not be bUnd faith. Reason must test,
verify, and interpret, or faith is mere creduUty.
"Consider, for example, the words of Christ, This is
My Body. Now the words as they stand may certainly
be supposed to mean what you say they mean; yet,
interpreted by Reason, they cannot possibly mean any
thing of the kind. Did not Christ HimseK sit in bodily
form at the table as He spoke them? How then could
He hold Himself in His hand? Did He not speak in
metaphors and images continuaUy? Did He not caU
HimseK a Door and a Vine? Using Reason, then, to
interpret these words, it is evident that He meant no
more than that He was instituting a memorial feast,
in which the bread should symbolize His Body and the
wine His Blood. So too with many other distinctively
CathoHc doctrines — with the Petrine claims, with the
authority 'to bind and loose,' and the rest. CathoUc
beUef on these points exhibits not faith properly so-
caUed — that is. Faith tested by Reason — but mere
creduUty. God gave us aU Reason! Then in His
Name let us use it!"
(u) From the other side comes precisely the opposite
charge. "You CathoUcs," cries the other critic, "are far too
argumentative and deductive and logical in your Faith.
Tme ReHgion is a very simple thing; it is the attitude

FAITH AND REASON 85
of a child who trusts and does not question. But with
you CathoUcs ReUgion has degenerated into Theology.
Jesus Christ did not write a Summa; He made a few plain
statements which comprise, as they stand, the whole
Christian ReUgion; they are fuU of mystery, no doubt,
but it is He who left them mysterious. Why, then,
should your theologians seek to penetrate into regions
which He did not reveal and to elaborate what He left
unelaborated? "Take, for example, Christ's words. This is My Body.
Now of course these words are mysterious, and if Christ
had meant that they should be otherwise. He would
HimseK have given the necessary comment upon them.
Yet He did not; He left them in an awful and deep
simpUcity into which no human logic ought even to seek
to penetrate. Yet see the vast and compHcated theology
that the traditions have either pUed upon them or
attempted to extract out of them; the philosophical
theories by which it has been sought to elucidate them;
the intricate and wide-reaching devotions that have
been founded upon them! What have words like
'Transubstantiation' and 'Concomitance,' devotions
like 'Benediction,' gatherings like Eucharistic Con
gresses to do with the august simpUcity of Christ's own
institution? You CathoHcs argue too much — deduce,
syUogize, and explain — until the simple splendour of
Christ's mysterious act is altogether overlaid and
hidden. Be more simple! It is better to 'love God than

86 PARADOXES OF CATHOLICISM
to discourse learnedly about the Blessed Trinity,' It has
not pleased God to save His people through dialectics.
BeUeve more, argue less!"
Once more, then, the double charge is brought. We
beUeve, it seems, where we ought to reason. We reason
where we ought to believe. We beUeve too blindly and
not bUndly enough. We reason too closely and not
closely enough.
Here, then, is a vast subject — the relations of Faith
and Reason and the place of each in man's attitude
towards Truth. It is, of course, possible only to glance
at these things in outUne.
II. First, let us consider, as a kind of iUustration,
the relations of these things in ordinary human science.
Neither Faith nor Reason wiU, of course, be precisely
the same as in supematural matters; yet there wiU
be a sufficient parallel for our purpose.
A scientist, let us say, proposes to make observations
upon the structure of a fly's leg. He catches his fly,
dissects, prepares, places it in his microscope, observes,
and records. Now here, it would seem, is Pure Science
at its purest and Reason in its most reasonable aspect.
Yet the acts of faith in this very simple process are, if
we consider closely, simply numberless. The scientist
must make acts of faith, certainly reasonable acts, yet
none the less of faith, for aU that: first, that his fly is not
a freak of nature; next, that his lens is symmetricaUy
ground; then that his observation is adequate; then

FAITH AND REASON 87
that his memory has not played him false between his
observing and his recording that which he has seen.
These acts are so reasonable that we forget that they are
acts of faith. They are justified by reason before they
are made, and they are usuaUy, though not invariably,
verified by Reason afterwards. Yet they are, in their
essence. Faith and not Reason.
So, too, when a child learns a foreign language. Reason
justifies him in making one act of faith that his teacher
is competent, another that his grammar is correct, a
third that he hears and sees and understands correctiy
the information given him, a fourth that such a language
actuaUy exists. And when he visits France afterwards
he can, within limits, again verify by his reason the acts
of faith which he has previously made. Yet none the
less they were acts of faith, though they were reasonable.
In a word, then, no acquirement of or progress in
any branch of human knowledge is possible without the
exercise of faith. I cannot walk downstairs in the dark
without at least as many acts of faith as there are
steps in the staircase. Society could not hold together
another day K mutual faith were whoUy wanting among
its units. Certainly we use reason first to justify our
faith, and we reason later to verify it. Yet none the
less the middle step is faith. Columbus reasoned first
that there must be a land beyond the Atlantic, and
he used that same reason later to verify his discovery.
Yet without a sublime act of faith between these pro-

88 PARADOXES OF CATHOLICISM
cesses, without that almost reckless moment in which
he first weighed anchor from Europe, reason would
never have gone beyond speculative theorizing. Faith
made real for him what Reason suggested. Faith
actuaUy accompUshed that of which Reason could only
dream. III. Tum now to the coming of Jesus Christ on earth.
He came, as we know now, a Divine Teacher from
heaven to make a Revelation from God; He came, that
is, to demand from men a sublime Act of Faith in Him
self. For He Himself was Incamate Wisdom, and He
demanded, therefore, as none else can demand it, a
supreme acceptance of His claim. No progress in
Divine knowledge, as He Himself teUs us, is possible,
then, without this initial act. Whosoever shall not
receive the kingdom of God as a little child shall not
enter into it. Every soul that is to receive this teaching
in its entirety must first accept the Teacher and sit
at His feet.
Yet He did not make this claim merely on His own
unsupported word. He presented His credentials, so to
say; He fulfilled prophecy; He wrought miracles; He
satisfied the moral sense. Believe Me, He says, for the
very works' sake. Before, then, demanding the funda
mental act of Faith on which the reception of Rev
elation must depend, He took pains to make this Act of
Faith reasonable. "You see what I do," He said in
effect, "you have observed My Ufe, My words. My

FAITH AND REASON 89
actions. Now is it not in accordance with Reason that
you should grant My claims? Can you explain away,
reasonably, on any other grounds than those which I
state, the phenomena of My Ufe?"
Certainly, then. He appealed to Reason; He appealed
to Private Judgment, since that, up to that moment,
was aU that His hearers possessed. But, in demanding
an Act of Faith, He appealed to Private Judgment to
set itseK aside; He appealed to Reason as to [whether
it were not Reasonable to stand aside for the moment
and let Faith take its place. And we know how His
disciples responded. Whom do you say that I am? . . .
Thou art the Christ, the Son of the Living God.
At that instant, then, a new stage was begun. They
had used their Reason and their Private Judgment, and,
aided by His grace, had concluded that the next reason
able step was that of Faith. Up to that point they had
observed, dissected, criticized, and analyzed His words;
they had examined, that is. His credentials. And now it
was Reason itseK that urged them towards Faith,
Reason that abdicated what had hitherto been, its
right and its duty, that Faith might assume her proper
place. Henceforth, then, their attitude must be a dif
ferent one. Up to now they had used their Reason
to examine His claim; now it was Faith, aided and
urged by Reason, which accepted it.
Yet even now Reason's work is not done, though its
scope in future is changed. Reason no longer examines

90 PARADOXES OF CATHOLICISM
whether He be God; Faith has accepted it: yet Reason
has to be as active as ever; for Reason now must begin
with aU its might the task of understanding His Revela
tion. Faith has given them, so to speak, casket after
casket of jewels; every word that Jesus Christ hence
forth speaks to them is a very mine of treasure, abso
lutely true since He is known to be a Divine Teacher
Who has given it. And Reason now begins her new
work, not of justifying Faith, but, so to say, of inter
preting it; not of examining His claims, since these
have been once for aU accepted, but of examining,
understanding, and assimilating aU that He reveals.
III. Tum now to CathoHcism.
It is the CathoHc Church, and the CathoHc Church
only, that acts as did Jesus Christ and offers an adequate
object to Reason and Faith aHke. For, first, it is evi
dent that if Christ intended His Revelation to last
through aU time. He must have designed a means by
which it should last, an Authority that should declare
and preserve it as He Himself deUvered it. And next,
it is evident that since the CathoHc Church alone even
claims that prerogative, clearly and coherently, her
right to represent that Authority is in proportion to the
cleamess and coherence of her claim. Or, again, she
advances in support of that claim precisely those same
credentials as did He: she points to her miracles, her
achievements, the fulfilment of prophecy, the unity of her
teaching, the appeal to men's moral sense — all of them

FAITH AND REASON 9I
appeals to Reason, and appeals which lead up, as did
His, to the supreme claim, which He also made, to
demand an Act of Faith in herself as a Divine Teacher.
For she alone demands it. Other denominations of
Christendom point to a Book, or to the writings of
Fathers, or to the example of their members, and she too
does these things. But it is she alone who appeals to
these things not as final in themselves, not as constituting
in themselves a final court of appeal, but as indicating
as that court of appeal her own Living Voice. Believe
me, for the works' sake, she too says. "Use your reason
to the fuU to examine my credentials; study prophecy,
history, the Fathers — study my claims in any realm in
which your inteUect is competent — and then see if it is
not after all supremely reasonable for Reason to abdicate
that particular throne on which she has sat so long and
to seat Faith there instead? Certainly foUow your
Reason and use your private judgment, for at present
you have no other guide; and then, please God, aided by
Faith, Reason wiU itseK bow before Faith, and take her
own place henceforth, not on the throne, but on the
steps that lead to it."
Is Reason, then, to be sUent henceforth? Why, the
whole of theology gives the answer. Did Newman cease
to think when he became a CathoHc? Did Thomas
Aquinas resign his inteUect when he devoted himseK to
study? Not for one instant is Reason silent. On the
contrary, she is active as never before. Certainly she

92 PARADOXES OF CATHOLICISM
is no longer occupied in examining as to whether the
Church is divine, but instead she is busied, with in
credible labours, in examining what foUows from that
fact, in sorting the new treasures that are opened to her
with the dawn of Revelation upon her eyes, in arranging,
deducting, and understanding the details and structure
of the astonishing Vision of Tmth. And more, she is as
inviolate as ever. For never can there be presented to
her one article of Faith that gives the He to her own
nature, since Revelation and Reason cannot contradict
one the other. She has learned, indeed, that the mys
teries of God often transcend her powers, that she
cannot fathom the infinite with the finite; yet never for
one moment is she bidden to evacuate her own position
or beUeve that which she perceives to be untrue. She
has learned her Umitations, and with that has come to
understand her inviolable rights.
See, then, how the features of Christ look out through
the lineaments of His Church. She alone dares to
claim an act of Divine Faith in herseK, since it is He
Who speaks in her Voice. She alone, since she is Divine,
bids the wisest men become as little children at her feet
and endows Httle children with the wisdom of the
ancients. Yet, on the other hand, in her magnificent
Humanity, she has produced through the exercise of
iUuminated human Reason such "a wealth of theology
as the world has never seen. Is it any wonder that the
world thinks both her Faith and Reason alike too ex-

