and seem to threaten his very existence; our
energies, in fact, must be concentrated upon this conflict if 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 Catholic Church towards Death is not only the
most violent reversal of the world's policy, but the most paradoxical,
too, of all her methods. For, while 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.

_If thou wilt be perfect_, she cries to the individual soul, _give up
all that thou hast and follow me_. "Give up all that makes life worth
living, strip thyself of every advantage that sustains thy life, of all
that makes thee effective." It is this that is her supreme appeal, not
indeed uttered, with all its corollaries, to all her children, but to
those only that desire perfection. Yet to all, in a sense, the appeal is
there. _Die daily_, die to self, mortify, yield, give in. If _any man
will save his life, he must lose it_.

So too, in her dealings with society, is her policy judged suicidal by a
world that is in love with its own kind of life. It is suicidal, cries
that world, to relinquish in France all on which the temporal life of
the Church depends; for how can that society survive which renounces the
very means of existence? It is suicidal to demand the virgin life of the
noblest of her children, suicidal to desert the monarchical cause of one
country, and to set herself in opposition to the Republican ideals of
another. For even she, after all, is human and must conform to human
conditions. Even she, however august her claims, must make terms with
the world if she desires to live in it.

And this comment has been made upon her actions in every age. She
condemned Arius, when a little compromise might surely have been found;
and lost half her children. 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 all.

Yes, that is the wonder. _As