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Page 7
Yet, when we look closer, the case is not so simple. For, first, what
was, as a matter of fact, the direct immediate effect of the Life and
Personality of Jesus Christ upon the society in which He lived but this
very dissension, this very bloodshedding and misery that are charged
against His Church? It was precisely on this 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 modern "humanitarian," of the modern 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 whited
sepulchres full of dead men's bones! You vipers! You hypocrites!_ This
is the language He uses to the representatives of Israel's religion. Is
this the kind of talk that we hear from modern leaders of religious
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 modern 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; 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 Personality 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 (1) the Catholic Church is a Human Society. She is constituted,
that is to say, of human beings; she depends, humanly speaking, upon
human circumstances; she can be assaulted, weakened, 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 all. 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 finest
religious thought of the 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
world, and these are constituted, at any rate at the present day, on
wholly human bases. Statesmen and kings, at the present day, do not
found their policies upon supernatural considerations; their object is
to govern their subjects, to promote the peace and union of their
subjects, to make war, if need be, on behalf of the peace of their
subjects, wholly on natural grounds. Commerce, finance, agriculture,
education in the things of this world, science, art, exploration--human
activities generally--these, in their purely natural aspect, are the
objects of nearly all modern 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 Church, in virtue of her humanity, is bound 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 supernatural principles revealed to her by God; she is
supernaturally constituted; she rests on a supernatural 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.
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