FAITH AND REASON 93
treme? For her Faith rises from her Divinity and her
Reason from her Humanity; and such an outpouring of
Divinity and such an emphatic Humanity, such a superb
confidence in God's revelation and such untiring labours
upon the contents of that Revelation, are altogether
beyond the imagination of a world that in reaUty, fears
both Faith and Reason aUke.
At her feet, and hers only, then, do the wisest and the
simple kneel together — St. Thomas and the child, St.
Augustine and the " charcoal burner " ; as diverse, in
their humanity, as men can be; as united in the Ught of
Divinity as only those can be who have found it.
So, then, she goes forward to victory. "First use
your reason," she cries to the world, "to see whether I
be not Divine! Then, impeUed by Reason and aided
by Grace, rise to Faith. Then once more caU up your
Reason, to verKy and understand those mysteries which
you accept as true. And so, Uttle by Uttle, vistas of
tmth wUl open about you and doctrines glow with an
undreamed-of Ught. So Faith wiU be interpreted by
Reason and Reason hold up the hands of Faith, until
you come indeed to the unveiled vision of the Tmth
whose feet already you grasp in love and adoration;
until you see, face to face in Heaven, Him Who is at
once the Giver of Reason and the Author of Faith." '

vn
AUTHORITY AND LIBERTY

VII
AUTHORITY AND LIBERTY
The truth shall make you free. — john vm. 32.
Bringing into captivity every understanding to the obedi
ence of Christ. — n cor. x. 5.
We have already considered in outUne the relations
between Faith and Reason; how each, in its own pro
vince, is supreme and how each, in its turn, supports and
ratifies the other. We pass on to a development of that
theme, springing almost immediately out of it, namely,
the relations between Authority and Liberty. And we
wiU begin that consideration, as before, as it is iUustrated
by the accusations of the world against the Church.
Briefly they are stated as foUows.
I. Freedom, we are told, is the note of Christianity
as laid down in the Gospels, in both discipUne and doc
trine. Jesus Christ came into the world largely for this
very purpose, to substitute the New Law for the Old
and thereby to free men from the compHcated theology
and the minutiae of reUgious routine which character
ized men's attempts to reduce that Old Law to practice.
The Old Law may or may not have been perfectly

98 PARADOXES OF CATHOLICISM
adapted, when first it was given, to the needs of God's
people in the early stages of Jewish civilization; but at
any rate it is certain, from a hundred texts in the Gospel,
that Jesus Christ in His day found it an intolerable
slavery laid upon the reUgious Hfe of the people. The
ology had degenerated into an incredible hair-spUtting
system of dogma, and discipUne had degenerated into a
multitude of irritating observances.
Jesus Christ, then, in the place of aU this, preached a
Creed that was essentiaUy simple, and simultaneously
substituted for the elaborate ceremoniaHsm of the
Pharisees the spirit of Uberty. The dogma that He
preached was Uttle more than that God is the Father of
aU and that aU men therefore are brothers; "discipline"
in the ordinary sense of the word is practicaUy absent
from the Gospel, and as for ceremonial there is none,
except such as is necessary for the performance of the
two extremely simple rites that He instituted. Baptism
and the Lord's Supper.
Now this supposed spirit of Uberty, we are informed,
is to-day to be found only in Protestantism. In that
system, if it can strictly be caUed one, and in that sys
tem only, may a man exercise that freedom which was
secured to him by Jesus Christ. First, in doctrine, he
may choose, weigh, and examine for himself, within the
wide Hmits which alone Christ laid down, those doc
trines or hopes which commend themselves to his
intellect; and next, in matters of discipUne, again_, he

AUTHORITY AND LIBERTY 99
may choose for himseK those ways of Hfe and action
that he may find helpful to his spiritual development.
He may worship, for example, in any church that he
prefers, attend those services and those only which
commend themselves to his taste; he may eat or not eat
this or that food, as he likes, and order his day, gener
ally, as it pleases him. And aU this, we are informed, is
of the very spirit of New Testament Christianity. The
Truth has made him free, as Christ HimseK promised.
The CathoHc Church, on the other hand, is essentially
a Church of slavery. First, in discipline, an enormous
weight of observances and duties is laid upon her
children, comparable only to the Pharisaic system.
The CathoHc must worship in this church and not in
that, in this manner and not in the other. He must
observe places and days and times, and that not only in
reUgious matters but in secular. He must eat this food
on this day and that on the other; he must frequent the
sacraments at specified periods; he must perform cer
tain actions and refrain from others, and that in matters
in themselves indifferent.
In dogma, too, no less is the burden that he must bear.
Not only are the simple words of Christ developed into
a vast theological system by the Church's officials, but
the whole of this system is laid, as of faith, down to
its minutest details, on the shoulders of the unhappy
beUever. He may not choose between this or that
theory of the mode of Christ's Presence in the Eucharist;

IOC PARADOXES OF CATHOLICISM
he must accept precisely that, and no other, which his
Church has elaborated.
In fact, in doctrine and in discipUne alike, the Church
has gone back to precisely that old reign of t}Tanny
which Christ aboUshed. The CathoUc, unlike the
Protestant who has retained the spirit of Hberty, finds
himseK in the same case as that under which Israel itseK
once groaned. He is a slave and not a child; he binds
his own Umbs, as the old phrase says, by his act of faith
and puts the other end of the chain into the hands of
the priest. Such, in outUne, is the charge against us.
Now much of it is so false that it needs no refutation.
It is, for example, entirely false that New Testament
theology is simple. It is far more tme to say that, com
pared with the systematized theology of the Church, it
is bewilderingly complex and puzzUng, and how complex
and puzzUng it is, is indicated by the hundreds of creeds
which Protestants have made out of it, each creed
claiming, respectively, to be its one and only proper inter
pretation. Men have only come to think it "simple"
in modern days by desperately eUminating from it every
element on which aU Protestants are not agreed. The
residuum is indeed "simple." Only it is not the New
Testament theology! Dogmas such as that of the
Blessed Trinity, of the Procession of the Holy Ghost,
of the nature of grace and of sin — these, whether as
held by orthodox or unorthodox, are at any rate not

AUTHORITY AND LIBERTY Id
simple, and it is merely untme to say that Christ made
no statements on these points, however they may be
understood. Further, it is merely untrue to say that
Protestant theology is "simple"; it is every whit as
elaborate as CathoUc theology and considerably more
complex in those points in which Protestant divines are
not agreed. The controversies on Justffication in which
such men as Calvin and Luther, with their disciples,
continuaUy engaged are fuUy as compHcated as any dis
putations on Grace between Jesuits and Dominicans.
Yet the general contention is plain enough — that on
the whole the CathoUc is bound to beUeve a certain set of
dogmas, while the Protestant is free to accept or reject
them. Therefore, it is argued, the Protestant is "free"
and the CathoUc is not. And this brings us straight to
the consideration of the relations between Authority and
Liberty. n. What, then, is ReUgious Liberty? It is necessary
to begin by forming some idea as to what it is that is
meant by the word in other than reUgious matters.
Very briefly it may be said that an individual enjoys
social Uberty when he is able to obey and to use the laws
and powers of his tme nature, and that a community
enjoys it when aU its members are able to do so without
interfering imduly one with the other. The more com
plete is this abiUty, the more perfect is Liberty.
A remarkable paradox at once presents itself — that
Liberty can only be secured by Laws. Where there are

102 PARADOXES OF CATHOLICISM
no laws, or too few, to secure it, slavery immediately
appears, no less surely than when there are too many;
for the stronger individuals are, by the absence of law,
enabled to tyrannize over the weaker. Even the vast
and complex legislation of our own days is designed to
increase and not to fetter Hberty, and its greater com
plexity is necessitated by the greater complexity and
the more numerous interrelationships of modern society.
Laws, of course, may be unwise or excessively minute
or deUberately enslaving; yet this does not affect the
point that for aU that Laws are necessary to the pres
ervation of Liberty. Merchants, women and children,
and citizens generaUy, can only enjoy rightful Uberty
if they are protected by laws. Only that man is free,
then, who is most carefully guarded.
In the same manner Scientffic Liberty does not con
sist in the absence of knowledge, or of scientific dogmas,
but in their presence. We are surrounded by innumer
able facts of nature, and that man is free who is fuUy
aware of those which affect his own Hfe. It is true, for
example, that two and two make four, and that heavy
bodies tend to faU towards the centre of the earth;
and it can only be a very superficial thinker who con
siders that to be ignorant of these facts is to be free from
the enslaving dogmas of them. If I am ignorant of them
I am, of course, in a sense at Uberty to beUeve that two
and two make five, and to jump off the roof of my house;
yet this is not Liberty at all in the sense in which reason-

AUTHORITY AND LIBERTY 103
able people use the word, since my knowledge of the
laws enables me to be effective and, in fact, to survive
in the midst of a world where they happen to be true.
That man, then, is more truly "free" whose intellect is
informed of and submits to these laws, than is the man
whose inteUect is unaware of them. Marconi's inteUect
submits to the laws of Ughtning and he is thereby en
abled to avail himseK of them. Ajax is unaware of them
and is accordingly destroyed by their action.
The Truth, then, makes us free. The State which
controls men's actions and educates their inteUects,
which, in a word, enforces the knowledge of tmth and
compels obedience to it, is actuaUy freeing its citizens
by that process. It is only by a misuse of words or a
failure to grasp ideas that I can maintain that an ignorant
savage is more free than an educated man. It is true
that I am, in a sense, "free" to think that two and two
make five, if I have not learned arithmetic; on the other
hand, when I learn that they make four I rise into that
higher and more real Uberty which a knowledge of arith
metic bestows. I am more effective, not less so; I am
more free to exercise my powers and use the forces of
the world in which I Uve, and not less free, when I have
submitted my inteUect to facts.
III. (i) Now the soul too has an environment. Men
may differ as to its nature and its conditions, but aU
who beUeve in the soul at all beUeve also that it has an
environment, and that this environment is as much in

I04 PARADOXES or CATHOLICISM
the realm of Law as is the natural world itseK. Prayer,
for example, elevates the soul, base thinking degrades it.
Now the laws of this environment were tme even
before Christ came. David knew, at any rate, something
of penitence and of the guilt of sin, and Nathan knew
something, at least, of the forgiveness of sins and of their
temporal punishment. Christ came, then, with this
object amongst others: that He might reveal the laws
of Grace and convey to men's minds some at least of the
facts of the spiritual Ufe amongst which they Hved. He
came, moreover, partly to modify the workings of these
laws, to release some more fuUy, and to restrain others;
in a word, to be the Revealer of Tmth and the Adminis
trator of Grace.
He came then, to increase men's Uberty by increasing
their knowledge, as, in another sphere, the scientist
comes to us with the same purpose. Here, for example,
is the law that murder is a sin before God and brings
its consequences with it, a law stated briefly in the com
mandment Thou shalt not kill. But our Divine Lord
revealed more of the workings of this law than men had
hitherto recognized. / say unto you, declared Christ,
that whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer. He re
vealed, that is to say, the fact that this law runs even
in the realm of thought, that the hating spirit incurs
the guilt and punishment of murder, and not merely
the murderous action. Were men less free when they
learned that fact? Not unless I am less free than I

AUTHORITY AND LIBERTY X05
was before, when I learn for the first time that Ughtning
kiUs. Christ came, then, to reveal the Truth that makes
us free, and He does so by informing our inteUects and
enabling us to bring into captivity every understanding to
His obedience.
(u) Tum now to the CathoUc Church. Here is a
Society whose function it is to preserve and apply the
teaching of Christ; to analyze it and to state it in forms
or systems which every generation can receive. For
this purpose, then, she draws up not merely a Creed —
which is the systematic statement of the Christian
Revelation — but disciplinary rules and regulations that
wiU make this Creed and the Ufe that is conformable
to it more easy of realization, and aU this she does with
the express object of enabling the individual soul to
respond to her spiritual environment and to rise to the
fuU exercise of her powers and rights. As the scientist
and the statesmen take, respectively, the great laws of
nature and society and reduce them to rules and codes,
yet without adding or taking away from these facts,
that are true whether they are popularly recognized
or not — and aU with the purpose not of diminishing
but of increasing the general Uberty — so the Church,
divinely safeguarded too in the process, takes the Rev
elation of Christ and by her dogma and her disci
pline popularizes it, so to speak, and makes it at once
comprehensible and effective.
What, then, is this fooUsh cry about the slavery of

