personal rights since He is that very Fire of Charity
by which Christians relinquish theirs.

[Footnote 1: This sermon was preached on Palm-Sunday.]

But, for all that, it is _riding_ that _thy King cometh to thee_.... He
will not relinquish His inalienable claim and He will have nothing
essential left out. He has His royal escort, even though a ragged one;
He will have His spearmen, even though their spears be only of palm; He
will have His heralds to proclaim Him, however much the devout Pharisees
may be offended by their proclamation; He will ride into His own Royal
City, even though that City casts Him out, and He will have His
Coronation, even though it be with thorns. So, too, the Catholic Church
advances through the ages.

In merely human rights and personal matters again and again she will
yield up all that she has, making, it may be, but one protest for
Justice' sake and then no more. And she will urge her children to do the
same. If the world will let her have no jewels, then she will put glass
beads in her monstrance, and for marble she will use plaster, and tinsel
for gold.

But she will have her Procession and insist upon her Royalty. It may
seem as poor and as mean and as tawdry as the entrance of Christ Himself
through the royal gate; for she will yield up all that the world demands
of her, so long as her Divine Right itself remains intact. She will
issue her orders, though few be found to obey them; she will cast out
from her the rebellious who question her authority, and cleanse her
Temple Courts even though with a scourge at which men mock. She will
give up all that is merely human, if the world will have it so, and will
_resist not evil_ if it merely concerns herself. But there is one thing
which she will not renounce, one thing she will claim, even with
_violence_ and "intransigeance," and that is the Royalty with which God
Himself has crowned her.

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
tragedy of their own lives and times. Merely to dwell 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 considerations might indeed be interesting, exciting, and eve