, 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 compact little 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 perceive 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 modern 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?

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?

II. We come back, then, to the Catholic answer. Treat the Catholic
Church as Divine only and you will stumble over her scandals, her
failures, and her shortcomings. Treat her as Human only and you will be
silenced by her miracles, her sanctity, and her eternal resurrections.

(i) Of course the Catholic Church is Human. 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 will be. Popes may betray their trust, in all 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.
Undoubtedly 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