Io6 PARADOXES OF CATHOLICISM
dogma? How can Truth make men anything except
more free? Unless a man is prepared to say that the
scientist enslaves his inteUect by teUing him facts, he
dare not say that the Church fetters his inteUect by
defining dogma. Christ did not condemn the Pharisaic
system because it was a system, but because it was
Pharisaic; because, that is, it was not true; because it
obscured instead of revealing the tme relations between
God and man; because it made the Word of God of none
effect through its traditions.
But the CathoHc system has the appearance of en
slaving men? Why yes; for the only way of aiming at
and using effectively the truth that makes us free is by
bringing into captivity every understanding to the obedience
of Christ.

vm
CORPORATENESS AND INDIVIDUALISM

VIII
CORPORATENESS AND INDIVID
UALISM
He that shall lose his life for My sake shall find it. For
what doth it profit a man if he gain the whole world and
suffer the loss of his own soul? — matt. xvi. 25, 26.
No recorded word of our Lord better iUustrates than
does this the startUng and paradoxical manner of His
teaching. For He Who knew what was in man. Who
spoke always down to man's deepest interests, dwelt
and spoke therefore in that realm of truth where man's
own paradoxical nature is most manifest; where his
interests appear to flourish only by being ruthlessly
pruned; where he rises to the highest development of
seK only by seK-mortffication. This is, in fact, the very
lesson Christ teaches in these words. To find the life is
the highest object of every man and the end for which
he was created; yet this can be attained only by the
losing of it for Christ's sake. IndividuaUty can be pre
served only by the sacrifice of IndividuaUsm. Let us
break up this thought and consider it more in detail.
I. (i) CathoUcs, it is said, are the most fundamentaUy
selfish people in the whole world, since aU that they do

no PARADOXES OF CATHOLICISM
and say and think is directed and calculated, so far as
they are "good CathoHcs," to the salvation of their own
souls. It is this that continuaUy crops up in their con
versation, and this that presumably is their chief pre
occupation. Yet surely this, above all methods, is
the very worst for achieving such an end. One does
not puU up flowers to see how they are growing. The
very secret of health is to be unconscious of it. Catho
Ucs, on the other hand, scarcely ever do anything else;
they are for ever examining themselves, for ever going
to confession, for ever developing and cultivating the
narrowest virtues. The whole science of Casuistry, for
example, is directed to nothing else but this — the exact
definition of those Hmits within which the salvation of
the soul is secure and beyond which it is imperiUed; and
Casuistry, as we aU know, has a stifling and deadening
influence upon aU who study it.
Again, see how the true development and expansion
of the soul must necessarily be hindered by such an
ideal. "I must not read this book, however brilUant,
since it might be dangerous to my faith. I must not
mix in this company, however charming, since evil com
munications cormpt good manners." What kind of
Hfe is that which must always be checked and stunted
in this fashion? What kind of salvation can there be
that can only be purchased by the sacrifice of so much
that is noble and inspiring? True Hfe consists in experi
ence, not in introspection; in going out from self into

CORPORATENESS AND INDIVIDUALISM III
the world, not in retiring from the world inwards. Let
us therefore Uve our Hfe without fear, lose ourselves in
humanity, forget self in experience, and leave the rest
to God!
(u) So much for the one side, while from the other
comes almost precisely the opposite criticism. Catho
Hcs, it is said, are not nearly individuaUstic enough; on
the contrary they are for ever sinking themselves and
their personalities in the corporate Ufe of the Church.
Not only are their outward actions checked and their
words guarded, but even their very consciences and
thoughts are informed and made by the coUective con
science and mind of others. It is the highest ambition
of every good CathoUc sentire cum ecclesia ; not merely
to act and speak but even to think in obedience to others.
Now a man's true Ufe, we are told, consists in an assertion
of his own individuaUty. God has made no two men the
same; the mould was made and broken in each several
case. If, therefore, we are to be what He meant us to be,
we must make the most of our own personaUties; we
must think our own thoughts, not other people's, direct
our own Uves, speak our own minds — so far, of course,
as we can do so without interfering with our neighbour's
equal Uberty. Once more, therefore, we are bidden to
Uve our Hfe to the fuU; not in this case, however, because
we aU share in a common humanity, but because we do
not! We CathoUcs are wrong, therefore, for both reasons

112 PARADOXES OF CATHOLICISM
and in both directions. We are wrong when we put
self first and we are wrong when we do not. We are
wrong when we launch out into the current of Ufe, and
wrong when we withdraw ourselves from its waters.
We are wrong when we insist upon our personal respon-
sibiUty, and wrong when we look to the Church to
undertake it.
II. (i) Here then, indeed, is a Paradox; but it is
one which our Lord HimseK expressly emphasizes. For,
first, there is nothing on which He so repeatedly insists
as the supreme and singular value of every soul's sal
vation. If this is not attained, aU is lost. What shall it
profit a man if he shall gain the whole world and suffer the
loss of his own soul? AU else, then, must be sacrificed
if this is in peril. No human possession, however great,
can be weighed against this. No human tie, however
sacred, can hold against its claim. Not only must
houses and lands, but father and mother and wives and
children must take second place, so soon as etemal Ufe
is at stake. And yet, somehow or another, this salva
tion can only be attained by loss; self can only Uve K it
be mortified, can only be saved by its own denial. In
dividuaUty, as has been said, can only be preserved by
the loss of IndividuaUsm.
(u) But this is not pecuUar to the spiritual sphere;
it is a paradox that is true, in some sense, of Ufe on every
plane — civic, inteUectual, artistic, human. The man
that desires to bring his intellectual and personal powers

CORPORATENESS AND INDIVIDUALISM II3
to their highest pitch must continually be sinking
them, so to speak, in the current of his feUows, continu
aUy exhausting, using, and wearing them out. He must
risk, and indeed inevitably lose, in a very real sense, his
personal point of view, K he is to have a point of view
that is worth possessing; he must be content to see his
theories and his thoughts modified, merged, changed,
and destroyed, K his thought is to be of value. For, so
far as he withdraws himseK from his feUows into a
physical or mental isolation, so far he approaches ego
tistic madness. He cannot grow unless he decreases; he
cannot remain himseK unless he ceases to be himseK.
So, too, is it in civic and artistic Ufe. The citizen
who truly Uves to the State of which he is a member
— the man to whom his country raises a monument, for
example — is one, always, who has lost himself for his
nation, whether he has died in battle or sacrificed him
seK in poUtics or phUanthropy. And the citizen who
has merely hugged his citizenship to himself, who has
enjoyed aU the privileges he can get and paid nothing
for them, — least of aU himseK — who has, so to say,
gained the whole world, has simultaneously lost himseK
indeed and is forgotten within a year of his death. So
with the artist. The man who has made his art serve
him, who has employed it, let us say, purely for the
sake of the money he could get out of it, who has kept
it within severe Hmits, who has been merely pmdent
and orderly and restrained, this man has, in a sense,

114 PARADOXES OF CATHOLICISM
saved his own life; yet simultaneously he has lost it.
But the man to whom art is a passion, to whom nothing
else is comparatively of any value, who has plunged
himseK in his art, has dedicated to it his days and his
nights, has sacrificed to it every power of his being
and every energy of his mind and body, this man has
indeed lost himself. Yet he Uves in his art as the other
has not, he has saved himself in a sense of which the
other knows nothing; and exactly in proportion as
he has succeeded in his seK-abnegation, so far has he
attained, as we say, immortaUty. There is not, then,
one sphere of Hfe in which the paradox is not tme.
The great historical lovers in romance, the pioneers
of science, the immortals in every plane, are precisely
those that have fulfilled on lower levels the spiritual
aphorism of Jesus Christ.
(in) Tum, then, once more to the CathoHc Church and
see how in the Life which she offers, as in none other,
there is presented to us a means of fulfilling our end.
For it is she alone who even demands in the spiritual
sphere a complete and entire abnegation of seK. From
every other Christian body comes the cry, Save your
soul, assert your individuaUty, foUow your conscience,
form your opinions; whUe she, and she alone, demands
from her children the sacrffice of their inteUect, the
submitting of their judgment, the informing of their
conscience by hers, and the obedience of their wiU to
her Ughtest command. For she, and she alone, is con-

CORPORATENESS AND INDIVIDUAUSM IIS
sdous of possessing that Divinity, in complete sub
mission to which Ues the salvation of Humanity. For
she, as the coherent and organic mystical Body of
Christ, caUs upon those who look to her to become,
not merely her children, but her very members; not to
obey her as soldiers obey a leader or citizens a Govem-
ment, but as the hands and eyes and feet obey a brain.
Once, therefore, I understand this, I understand too
how it is that by being lost in her I save myseK;
that I lose only that which hinders my activity, not
that which fosters it. For when is my hand most itseK?
When separated from the body, by paralysis or amputa
tion? Or when, in vital union with the brain, with
every fibre alert and every nerve aUve, it obeys in every
gesture and receives in every sensation a Hfe infinitely
vaster and higher than any which it might, temporarily,
enjoy in independence? It is true that its capacity for
pain is the greater when it is so united, and that it
would cease to suffer K once its separation were accom
pUshed; yet, simultaneously, it would lose aU that for
which God made it and, saving itself, would be lost
indeed. I live, then, the perfect CathoHc may say, as none
other can say, when I have ceased to be myseK. And
yet not I, since I have lost my IndividuaUsm. No longer
do I claim any activity at aU on my own behalf; no
longer do I demand to form my opinions, to foUow my
own conscience apart from that informing of it that

Il6 PARADOXES OF CATHOLICISM
comes from God, or to Uve my own Hfe. Yet in losing
my IndividuaUsm I have won my IndividuaUty, for I
have found my tme place at last. I have lost the whole
world? Yes, so far as that world is separate from or
antagonistic to Cjod's wiU; but I have gained my own
soul and attained immortaUty. For it is not I that live,
but Christ that liveth in me.

