to her lightest command. For she, and she alone, is conscious of
possessing that Divinity, in complete submission to which lies the
salvation of Humanity. For she, as the coherent and organic mystical
Body of Christ, calls upon those who look to her to become, not merely
her children, but her very members; not to obey her as soldiers obey a
leader or citizens a Government, but as the hands and eyes and feet obey
a brain. Once, therefore, I understand this, I understand too how it is
that by being lost in her I save myself; that I lose only that which
hinders my activity, not that which fosters it. For when is my hand most
itself? When separated from the body, by paralysis or amputation? Or
when, in vital union with the brain, with every fibre alert and every
nerve alive, it obeys in every gesture and receives in every sensation a
life infinitely vaster and higher than any which it might, temporarily,
enjoy in independence? It is true that its capacity for pain is the
greater when it is so united, and that it would cease to suffer if once
its separation were accomplished; yet, simultaneously, it would lose all
that for which God made it and, _saving itself_, would be _lost_ indeed.

_I live_, then, the perfect Catholic may say, as none other can say,
when I have ceased to be myself. And _yet not I_, since I have lost my
Individualism. No longer do I claim any activity at all on my own
behalf; no longer do I demand to form my opinions, to follow my own
conscience apart from that informing of it that comes from God, or to
live my own life. Yet in losing my Individualism I have won my
Individuality, for I have found my true place at last. I have _lost the
whole world?_ Yes, so far as that world is separate from or antagonistic
to God's will; but I have _gained my own soul_ and attained immortality.
For it is _not I that live, but Christ that liveth in me_.

IX

MEEKNESS AND VIOLENCE

_Blessed are the meek_.--MATT. V. 4.

_The Kingdom of Heaven suffereth violence, and the violent bear it
away_.--MATT. XI. 12.

We have already considered the Church's relations towards such things as
wealth and human influence and power, how she will sometimes use and
sometimes disdain them. Let us now penetrate a little deeper and
understand the spirit that underlies and explains this varying attitude
of hers.

I. (i) It has been charged against Christianity in general, and
therefore implicitly and supremely against the Ch