f the gray sages of Greece and Rome did so much? Well
could He say, in his crown of thorns, when the judge asked him: "Art
thou the King of the Jews?"--Thou sayest! And can He, who lives in the
Gospel, since we have it everywhere, need a vicar on earth--a vicar on
a worldly throne, in a gorgeous palace? Has no one ever blushed at the
thought? Catholicism is still here, still stands erect. It must have a
better foundation than a mere untenable assumption.[1] But where can
this be found?

It lies in the power of the senses and in faith in this power. It is
justified of this faith, justified again by all experience. A sound
body, with the senses in full vigor, bears up and sustains the spirit
also. Indeed, the world of sense, like that of the spirit, has a higher
position. Its centre, its life-organ, is the heart, and this same heart
is the field for all the conquests of earth. It was left for
Christianity to reveal this secret.[2] In right relations, and if the
spiritual is the leading element, the creations of art, belonging to
the world of sense, are aids to Christianity. They elevate the spirit
and complete the consecration of divine worship. Whenever this right
relation was observed, the Catholic church grew and prospered. But two
deviations from it, which the Papacy needed and used for the
strengthening of its dominion, weakened and finally in the sixteenth
century brought it nigh to destruction: monkery and the celibacy of the
clergy. Whatever there was of good in the monasteries, derived its
origin from the most ancient times, when, for example, into our own
fatherland Christian men, of scientific culture, Gallus, Collomban and
Siegfried, wandering hither from distant Ireland and Scotland, brought
science and agriculture into regions that lay waste, at a time when the
rule of Benedict, although one of the best, had not yet been introduced
into the oldest monastic foundations, St. Gall and Disentis. But as
soon as this was inoculated upon the life-giving stem, it gradually
degenerated.[3] Just as little was celibacy practised by the clergy of
the Catholic church before the age of Gregory VI. (Pope from
1073-1085). The priests lived like other men, members of families, and
did not stand _over_ the people, but _among_ them and _with_ them. But
monasticism and celibacy rest upon the principle, that the senses are
to be feared, which, like all fear, _except the fear of God_, is
inwardly untrue. This principle is also un