IX
MEEKNESS AND VIOLENCE

rx
MEEKNESS AND VIOLENCE
Blessed are the meek. — matt. v. 4.
The Kingdom of Heaven suffereth violence, and the violent
bear it away. — matt. xi. 12.
We have already considered the Church's relations
towards such things as wealth and human influence and
power, how she wiU sometimes use and sometimes dis
dain them. Let us now penetrate a Httle sleeper and
understand the spirit that imderUes and explains this
varying attitude of hers.
I. (i) It has been charged against Christianity in
general, and therefore impHcitly and supremely against
the Church that was for so long its sole embodiment
and is stiU, alone, its adequate representative, that it
has fostered virtues which retard progress. Progress,
in the view of the German phUosopher who expUcitly
made this charge, is merely natural both in its action
and its end; and Nature, as we are weU aware, knows
nothing of forgiveness or compassion or tenderness: on
the contrary she moves from lower to higher forms by
forces that are their precise opposite. The wounded
stag is not protected by his feUows, but gored to death;

I20 PARADOXES OF CATHOLICISM
the old wolf is tom to pieces, the sick Hon wanders away
to die of starvation, and aU these instincts, we are in
formed, have for their object the gradual improvement
of the breed by the eUmination of the weak and in
effective. So should it be, he teUs us, with man, and
the extreme Eugenists echo his teaching. Christianity,
on the other hand, deUberately protects the weak and
teaches that the sacrffice of the strong is supreme hero
ism. Christianity has raised hospitals and refuges for
the infirm, seeking to preserve those very types which
Nature, if she had her way, would eliminate. Chris
tianity, then, is the enemy of the human race and not
its friend, since Christianity has retarded, as no other
reHgion has ever succeeded in retarding, the appearance
of that superman whom Nature seeks to evolve. . . .
It is scarcely to be wondered at that the teacher of
such a doctrine himself died insane.
A parallel doctrine is taught largely to-day by persons
who call themselves practical and businesslike. Meek
ness and gentleness and compassion, they teU their sons,
are very elegant and graceful virtues for those who
can afford them, for women and chUdren who are more
or less sheltered from the stmggle of Hfe, and for feeble
and ineffective people who are capable of nothing else.
But for men who have to make their own way in the
world and intend to win success there, a more stem code
is necessary; from these there is demanded such a rule
of action as Nature herseK dictates. Be seK-confident

MEEKNESS AND VIOLENCE 121
and seK-assertive then, not meek. Remember that the
weakness of your neighbour is your own opportunity.
Take care of number one and let the rest take care of
themselves. A man does not go into the stock-exchange
or into commerce in order to exhibit Christian virtues
there, but business quaUties. In a word, Christianity,
so far as it affects material or commercial or poUtical
progress, is a weakness rather than a strength, an enemy
rather than a friend.
(u) But if, on the one side, the gentleness and non-
resistance inculcated by Christianity form the material
of one charge against the Church, on the other side, no
less, she is blamed for her violence and intransigeance.
CathoUcs are not yielding enough, we are told, to be tme
foUowers of the meek Prophet of GaUlee, not gentle
enough to inherit the blessing which He pronoimced.
On the contrary there are no people so tenacious, so
obstinate, and even so violent as these professed disciples
of Jesus Christ. See the way, for example, in which
they cHng to and insist upon their rights; the obstacles
they raise, for example, to reasonable national schemes
of education or to a sensible system in the divorce
courts. And above aU, consider their appalling and
brutal violence as exhibited in such institutions as that
of the Index and Excommunication, the fierceness with
which they insist upon absolute and detailed obedience
to authority, the ruthlessness with which they cast out
from their company those who wUl not pronounce their

122 PARADOXES OF CATHOLICISM
shibboleths. It is tme that in these days they can only
enforce their claims by spiritual threatenings and penal
ties, but history shows us that they would do more if
they could. The story of the racks and the fires of the
Inquisition shows plainly enough that the Church once
used, and therefore, presumably, would use again K she
could, carnal weapons in her spiritual warfare. Can
anything be more unlike the gentle Spirit of Him Who,
when He was reviled, reviled not again; of Him Who
bade men to learn of Him, for He was meek and lowly
of heart, and so find rest to their souls?
Here, then, is the Paradox, and here are two charac
teristics of the CathoHc Church: that she is at once too
meek and too self-assertive, too gentle and too violent.
It is a paradox exactly echoed by our Divine Lord Him
self, Who in the Upper Chamber bade His disciples who
had no sword to sell their cloaks and buy them, and Who
yet, in the garden of Gethsemane, commanded the one
disciple who had taken Him at His word to put up the
sword into its sheath, telHng him that they who took the
sword should perish by it. It is echoed yet again in His
action, first in taking the scourge into His own Hand,
in the temple courts, and then in baring His shoulders
to that same scourge in the hands of others. How,
then, is this Paradox to be reconciled?
II. The Church, let us remind ourselves again, is
both Human and Divine.
(i) She consists of human persons, and those persons

MEEKNESS AND VIOLENCfi I23
are attached both to one another and to the world out
side by a perfectiy balanced system of human rights
known as the Law of Justice. This Law of Justice,
though coming indeed from God, is, in a sense, natural
and human; it exists to some extent in aU societies, as
weU as being closely defiined and worked out in the Old
Law given on Sinai. It is a Law which men could have
worked out, at any rate in its main principles, by the
Ught of reason only, unaided by Revelation, and it is a
Law, further, so fundamental that no Revelation could
conceivably ever outrage or set it aside.
At the coming of Christ into the world, however,
Supematural Charity came with Him. The Law of
Justice stUl remained; men stiU had their rights on
which they might insist, stiU had their rights which no
Christian may refuse to recognize. But such was the
torrent of Divine generosity which Christ exhibited, so
overwhelming was the Vision which He revealed of the
supematural charity of God towards men, that a set
of ideals sprang into Ufe such as the world had never
dreamed of; more, Charity came with such power that
her commands actuaUy overruled in many instances the
feeble claims of Justice, so that she bade men hence
forward to forgive, for example, not merely according
to Justice, but according to her own Divine nature, to
forgive unto seventy times seven, to give good measure,
heaped up and running over, and not the bare minimum
which men had merely eamed.

124 PARADOXES OF CATHOLICISM
It was from this advent of Charity, then, that aU
these essentially Christian virtues of generosity and
meekness and seK-sacrifice sprang which Nietsche
condemned as hostUe to material progress.
For, from henceforth, if a man take thy coat, let him
take thy cloak also; if he will compel thee to go with
him one mile, go two; if he strike thee on one cheek, turn
to him the other also. The Law of Natural Justice is
transcended and the Law of Charity and Sacrifice reigns
instead. Resist not evil; do not insist always, that is to
say, on your natural rights; give men more than their
due, and be yourself content with less. Learn of Me, for
I am meek and lowly of heart, and find rest to your souls.
Forgive one another your trespasses with the same gen
erous charity with which God has forgiven and wiU
forgive you yours. Judge not and you shall not be
judged. Do not, in personal matters, insist upon bare
justice for yourseK, but act on that scale and by
those principles by which God Himself has dealt with
you. Meekness, then, is undoubtedly a Christian virtue.
Sometimes it is obUgatory, sometimes it is but a Counsel
of Perfection; it stands, in any case, high among those
ideals which it has been the glory of Christianity to
create. (ii) But there are other elements in Hfe besides the
human and the natural, beyond those personal rights
and claims which a Christian may, if he is aiming at

MEEKNESS AND VIOLENCE 12$
perfection, set aside out of charity. The Church is
Divine as weU as Human.
For the Church has entmsted to her, besides the rights
of men, which may be sacrificed by their possessors,
the rights and claims of God, which none but He can set
aside. He has given into her keeping, for example, a
Revelation of truths and principles which, springing out
of His own Nature or of His WiU, are as immutable and
etemal as HimseK. And it is precisely in defence of
these tmths and principles that the Church exhibits that
which the world calls intransigeance and Jesus Christ
violence. Here, for example, is the right of a baptized CathoHc
child to be educated in his reUgion, or rather, the right
of God HimseK to teach that chUd in the manner He
has ordained. Here is the revealed truth that marriage
is indissoluble; here that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.
Now these are not human rights or opinions at aU
— rights and opinions which men, urged by charity or
humility, can set aside or waive in the face of opposi
tion. They rest on an entirely different basis; they are,
so to speak, the inaUenable possessions of God; and it
would neither be charity nor humiUty, but sheer treach
ery, for the Church to exhibit meekness or pHancy in
matters such as these, given to her as they are, not to
dispose of, but to guard intact. On the contrary here,
exactly, comes the command. He that hath not, let him
sell his cloak and buy a sword, for here comes the line

126 PARADOXES OF CATHOLICISM
between the Divine and the Human; let aU personal
possessions go, aU merely natural rights and claims be
yielded, and let a sword take their place. For here is a
matter that must be resisted, even unto blood.
The CathoUc Church then is, and always wiU be,
violent and intransigeant when the rights of Gk)d are in
question. She will be absolutely ruthless, for example,
towards heresy, for heresy affects not personal matters
on which Charity may yield, but a Divine right on which
there must be no 3delding. Yet, simultaneously, she
wiU be infinitely kind towards the heretic, since a thou
sand human motives and circumstances may come in
and modify his responsibffity. At a word of repentance
she wiU readmit his person into her treasury of souls,
but not his heresy into her treasury of wisdom; she wiU
strike his name eagerly and freely from her black Ust
of the rebeUious, but not his book from the pages of her
Index. She exhibits meekness towards him and violence
towards his error; since he is human, but her Truth is
Divine. It is, then, from a modem confusion of thought with
regard to the realms of the Divine and the Human
that the amazing inabiUty arises, on the world's part,
to understand the respective principles on which the
CathoHc Church acts in these two and utterly separate
departments. The world considers it reasonable for a
country to defend its material possessions by the sword,
but intolerant and unreasonable for the Church to con-

MEEKNESS AND VIOLENCE 127
demn, resisting even unto blood, principles which she
considers erroneous or false. The Church, on the other
hand, urges her cluldren again and again to yield rather
than to fight when merely material possessions are at
stake, since Charity permits and sometimes even com
mands men to be content with less than their OAvn rights,
and yet again, when a Divine tmth or right is at stake,
here she wiU resist unfaltering and undismayed, since she
cannot be "charitable" with what is not her own; here •
she wUl sell her cloak and buy that sword which, when
the dispute was on merely temporal matters, she thrust
back again into its sheath.
To-day ^ as Christ rides into Jemsalem we see, as in a
mirror, this Paradox made plain. Thy King cometh to
thee, meek. Was there ever so mean a Procession as
this? Was there ever such meekness and charity?
He Who, as His personal right, is attended in heaven
by a multitude on white horses, now, in virtue of His
Humanity, is content with a few fishermen and a crowd
of children. He to Whom, in His personal right, the
harpers and the angels make etemal music is content,
since He has been made Man for our sakes, with the
discordant shoutings of this crowd. He Who rode on the
Seraphim and came fiying on the wings of the wind sits
on the colt of an ass. He comes, meek indeed, from the
golden streets of the Heavenly Jemsalem to the foul
roads of the Earthly, laying aside His personal rights
1 This sermon was preached on Pahn-Sunday.

128 PARADOXES OF CATHOLICISM
since He is that very Fire of Charity by which Christians
relinquish theirs.
But, for aU that, it is riding that thy King cometh to
thee. ... He wUl not relinquish His inaUenable claim
and He wiU have nothing essential left out. He has
His royal escort, even though a ragged one; He wiU
have His spearmen, even though their spears be only of
palm; He wiU have His heralds to proclaim Him, how
ever much the devout Pharisees may be offended by
their proclamation; He wiU ride into His own Royal
City, even though that City casts Him out, and He wiU
have His Coronation, even though it be with thorns.
So, too, the CathoHc Church advances through the ages.
In merely human rights and personal matters again
and again she wiU yield up aU that she has, making, it
may be, but one protest for Justice' sake and then no
more. And she wiU urge her chUdren to do the same.
If the world wUl let her have no jewels, then she wiU
put glass beads in her monstrance, and for marble she
wiU use plaster, and tinsel for gold.
But she wiU have her Procession and insist upon her
Royalty. It may seem as poor and as mean and as
tawdry as the entrance of Christ HimseK through the
royal gate; for she wiU yield up aU that the world
demands of her, so long as her Divine Right itseK
remains intact. She wiU issue her orders, though few
be found to obey them; she wUl cast out from her the
rebeUious who question her authority, and cleanse her

MEEKNESS AND VIOLENCE 1 29
Temple Courts even though with a scourge at which
men mock. She wUl give up all that is merely human,
K the world wiU have it so, and wUl resist not evil if it
merely concerns herseK. But there is one thing which
she wiU not renounce, one thing she wiU claim, even
with violence and "intransigeance," and that is the
Royalty with which God Himself has crowned her.

