the faithful departed, through His Mercy, rest in Him!




XI

LIFE AND DEATH


_As dying, and behold we live_.--II COR. VI. 9.


We have considered, so far, a number of paradoxical phenomena exhibited
in the life of Catholicism and have attempted to find their
reconciliation in the fact that the Catholic Church is at once Human and
Divine. In her striving, for example, after a Divine and supernatural
Peace, of which she alone possesses the secret, she _resists even unto
blood_ all human attempts to supplant this by another. As a human
society, again, she avails herself freely of human opportunities and
aids, of earthly and created beauty, for the setting forth of her
message; yet she can survive, as can no human society, when she is
deprived of her human rights and her acquired wealth. As human she
numbers the great multitude of the world's sinners among her children,
yet as Divine she has produced the saints. As Divine she bases all her
gospel on a Revelation which can be apprehended only by Faith, yet as
human she employs the keenest and most profound intellects for its
analysis and its propagation. In these and in many other similar points
it has been attempted to show why she offers now one aspect and now
another to human criticism, and how it is that the very charges made