dying, behold she lives_!

II. The answer of course is easy. It is that she simply does not desire
the kind of life which the world reckons alone to be life. To her that
is not life at all. She desires of course to survive as a human society,
and she is assured that she always shall so survive. Yet it is not on
the ordinary terms of ordinary society that she desires survival. It is
not a _natural_ life of which she is ambitious, a life that draws its
strength from human conditions and human environment, a life, therefore,
that waxes and wanes with those human conditions and ultimately meets
their fate, but a _supernatural_ life that draws its strength from God.
And she recognizes, as one of the most fundamental paradoxes of all,
that such a life can be gained and held only through what the world
calls "death."

She does not, then, want merely the life of a prosperous human state,
whether monarchy or republic. There are times indeed in her history when
such an accompaniment to her real existence is useful to her
effectiveness; 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 while the ordinary civil affairs of men who choose to
be loyal to her government. Yet if, for one instant, such a
responsibility were really to threaten her spiritual effectiveness--if,
that is, the choice were really presented to her between spiritual and
temporal dominion--she would let all the kingdoms of the world go in an
instant, 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 live indeed? They have not, it is true,
prospered, let us say, as business men, directors of companies, or
government officials, but such a success is simply not her ideal for
them, not their own ideal for themselves. That is precisely the kind of
life 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 Labre who gnawed cabbage stalks in t