X
THE SEVEN WORDS

X
THE SEVEN WORDS
THE "THREE HOURS"
Introduction
The value, to the worshippers, of the Devotion of the
Three Hours' Agony is in proportion to the degree in
which they understand that they are watching not so
much the tragedy of nineteen hundred years ago as the
tiragedy of their own Uves and times. Merely to dweU
on the Death of Christ on Calvary would scarcely avail
them more than to study the details of the assassination
of Caesar at the foot of Pompey's statue. Such consider
ations might indeed be interesting, exciting, and even a
Uttle instructive or inspiring; but they could not be
better than this, and they might be no better than
morbid and harmful.
The Death of Christ, however, is unique because it
is, so to say, universal. It is more than the crowning
horror of aU murderous histories; it is more even than
the type of aU the outrages that men have ever com
mitted against God. For it is just the very enactment,
upon the historical stage of the world, of those repeated

134 PARADOXES OF CATHOLICISM
interior tragedies that take place in every soul that
rejects or insults Him; since the God whom we cmcKy
within is the same God that was once crucified without.
There is not an exterior ddtaU in the Gospel which may
not be interiorly repeated in the spiritual Hfe of a sinner;
the process recorded by the EvangeUsts must be more
or less identical with the process of aU apostasy from
God. For, first, there is the Betrayal of Conscience, as a
beginning of the tragedy; its betrayal by those elements
of our nature that are intended as its friends and
protectors — by Emotion or Forethought, for example.
Then Conscience is led away, bound, to be judged; for
there can be no mortal sin without deUberation, and no
man ever yet feU into it without conducting first a sort
of hasty mock-trial or two in which a sham Prudence
or a false idea of Liberty solemnly decide that Conscience
is in the wrong. Yet even then Conscience persists,
and so He is made to appear absurd and ridiculous, and
set beside the Barabbas of a coarse and sturdy lower
nature that makes no high pretensions and boasts of it.
And so the drama proceeds and Conscience is crucified:
Conscience begins to be silent, breaking the deepening
gloom now and again with protests that grow weaker
every time, and at last Conscience dies indeed. And
thenceforward there can be no hope, save in the miracle
of Resurrection.
This Cross of Calvary, then, is not a mere type or

THE SEVEN WORDS 135
picture; it is a fact identical with that so dreadfuUy
famiUar to us in spiritual Ufe. For Christ is not one
Person, and Conscience something else, but it is actuaUy
Christ who speaks in Conscience and Christ, therefore.
Who is crucified in mortal sin.
Let us, then, be plain with ourselves. We are watch
ing not only Christ's Death but our own, since we are
watching the Death of Christ Who is our Life.

The First Word
Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.
In previous considerations we have studied the LKe
of Christ in His Mystical Body from an angle at which
the strange and innumerable paradoxes which abound in
aU forms of Ufe at a certain depth become visible. And
we have seen how these paradoxes He in those strata,
so to say, where the Divinity and the Humanity meet.
Christ is God and God cannot die; therefore Christ
became man in order to be able to do so. The
Church is Divine and therefore aU-holy, but she
dweUs in a Body of sinfid Humanity and reckons her
sinners to be her children and members no less than
her saints.
We wUI continue to regard the cmcifixion of Jesus
Christ and the Words which He spoke from the Cross
from the same angle, and to find, therefore, the same

136 PARADOXES OF CATHOLICISM
characteristic paradoxes and mysteries in aU that we
see. In the First Word we meet the Paradox of Divine
Forgiveness. I. Ordinary human forgiveness is no more than a
natural virtue, resulting from a natural sense of justice,
and if a man is normal, his forgiveness wUl be a natural
and inevitable part of the process of reconciUation so
soon as a certain kind of restitution has been made.
For example, a friend of mine sins against me — he in
jures, perhaps, my good name; and my natural answer is
the emotion of resentment towards him and, perhaps, of
actual revenge. But what I chiefly resent is my friend's
stupidity and his ignorance of my real character. "I
am angry," I say, with perfect sincerity, "not so much at
the thing he has said of me, as at this proof of his in
capacity to understand me. I thought he was my friend,
that he was in sympathy with my character or, at least,
that he understood it sufficiently to do me justice. But
now, from what he has just said of me, I see that he does
not. If the thing he said were tme of me, the most of
my anger would be gone. But I see that he does not
know me, after aU."
And then, presently, my friend does understand that
he has wronged me; that the gossip he repeated or the
constmction he put upon my actions was not fair or
true. And immediately that I become aware of this,
from him or from another, my resentment goes, if I have
any natural virtue at aU; it goes because my wounded

THE SEVEN WORDS 137
pride is healed. I forgive him easUy and naturally
because he knows now what he has done.
n. How entirely different from this easy, seK-loving,
human forgiveness is the Divine Forgiveness of Christ!
Now it is true that in the conscience of Pilate, the unjust
representative of Justice, and in that thing that caUed
itseK conscience in Herod, and in the hearts of the
priests who denounced their God, and of the soldiers
who executed their overlord, and of Judas who betrayed
his friend, in all these there was surely a certain uneasi
ness — such an uneasiness is actuaUy recorded of the
first and the last of the Ust — a certain faint shadow of
perception and knowledge of what it was that they
had done and were doing. And, for the natural man, it
would have been comparatively easy to forgive such
injuries on that account. "I forgive them," such a
man might have said from his cross, "because there is
just a glimmer of knowledge left; there is just one spark
in their hearts that stiU does me justice, and for the sake
of that I can try, at least, to put away my resentment
and ask God to forgive them."
But Jesus Christ cries, "Forgive them because they
do not know what they do! Forgive them because they
need it so terribly, since they do not even know that
they need it! Forgive in them that which is unfor
givable!" TIT. Two obvious points present themselves in con
clusion.

138 PARADOXES OF CATHOUCISM
(i) First, it is Divine Forgiveness that we need, since
no sinner of US aU knows the fuU maUce of sin. One
man is a slave, let us say, to a sin of the flesh, and seeks
to reassure himseK by the reflection that he injures no
one but himseK; ignorant as he is of the outrage to God
the Holy Ghost Whose temple he is ruining. Or a
woman repeats again every piece of slanderous gossip
that comes her way and comforts herseK in moments of
compunction by reflecting that she "means no harm";
ignorant as she is of the discouragement of souls of which
she is the cause and of the seeds of distmst and enmity
sown among friends. In fact it is incredible that any
sinner ever knows what it is that he does by sin. We need,
therefore, the Divine Forgiveness and not the human,
the pardon that descends when we are unaware that
we must have it or die; the love of the Father Who,
while we are yet a great way off, runs to meet us, and Who
teaches us for the first time, by the warmth of His
welcome, the icy distances to which we had wandered.
If we knew, anyone could forgive us. It is because
we do not that only God, Who knows aU things, can
forgive us effectively.
(2) And it is this Divine Forgiveness that we ourselves
have to extend to those that sin against us, since only
those who so forgive can be forgiven. We must not
wait until wounded pride is made whole by the conscious
shame of our enemy; untU the debt is paid by acknowl
edgment and we are complacent once more in the knowl-

THE SEVEN WORDS I39
edge that justice has been done to us at last. On the
contrary, the only forgiveness that is supernatural, and
which, therefore, alone is meritorious, is that which
reaches out to men's ignorance and not their knowledge
of their need.
The Second Word
Amen I say to thee, to-day thou shalt be with Me in
Paradise. Our Divine Lord, in this Second Word, immediately
appUes and Ulustiates the First and drives its lesson
home. He shows us how the rain of mercy that poured
out of heaven in answer to the prayer He made just
now enUghtens the man who, above aU others present
on Calvary, was the most abjectly ignorant of aU; the
man who, himseK at the very heart of the tragedy,
understood it less, probably, than the smaUest chUd on
the outskirts of the crowd.
His Ufe had been one long defiance of the laws of both
God and man. He had been a member of one of those
troops of human vermin that crawl round Jemsalem,
raiding soUtary houses, attacking soUtary traveUers,
guilty of sins at once the bloodiest and the meanest,
comparable only to the French apaches of our own
day. WeU, he had been gripped at last by the Roman
machine, caught in some sordid adventure, and here,
resentful and furious and contemptuous, fuU of bravado

I40 paradoxes of cathouctsm
and terror, he snarled Uke a polecat at every human
face he saw, snarled and spat at the Divine Face ItseK
that looked at him from a cross that was like his own;
and, since he had not even a spark of the honour that is
reputed to exist "among thieves," taunted his "feUow
criminal" for the foUy of His "crime."
"If thou be the Christ, save ThyseK and us."
Again, then, the Paradox is plain enough. Surely
an educated priest, or a timid disciple, or a good-hearted
dutiful soldier who hated the work he was at, surely
one of these wUl be the first object of Christ's pardon;
and so one of these would have been, K one of ourselves
had hung there. But when God forgives, He forgives
the most ignorant first — that is, the most remote
from forgiveness — and makes, not Peter or Caiphas or
the Centurion, but Dismas the thief, the firstfruits of
Redemption. [j
I. The first effect of the Divine Mercy is EnUghten-
ment. Before they call, I will answer. Before the thief
feels the first pang of sorrow Grace is at work on him,
and for the first time in his dreary Ufe he begins to
understand. And an extraordinary iUumination shines
in his soul. For no expert penitent after years of
spirituaUty, no sorrowful saint, could have prayed more
perfectly than this outcast. His inteUect, perhaps, took
in Uttle or nothing of the great forces that were active
about him and within him; he knew, perhaps, expUcitly
Httle or nothing of Who this was that hung beside him;

THE SEVEN WORDS 141
yet his soul's intuition pierces to the very heart of the
mystery and expresses itseK in a prayer that combines
at once a perfect love, an exquisite humiUty, an entire
confidence, a resolute hope, a clear-sighted faith, and an
unutterable patience; his soul blossoms aU in a moment:
Lord, remember me when Thou comest in Thy Kingdom.
He saw the glory behind the shame, the Eternal Throne
behind the Cross, and the future behind the present;
and he asked only to be remembered when the glory
should transfigure the shame and the Cross be trans
formed into the Throne; for he understood what that
remembrance would mean: "Remember, Lord, that I
suffered at Thy side."
n. So perfect, then, are the dispositions formed in
him by grace that at one bound the last is first. Not
even Mary and John shall have the instant reward that
shaU be his; for them there are other gKts, and the first
are those of separation and exUe. For the moment, then,
this man steps into the foremost place and they who
have hung side by side on Calvary shaU walk side by
side to meet those waiting souls beyond the veU who
wiU run so eagerly to welcome them. To-day thou shalt
be with Me in Paradise.
HI. Now this Paradox, the last shall be first, is an old
doctrine of Christ, so startling and bewUdering that
He has been forced to repeat it again and again. He
taught it in at least four parables: in the parables of
the Lost Piece of Silver, the Lost Sheep, the Prodigal Son,

142 PARADOXES OF CATHOLICISM
and the Vineyard. The Nine Pieces Ue neglected on the
table, the Ninety-nine sheep are exiled in the Fold,
the Elder Son is, he thinks, overlooked and sUghted, and
the Labourers complain of favouritism. Yet stiU, even
after aU this teaching, the complaint goes up from
Christians that God is too loving to be quite just. A
convert, perhaps, comes into the Church in middle age
and in a few months develops the graces of Saint Teresa
and becomes one of her daughters. A careless black
guard is condemned to death for murder and three
weeks later dies upon the scaffold the death of a saint,
at the very head of the line. And the complaints seem
natural enough. Thou hast made them equal unto us who
have borne the burden and heat of the day.
Yet look again, you Elder Sons. Have your reUgious,
careful, timid Uves ever exhibited anything resembling
that depth of seK-abjection to which the Younger Son
has attained? Certainly you have been virtuous and
conscientious; after aU, it would be a shame if you had
not been so, considering the wealth of grace you have
always enjoyed. But have you ever even striven seri
ously after the one single moral quaUty which Christ
holds up in His own character as the point of imitation:
Learn of Me, for I am meek and lowly of heart? It is
surely significant that He does not say, expressly. Learn
of Me to be pure, or courageous, or fervent; but Learn
to be humble, for in this, above aU, you shaU find rest to
your souls. Instead, have you not had a kind of gentle

THE SEVEN WORDS 1 43
pride in your reUgion or your virtue or your fastidious
ness? In a word, you have not been as exceUent an
Elder Son as your brother has been a Younger. You
have not corresponded with your graces as he has
corresponded with his. You have never yet been capa
ble of suflficient lowliness to come home (which is so
much harder than to remain there), or of suflficient
humility to begin for the first time to work with aU
your heart only an hour before sunset.
Begin, then, at the beginning, not haK-way up the
line. Go down to the church door and beat your breast
and say not, God reward me who have done so much for
Him, but God be merciful to me who have done so Uttle.
Get off your seat amongst the Pharisees and go down
on your knees and weep behind Christ's couch, K per
haps He may at last say to you, Friend, come up higher.

