empty throne of Caesar and the prestige of Rome that developed
the world's acceptance of the authority of Peter's Chair. Undoubtedly
it was the divisions of Europe that cemented the Church's unity and led
men to look to a Supreme Authority that might compose their differences.
There is scarcely an opening in human affairs into which she has not
plunged; hardly an opportunity she has missed. Human affairs, human sins
and weaknesses as well as human virtues, have all contributed to her
power. So grows a tree, even in uncongenial soil. The rocks that impede
the roots later become their support; the rich soil, waiting for an
occupant, has been drawn up into the life of the leaves; the very winds
that imperilled the young sapling have developed too its power of
resistance. Yet these things do not make the tree.

(ii) For her Humanity, though it is the body in which her Divinity
dwells, does not create that Divinity. Certainly human circumstances
have developed her, yet what but Divine Providence ordered and developed
those human circumstances? What but that same power, which indwells in
the Church, dwelt without her too and caused her to take root at that
time and in that place which most favored her growth? Certainly she is
Human. It may well be that her rulers have contradicted one another in
human matters--in science, in policy, and in discipline; but how is it,
then, that they have not contradicted one another in matters that are
Divine? Granted that one Pope has reversed the policy of his
predecessor, then what has saved him from reversing his theology also?
Certainly there have been appalling scandals, outrageous sinners,
blaspheming apostates--but what of her saints?

And, above all, she gives proof of her Divinity by that very sign to
which Christ Himself pointed as a proof of His own. Granted that she
_dies daily_--that her cause fails in this century and in that country;
that her science is discredited in this generation and her active
morality in that and her ideals in a third--how comes it that she also
rises daily from the dead; that her old symbols rise again from their
ruins; that her virtues are acclaimed by the children of the men who
renounced her; that her bells and her music sound again where once her
churches and houses were laid waste?

Here, then, is the Catholic answer and it is this alone that makes sense
of history, as it is Catholic doctrine which alone makes sense of the
Gospel record. The answ