more loudly
than Walt Whitman, and St. Jerome denounce evil more darkly than
Schopenhauer--but both emotions must be kept in their place. I
remember how George Wyndham laughed as he recited to us the paragraph
where this idea reached its climax.

And sometimes this pure gentleness and this pure fierceness met and
justified their juncture; the paradox of all the prophets was
fulfilled, and, in the soul of St. Louis, the lion lay down with the
lamb. But remember that this text is too lightly interpreted. It is
constantly assumed, especially in our Tolstoyan tendencies, that when
the lion lies down with the lamb the lion becomes lamb-like. But that
is brutal annexation and imperialism on the part of the lamb. That is
simply the lamb absorbing the lion instead of the lion eating the
lamb. The real problem is--can the lion lie down with the lamb and
still retain his royal ferocity? _That_ is the problem the Church
attempted; _that_ is the miracle she achieved.*

[* _Orthodoxy_, Chapter VI, pp. 178-9.]

All this applied not only to the release of the emotions, the
development of all the elements that go to make up humanity, but even
more to the truths of Revelation. A heresy always means lopping off a
part of the truth and, therefore, ultimately a loss of liberty.
Orthodoxy, in keeping the whole truth, safeguarded freedom and
prevented any one of the great and devouring ideas she was teaching
from swallowing any other truth. This was the justification of
councils, of definitions, even of persecutions and wars of religion:
that they had stood for the defence of reason as well as of faith.
They had stood to prevent the suicide of thought which must result if
the exciting but difficult balance were lost that had replaced the
classical moderation.

The Church could not afford to swerve a hair's breadth on some
things if she was to continue her great and daring experiment of the
irregular equilibrium. Once let one idea become less powerful and
some other idea would become too powerful. It was no flock of sheep
the Christian shepherd was leading, but a herd of bulls and tigers,
of terrible ideals and devouring doctrines, each one of them strong
enough to turn to a false religion and lay waste the world. Remember
that the Church went in specifically for dangerous ideas; she was a
lion tamer. The idea of birth through a Holy Spirit, of the death of
a divine being, of