The Third Word
Woman, behold thy son. Behold thy mother.
Our Divine Lord now tums, from the soul who at one
bound has sprung into the front rank, to those two souls
who have never left it, and supremely to that Mother
on whose soul sin has never yet breathed, on whose
breast Incamate God had rested as inviolate and secure
as on the Bosom of the Etemal Father, that Mother who
was His Heaven on earth. Standing beside her is the

144 PARADOXES OF CATHOLICISM
one human being who is least unworthy to be there,
now that Joseph has passed to his reward and John the
Baptist has gone to join the Prophets — the disciple
whom Jesus loved, who had lain on the breast of Jesus
as Jesus had lain on the breast of Mary.
Our Lord has just shown how He deals with His dear
sinners; now He shows how He wiU be glorified with His
Saints. The Paradox of this Word is that Death, the
divider of those who are separated from God, is the
bond of union between those that are united to
Him. I. Death is the one inexorable enemy of human
society as constituted apart from God. A king dies
and his kingdom is at once in danger of dismption. A
child dies and his mother prays that she may bear
another, lest his father and she should drift apart.
Death is the supreme sower of discord and disunion,
then, in the natural order, since he is the one supreme
enemy of natural Ufe. He is the noonday terror of
the Rich Fool of the parable and the nightmare of the
Poor Fool, since those who place their hope in this Ufe
see that death is the end of their hope. For these
there is no appeal beyond the grave.
n. Now precisely the opposite of aU this is tme in
the supematural order, since the gate of death, viewed
from the supernatural side, is an entrance and not an
ending, a beginning and not a close. This may be seen
to be so even in a united human family in this world,

THE SEVEN WORDS I45
the members of whom are Hving the supematural Ufe;
for where such a fanuly is Hving in the love of God,
Death, when he comes, draws not only the survivors
closer together, but even those whom he seems to have
separated. He does not bring consternation and terror
and disunion, but he awakens hope and tenderness,
he smooths away old differences, he explains old
misunderstandings. Our Blessed Lord has already, over the grave of Laza
rus, hinted that this shaU be so, so soon as He has con
secrated death by His own dying. He that belieueth in
Me shall never die. He, that is to say, who has died
with Christ, whose centre henceforward is in the super
natural, simply no longer finds death to be what nature
finds it. It no longer makes for division but for union;
it no longer imperUs or ends Ufe and interest and posses
sion, but releases them from risk and mortaUty.
Here, then. He deUberately and expUcitly acts upon
this truth. He once raised Lazams and the daughter of
Jaims and the Widow's Son from the dead, for death's
sting could, at that time, be drawn in no other way;
but now that He HimseK is tasting death for every man.
He performs an even more emphaticaUy supematural
act and conquers death by submitting to it instead of
by commanding it. Life had already united, so far as
mortal Ufe can unite, those two souls who loved Him
and one another so weU. These two, since they knew
Him so perfectly, knew each the other too as perfectly as

146 PARADOXES OF CATHOLICISM
knowledge and sympathy can unite souls in this Ufe.
But now the whole is to be raised a stage higher. They
had already been united on the Hving breast of Jesus;
now, over His dead body, they were to be made yet
more one.
It is marveUous that, after so long, our imaginations
should stiU be so tormented and oppressed by the
thought of death; that we should stUl be so without
understanding that we think it morbid to be in love with
death, for it is far more morbid to be in fear of it. It is
not that our reason or our faith are at fault; it is only
that that most active and untamable faculty of ours,
which we caU imagination, has not yet assinulated the
truth, accepted by both our faith and our reason, that
for those who are in the friendship of God death is
simply not that at aU which it is to others. It does
not, as has been said, end our Uves or our interests: on
the contrary it Uberates and fulfills them.
And aU this it does because Jesus Christ has HimseK
plunged into the heart of Death and put out his fires.
Henceforth we are one fanuly in Him K we do His wiU —
his brother and sister and mother; and Mary is our Mother,
not by nature, which is accidental, but by supemature,
which is essential. Mary is my Mother and John is my
brother, since, if I have died with Christ, it is no longer
I that live, but Christ that liveth in me. In a word, it is
the Communion of Saints which He inaugurates by this
utterance and seals by His dying.

the seven words i47
The Fourth Word
My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me ?
Our Blessed Lord in the revelation He makes from
the Cross passes graduaUy inwards to HimseK Who is
its centre. He begins in the outermost circle of all,
with the ignorant sinners. He next deals with the one
sinner who ceased to be ignorant, and next with those
who were always nearest to HimseK, and now at last
He reveals the deepest secret of aU. This is the central
Word of the Seven in every sense. There is no need
to draw attention to the Paradox it expresses.
I. First, then, let us remind ourselves of the revealed
dogma that Jesus Christ was the Etemal Son of the
Father; that He dwelt always in the Bosom of that
Father; that when He left heaven He did not leave the
Father's side; that at Bethlehem and Nazareth and
GaUlee and Jemsalem and Gethsemane and Calvary
He was always the Word that was with God and the Word
that was God. Next, that the eyes even of His Sacred
Humanity looked always and continuously upon the
Face of God, since His union with God was entire and
complete: as He looked up into His Mother's face
from the manger. He saw behind it the Face of His
Father; as He cried in Gethsemane, // it be possible,
even in His Sacred Humanity He knew that it could
not be; as He groaned out on Calvary that God had

148 paradoxes of CATHOLICISM
forsaken Him, He yet looked without one instant's
intermission into the glory of heaven and saw His
Father there.
Yet simultaneously with these tmths it is also tme
that His cry of dereUction was incalculably more of a
reaUty than when first uttered by David or, since, by
any desolate sinner in the thickest spiritual darkness.
AU the miseries of holy and sinful souls, heaped together,
could not approach even afar off the intolerable misery
of Christ. For of His own wiU He refused to be con
soled at aU by that Presence which He could never lack,
and of His own wiU He chose to be pierced and saturated
and tormented by the sorrow He could never deserve.
He held firm against the touch of consolation every power
of His Divine and Human Being and, simultaneously,
flung them open to the assaults of every pain. And K
the psychology of this state is altogether beyond our
power to understand, we may remind ourselves that it
is the psychology of the Word made Flesh that is con
fronting us. . . . Do we expect to understand that? . . .
II. There is a human phrase, however, itseK a para
dox, yet corresponding to something which we know to
be true, which throws some faint gUmmer of Ught upon
this impenetrable darkness and seems to extend Christ's
experience upon the Cross so as to touch our own
human Ufe. It is a phrase that describes a condition
weU known to spiritual persons: "To leave God for
God."

the seven words 149
(1) The simplest and lowest form of this state is that
condition in which we acquiesce with our wiU in the
withdrawal of ordinary spiritual consolation. Certainly
it is an inexpUcable state, since both the ordinary aids
to our wiU — our understanding and our emotion — are,
by the very nature of the case, useless to it. Our heart
revolts from that dereUction and our understanding fails
to comprehend the reasons for it. Yet we acquiesce,
or at least perceive that we ought to do so; and that by
doing so — by ceasing, that is, to grasp God's Presence
any longer — we find it as never before. We leave God
in order to find Him.
(2) The second state is that in which we find ourselves
when not only do aU consolations leave us, but the
very grip of inteUigent faith goes too; when the very
reasons for faithfulness appear to vanish. It is an in
calculably more bitter trial, and soul after soul fails
under it and must be comforted again by God in less
august ways or perish altogether. And yet this is not
the extremest pitch even of human desolation.
(3) For there is a third of which the saints teU us in
broken words and images. . . .
HI. Our final point, for appUcation to ourselves, is
that dereUction in some form or another is as much a
stage in spiritual progress as autumn and winter are
seasons of the year. The begumers have to suffer one
degree, the iUuminated another, and those that have
approached a real Union with God a third. But aU

150 PARADOXES OF CATHOLICISM
must suffer it, and each in his own degree, or progress
is impossible.Let us take courage therefore and face it, in the Ught
of this Word. For, as we can sanctKy bodUy pain by
the memory of the naUs, so too can we sanctify spiritual
pain by the memory of this darkness. If He Who never
left the Father's side can suffer this in an unique and
supreme sense, how much more should we be content to
suffer it in lower degrees, who have so continuaUy, since
we came to the age of reason, been leaving not His side
only, but His very house.
The Fifth Word
I thirst.
Our Lord continues to reveal His own condition, since
He, after aU, is the key to aU Humanity. If we
understand anything of Him, simultaneously we shaU
imderstand ourselves far better.
He has shown us that He can tmly be deprived of
spiritual consolation; and the value of this deprivation;
now He shows us the value of bodily deprivation also.
And the Paradox for our consideration is that the Source
of aU can lose aU; that the Creator needs His creation;
that He Who offers us the water springing up into Life
Eternal can lack the water of human Hfe — the simplest
element of aU. In His Divine DereUction He yet
continues to be Human.

THE SEVEN WORDS 151
I. It is very usual, under this Word, to meditate on
Christ's thirst for souls; and this is, of course, a legiti
mate thought, since it is tme that His whole Being,
and not merely one part of it, longed and panted on
the Cross for every object of His desire. Certainly He
desired souls! When does He not?
But it is easy to lose the proportion of tmth, K we
spiritualize everything, and pass over, as K unworthy
of consideration. His bodily pain. For this Thirst of
the Crucified is the final sum of aU the pains of cruci
fixion: the physical agony, the fever produced by it, the
torrential sweat, the burning of the sun — aU these
culminated in the torment of which this Cry is His
expression. Bodily pain, then, since Jesus not only deigned to
suffer it, but to speak of it, is as much a part of the
Divine process as the most spiritual of dereUctions : it is
an intense and a vital reaUty in Ufe. It is the fashion,
at present, to pose as K we were superior to such things;
as K either it were too coarse for our high natures or
even actually in itseK evil. The tmth is that we are
terrified of its reaUty and its sting, and seek, therefore,
to evade it by every means in our power. We affect to
smile at the old penances of the saints and ascetics as if
we ourselves had risen into a higher state of develop
ment and needed no longer such elementary aids to
piety! Let this Word, then, bring us back to our senses and

1 52 PARADOXES OF CATHOLICISM
to the due proportions of tmth. We are body as weU as
soul; we are incomplete without the body. The soul is
insufficient to itseK, the body has as real a part to play
in Redemption as the soul which is its inmate and
should be its mistress. We look for the redemption of
our body and the Resurrection of the Flesh, we merit or
demerit before God in our soul for the deeds done in
our body.
So was it too with our Lord of His infinite compas
sion. The Word was made Flesh, dwelt in the Flesh,
has assumed that Flesh into heaven. Further, He
suffered in the Flesh and deigned to teU us so; and that
He found that suffering aU but intolerable.
II. In a weU-known book a CathoHc poet i describes
with a great deal of power the development of men's
nervous systems in these later days, and warns his
readers against a scmpulous terror lest they, who no
longer scourge themselves with briers, should be neglect
ing a means of sanctification. He points out, with
perfect justice, that men, in these days, suffer instead
in more subtle manners than did those of the Middle
Ages, yet none the less physical; and puts us on our
guard lest we should aflOict ourselves too much. Yet
we must take care, also, that we do not faU into the
opposite extreme and come to regard bodily pain, (as
has been said) as if it were altogether too elementary for
our refined natures and as if it must have no place in
' Health and Holiness by Francis Thompson.

THE SEVEN WORDS 1 53
the alchemy of the spirit. This would be both danger
ous and false. What God hath joined together, let no man
put asunder ! For, K we once treat body and soul as ill-
matched companions and seek to deal with them apart,
instantiy the door is flung open to the old Gnostic
horrors of sensualism on the one side or inhuman muti
lation or neglect on the other.
The Church, on the other hand, is very clear and
insistent that body and soul make one man as fuUy as
God and Man make one Christ; and she iUustrates and
directs these strange co-relations and mutual effects of
these two partners by her steady insistence on such
things as Fasting and Abstinence. And the saints are
equaUy clear and insistent. There never yet has been a
single soul whom the Church has raised to her altars in
whose Hfe bodily austerity in some form has not played
a considerable part. It is tme that some have warned
us against excess; but what warnings and what excess!
"Be moderate," advises St. Ignatius, that most reason
able and moderate of aU the saints. "Take care that
you do not break any bones with your iron scourge.
God does not wish that!"
Pain, then, has a real place in our progress. Who
that has suffered can ever doubt it again?
Let us consider, therefore, under this Word of Christ,
whether our attitude to bodily pain is what God would
have it to be. There are two mistakes that we may be
committing. Either we may fear it too Uttie — meet it,

154 PARADOXES OF CATHOLiaSM
that is to say, with Pagan stoicism instead of with Chris
tianity — or we may fear it too much. Despise not the
chastening, on one side, or faint on the other. It is surely
the second warning that is most needed now. For pain
had a real place in Christ's programme of Hfe. He
fasted for forty days at the beginning of His Ministry,
and He wiUed every shocking detaU of the Praetorium
and Calvary at the end. He told us that Sis Spirit
willed it and, yet more kindly, that His Flesh was weak.
He revealed, then, that He reaUy suffered and that He
wiUed it so. . . . / thirst.

The Sixth Word
It is consummated.
He has finished His Father's business. He has dealt
with sinners and saints, and has finaUy disclosed to us
the secrets of the Soid and the Body of His that are the
hope of both sinners and saints aUke. And there is no
more for Him to do.
An entirely new Beginning, then, is at hand, now that
the Last Sabbath is come — the Last Sabbath, so much
greater than the First as Redemption is greater than
Creation. For Creation is a mere introduction to the
Book of Life; it is the arrangement of materials that are
to be thrown instantly into confusion again by man,
who should be its crown and master. The Old Testa-

the seven WORDS 1 55
ment is one medley of mistakes and fragments and
broken promises and violated treaties, to reach its
cUmax in the capital Mistake of Calvary, when men
indeed knew not what they did. And even God Him
seK in the New Testament, as man in the Old, has
gone down in the catastrophe and hangs here mutilated
and broken. Real Hfe, then, is now to begin.
Yet, strangely enough. He caUs it an End rather
than a Beginning. Consummatum est!
I. The one and only thing in human Ufe that God
desires to end is Sin. There is not a pure joy or a sweet
human relationship or a selfless ambition or a divine
hope which He does not desire to continue and to be
crowned and transfigured beyond aU ambition and aU
hope. On the contrary. He desires only to end that
one single thing which ruins relationships and spoUs
joy and poisons aspirations. For up to the present
there is not one page of history which has not this
blot upon it.
God has had to tolerate, for lack of better, such miser
able specimens of humanity! Jctcob have I loved! . . .
David a man after my heart; the one a poor, mean, cal
culating man, who had, however, that single gUmmer
of the supematural which Esau, for aU his genial stur-
diness, was without; the other an adulterous murderer,
who yet had grace enough for real contrition. Hitherto
He has been content with so Uttle. He has accepted
vinegar for want of wine.

IS6 PARADOXES OF CATHOLICISM
Next, God has had to tolerate, and indeed to sanction
— such an unworthy worship of HimseK — aU the blood
of the temple and the spiUed entraUs and the nameless
horrors. And yet this was aU to which men could rise;
for without it, they never could have leamed the more
nameless horror of sin.
Last, for His worshippers He has had to content Him
self with but one People instead of all peoples and
nations and languages. And what a People, — whom
even Moses could not bear for their treachery and in-
stabiUty! And all this wretched record ends in the
Crime of Calvary, at which the very earth revolts and
the sun grows dark with shame. Is it any wonder
that Christ cried. Thank God that is aU done with at
last! II. Instead of this miserable past, then, what is to
come? What is that New Wine He would drink with
us in His Father's Kingdom? First; real and complete
saints of God are to take the place of the fragmentary
saints of the Old Dispensation, saints with heads of gold
and feet of clay. Souls are to be born again in Baptism,
not merely sealed by circumcision, and to be purified
before they can contract any actual guilt of their own.
And, of these, many shaU keep their baptismal inno
cence and shall go, wearing that white robe, before God
Who gave it them. Others again shaU lose it, but reg£iin
it once more, and, through the power of the Precious
Blood, shaU rise to heights of which Jacob and David

THE SEVEN WORDS 157
never even dreamed. To awake in His likeness was the
highest ambition of the man after God's Heart; but to
be not merely like Christ, but one with Him, is the
hope of the Christian. I live, the new saints shaU say
with truth, yet now not I, but Christ liveth in me.
Next, instead of the old worship of blood and pain
there shall be an Unbloody Sacrifice and a Pure Offering
in which shall be aU the power and propitiation of Cal
vary without its pain, all the glory without the degrada
tion. And last, in place of the old enclosed Race of
Israel shaU be a Church of aU nations and tongues, one
vast Society, with aU walls thrown down and aU divi
sions done away, one Jerusalem from above, that shaU
be the Mother of us aU.
m. That, then, is what Christ intended as He cried.
It is consummated. Behold the old things are passed
away! Behold, I make all things new!
And now let us see how far that is fulfilled. Where
is there, in me, the New Wine of the Gospel?
I have aU that God can give me from His Throne on
Calvary. I have the tmth that He proclaimed and the
grace that He released. Yet is there in me, up to the
present, even one glimmer of what is meant by Sanctity?
Am I even within an appreciable distance of the saints
who knew not Christ? Have I ever wrestled Uke Jacob
or wept Uke David? Has my reHgion, that is to say,
ever inspired me beyond the low elevation of joy into
the august altitudes of pain? Is it possible that with

IS8 PARADOXES OF CATHOLICISM
me the old is not put away, the old man is not yet dead,
and the new man not yet put on? Is that New Sac
rifice the Ught of my daily Ufe? Have I done anything
except hinder the growth of Christ's Church, anything
except drag down her standards, so far as I am able, to
my own low level? Is there a single soul now in the
world who owes, under God, her conversion to my
efforts? Why, as I watch my Ufe and review it in His Presence
it would seem as if I had done nothing but disappoint
Him aU my days! He cried, like the deacon of His own
Sacrifice, Go! it is done! Ite; missa est! The Sacrifice
is finished here; go out in its strength to Uve the Ufe
which it makes possible!
Let me at least begin to-day, have done with my old
compromises and shifts and evasions. Ite; missa est!

The Seventh Word
Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit.
He has cried with a loud voice, and the rocks have
rent to its echo, and the earth is shaken, and the Veil
of the Old Testament is torn from top to bottom as the
Old Covenant passes into the New and the enclosed
sanctity of the Most Holy Place breaks out into the
world. And now, as the level sun shines out again
beneath the paU of clouds, He whispers, as at Mary's

the seven words 159
knee in Nazareth, the old chUdish prayer and yields
up His spirit into His Father's hands.
The last Paradox, then, is uttered. He Who saves
others cannot save HimseK! The Shepherd of souls
relinquishes His own. For, as we cannot save our Uves
unless we lose them for His sake, so He too cannot save
them unless He loses His for our sake.
I. This, then, is merely the summary of aU that has
gone before; it is the word Finis written at the end of
this new Book of LKe which He has written in His
Blood. It is the sUence of the white space at the close
of the last page. Yet it is, too, the final act that gives
value to all that have preceded it. If Christ had not
died, our faith would be vain.
Oh! these New Theologies that see in Christ's Death
merely the end of His LKe! Why, it is the very point
and climax of His LKe that He should lay it down ! Like
Samson himseK, that strange prototype of the Strong
M^ armed, he slew more of the enemies of our souls
by His Death than by aU His gracious Life. For this
cause He came into the world. For Sacrifice, which is the
very heart of man's instinctive worship of God, was set
there, imperishably, in order to witness to and be ratified
by His One Offering which alone could truly take away
sins; and to deny it or to obscure it is to deny or to
obscure the whole history of the human race, from the
Death of Abel to the Death of Christ, to deny or obscure
the significance of every lamb that bled in the Temple

l6o PARADOXES OF CATHOLICISM
and of every wine-offering poured out before the Holy
Place, to deny or to obscure (if we wiU but penetrate to
the roots of things) the free wiU of Man and the Love of
God. If Christ had not died, our faith would be vain.
II. Once again, then, let us tum to the event in our
own Uves that closes them; that death which, united
to Christ's, is our entrance into Hberty and, disunited,
the supreme horror of existence.
(i) For without Christ death is a violent intermp-
tion to Ufe, introducing us to a new existence of which
we know nothing, or to no existence at aU. Without
Christ, however great our hopes, it is abmpt, appalling,
stunning, and shattering. It is this at the best, and,
at the worst, it is peaceful only as the death of a beast is
peaceful. (2) Yet, with Christ, it is harmonious and continuous
with aU that has gone before, since it is the final move
ment of a Ufe that is already dead with Christ, the last
stage of a process of mortaUty, and the stage that ends
its pain. It is just one more passing phase, by which
is changed the key of that music that every holy Ufe
makes always before God.
There is, then, the choice. We may, K we wiU, die
fighting to the end a force that must conquer us however
we may fight, resisting the irresistible. Or we may die,
in lethargic resignation, as dogs die, without hopes or
regrets, since the past, without Christ, is as meaningless
as the future. Or we may die, Uke Christ, and with Him,

THE SEVEN WORDS l6l
yielding up a spirit that came from the Father back
again into His Fatherly hands, content that He Who
brought us into the world should receive us when we go
out again, confident that, as the thread of His purpose
is plain in earthly Ufe, it shall shine yet more plainly
in the Ufe beyond.
One last look, then, at Jesus shows us the lines
smoothed from His face and the agony washed from
His eyes. May our souls and the souls of aU the faithful
departed, through His Mercy, rest in Him!

XI
LIFE AND DEATH

XI
LIFE AND DEATH
As dying, and behold we live. — n Cor. vi. 9.
We have considered, so far, a number of paradoxical
phenomena exhibited in the Hfe of CathoHcism and have
attempted to find their reconciUation in the fact that the
CathoUc Church is at once Human and Divine. In her
striving, for example, after a Divine and supematural
Peace, of which she alone possesses the secret, she resists
even unto blood aU human attempts to supplant this
by another. As a human society, again, she avails her
seK freely of human opportunities and aids, of earthly
and created beauty, for the setting forth of her message;
yet she can survive, as can no human society, when she
is deprived of her human rights and her acquired wealth.
As human she numbers the great multitude of the
world's sinners among her children, yet as Divine she
has produced the saints. As Divine she bases aU her
gospel on a Revelation which can be apprehended only
by Faith, yet as human she employs the keenest and
most profound inteUects for its analysis and its propaga
tion. In these and in many other similar points it has

1 66 PARADOXES OF CATHOLICISM
been attempted to show why she offers now one aspect
and now another to human criticism, and how it is that
the very charges made against her become, when
viewed in the Ught of her double claim, actual creden
tials and arguments on behaK of that claim. FinaUy, in
the meditations upon the Seven Words of Christ, we
considered very briefly how, in the hours of the deepest
hunuUation of His Humanity, He revealed again and
again the characteristics of His Divinity.
It now remains to consider that point in which she
most manifests that double nature of hers and, simul
taneously therefore, presents, as in a kind of cUmax,
her identity, under human terms, with Him Who, Him
seK the Lord of Life, conquered death by submitting
to it and, by His Resurrection from the dead, showed
HimseK the Son of God with power.
I. Death, the world teUs us, is the final end of aU
things, and is the one universal law of which evasion is
impossible; and this is tme, not of the individual only,
but of society, of nations, of civUization, and even, it
would seem, ultimately of physical Ufe itseK. Every
vital energy therefore that we possess can be directed
not to the aboUtion, but only to the postponement of
this final fuU close to which the most ecstatic created
harmony must come at last.
Our physicians cannot heal us, they can merely ward
off death for a Httle. Our statesmen cannot estabUsh
an etemal federation, they can but help to hold a

LIFE AND DEATH 167
crumbling society together for a Uttie longer. Our
civilization cannot really evolve an immortal superman,
it can but render ordinary humanity a Uttie less mortal,
temporarUy and in outward appearance. Death, then,
in the world's opinion, is the duelUst who is bound to
win. We may parry, evade, leap aside for a Httle; we
may even advance upon him and seem to threaten his
very existence; our energies, in fact, must be concen
trated upon this conflict K we are to survive at all.
But it is only in seeming, at the best. The moment
must come when, driven back to the last barrier, our
last defence falters . . . and Death has only to wipe his
sword. Now the attitude of the CathoUc Church towards
Death is not only the most violent reversal of the world's
poUcy, but the most paradoxical, too, of aU her methods.
For, whUe the world attempts to keep Death at arm's
length, the Church strives to embrace him. Where the
world draws his sword to meet Death's assault, the
Church spreads her heart only to receive it. She is in
love with Death, she pursues him, honours him, extols
Him. She places over her altars not a Risen Christ,
but a dying One.
// thou wilt be perfect, she cries to the individual soul,
give up all that thou hast and follow me. "Give up aU
that makes Ufe worth Hving, strip thyseK of every
advantage that sustains thy Ufe, of aU that makes thee
effective." It is this that is her supreme appeal, not

l68 PARADOXES OF CATHOLICISM
indeed uttered, with aU its corollaries, to aU her chil
dren, but to those only that desire perfection. Yet to
aU, in a sense, the appeal is there. Die daily, die to
seK, mortify, yield, give in. // any man will save his
life, he must lose it.
So too, in her dealings with society, is her poUcy
judged suicidal by a world that is in love with its own
kind of Hfe. It is suicidal, cries that world, to reUn-
quish in France all on which the temporal Ufe of the
Church depends; for how can that society survive which
renounces the very means of existence? It is suicidal to
demand the virgin Ufe of the noblest of her children,
suicidal to desert the monarchical cause of one country,
and to set herseK in opposition to the RepubUcan ideals
of another. For even she, after aU, is human and must
conform to human conditions. Even she, however august
her claims, must make terms with the world K she
desires to Uve in it.
And this comment has been made upon her actions
in every age. She condemned Arius, when a Uttle
compromise^might surely have been found; and lost haK
her cluldren. She condemned Luther and lost Germany;
Elizabeth, and lost England. At every crisis she has
made the wrong choice, she has yielded when she should
have resisted, resisted when she should have yielded.
The wonder is that she survives at aU.
Yes, that is the wonder. As dying, behold she lives!
II. The answer of course is easy. It is that she

LIFE AND DEATH 1 69
simply does not desire the kind of Ufe which the worid
reckons alone to be Hfe. To her that is not Ufe at aU.
She desires of course to survive as a human society,
and she is assured that she always shaU so survive. Yet
it is not on the ordinary terms of ordinary society that
she desires survival. It is not a natural Hfe of which
she is ambitious, a Hfe that draws its strength from
human conditions and human environment, a Ufe, there
fore, that waxes and wanes with those human condi
tions and ultimately meets their fate, but a supernatural
Ufe that draws its strength from God. And she recog
nizes, as one of the most fundamental paradoxes of aU,
that such a Hfe can be gained and held only through
what the world caUs " death."
She does not, then, want merely the Ufe of a prosper
ous human state, whether monarchy or repubUc. There
are times indeed in her history when such an accom
paniment to her real existence is useful to her effective
ness; and she has, of course, the right, as have other
societies, to earthly dominions that may have been won
and presented to her by her children. Or through her
ministers, as in Paraguay, she may administer for a
whUe the ordinary civil affairs of men who choose to be
loyal to her government. Yet if, for one instant, such a
responsibiUty were really to threaten her spiritual effect
iveness — K, that is, the choice were reaUy presented to
her between spiritual and temporal dominion — she

170 PARADOXES OF CATHOLiaSM
would let aU the kingdoms of the world go in an in
stant, to retain her kingdom from God; she would gladly
suffer the loss of all things to retain Christ.
And how is it possible to deny for one instant that
her success has been startling and overwhelming — this
fructification of Life by Death.
Are there any human beings, for example, who have
been more effective and influential than her saints —
men and women, that is to say, who have died daily, in
order to Uve indeed? They have not, it is true, pros
pered, let us say, as business men, directors of companies,
or government oflficials, but such a success is simply not
her ideal for them, not their own ideal for themselves.
That is precisely the kind of Ufe to which they have, as
a rule, determinedly and perseveringly died. Yet their
effectiveness in this world has been none the less. Are
any kings remembered as is the beggar Labr6 who
gnawed cabbage stalks in the gutters of Rome? Are
the names of any statesmen of, let us say, even a
hundred years ago, reverenced and repeated as is the
name of the woman of Spain caUed Teresa of Jesus who,
four hundred years ago, ruled a few nuns within the
enclosure of a convent? Are any musicians or artists
loved to-day with such rapture as is God's Uttie trouba
dour, called Francis, who made music for himseK and
the angels by mbbing one stick across another?
Or, again, is any empire that the world has ever seen

LIFE AND DEATH 171
so great, so loyally united in itseK, so universal and yet
so rigorous as is that spiritual empire whose capital is
Rome? Is there any nation with so fierce a patriotism
as she who is Supemational? Earthly kings speak from
their thrones and what happens ? And an old man in
Rome who wears three crowns on his head speaks
from his prison in the Vatican and aU the earth rings
with it.
Has her poUcy, then, been so suicidal after aU? From
the world's point of view it has never been anything else.
Her history is but one long example of the sacrifice of
human activities and earthly opportunities; she has
expeUed from her pulpits the most briUiant of her
children, she has sUenced or aUenated the most eloquent
of her defenders. She has cut off from herseK aU that
she should have kept, and hugged to her arms aU that
she should have relinquished! She has never done any
thing but die! She never does anything but Uve!
in. Tum, then, to the Hfeof herLord for the solution
of this riddle. Last week ^ He was going to His Death.
He was losing, Uttle by Uttle, aU that bound Him to LKe.
The multitudes that had foUowed Him hitherto were
leaving Him by units and groups, they who might have
formed His armies to seat Him on the throne of His father
David. Disloyalty had made its way even among His
chosen body-guard, and already Judas is bargaining for
^ This Sermon was preached on Easter Day.

172 PARADOXES OF CATHOLICISM
the price of His Master's blood. Even the most loyal of
all are dismayed, and presently -w't]! forsake Him and flee
when the swords flash out in the garden of Gethsemane.
A few weeks ago in GaUlee thousands were leaving Him
for the last time; and when, once again, a company
seemed to raUy, He wept! And so at last the sacrifice
was complete and, one by one. He laid down of His own
wiU every tie that kept Him in Hfe. And then on Good
Friday itseK He suffered that beauty of His Face to be
marred so that no man would ever desire Him any more,
sUenced the melody of the Voice that had broken so
many hearts and made them whole again; He stretched
out His Shepherd's Hands with which alone He could
gather His sheep to His Breast, and the Feet that
alone could bear Him into the wilderness to seek after
that which was lost. Was there ever a Suicide such as
this, such a despair of high hopes, such a ruin of aU
ambition, a d3dng so complete and irremediable as
the D3dng of Jesus Christ?
And now on Easter Day look at Him again and see
how He Uves as never before. See how the LKe that
has been His for thirty years — the Life of God made
Man — itseK pales almost to a phantom before the glory
of that same Life transfigured by Death. Three days
ago He fainted beneath the scourge and naUs; now He
shows the very scars of His Passion to be the em
blems of immortal strength. Three days ago He spoke

LIFE AND DEATH 1 73
in human words to those only that were near Him, and
limited HimseK under human terms of space and time;
He speaks now in every heart. Three days ago He
gave His Body to the few who knelt at His Table; to
day in ten thousand tabernacles that same Body may
be worshipped by aU who come.
In a word. He has exchanged a Natural LKe for a
Supematural in every plane at once. He has laid down
the Natural LKe of His Body to take it back again
supematuralized for ever. He has died that His Life
may be released; He h&s finished in order to begin.
It is easy, then, to see why it is that the Church dies
daily, why it is that she is content to be stripped of aU
that makes her Ufe effective, why she too permits her
hands to be bound and her feet fettered and her beauty
marred and her voice sUenced so far as men can do
those things. She is human? Yes; she dweUs in a
body that is prepared for her, but prepared chiefly that
she may suffer in it. Her far-reaching hands are not
hers merely that she may bind up with them the broken
hearted, nor her swKt feet hers merely that she may mn
on them to succour the perishing, nor her head and
heart hers merely that she may ponder and love. But
aU this sensitive human organism is hers that at last
she may agonize in it, bleed from it from a thousand
wounds, be Ufted up in it to draw aU men to her cross.
She does not desire, then, in this world, the throne of

174 PARADOXES OF CATHOLICISM
her Father David, nor the kind of triumph which is the
only kind that the world understands to be so. She
desires one Ufe and one triumph only — the Risen LKe
of her Saviour. And this, at last, is the transfiguration
of her Humanity by the power of her Divinity and
the vindication of them both.

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