administer for a while the ordinary civil affairs of men who choose to
be loyal to her government. Yet if, for one instant, such a
responsibility were really to threaten her spiritual effectiveness--if,
that is, the choice were really presented to her between spiritual and
temporal dominion--she would let all the kingdoms of the world go in an
instant, to retain her kingdom from God; she would gladly _suffer the
loss of all things_ to retain Christ.

And how is it possible to deny for one instant that her success has been
startling and overwhelming--this fructification of Life by Death.

Are there any human beings, for example, who have been more effective
and influential than her saints--men and women, that is to say, who have
_died daily_, in order to live indeed? They have not, it is true,
prospered, let us say, as business men, directors of companies, or
government officials, but such a success is simply not her ideal for
them, not their own ideal for themselves. That is precisely the kind of
life to which they have, as a rule, determinedly and perseveringly died.
Yet their effectiveness in this world has been none the less. Are any
kings remembered as is the beggar Labré who gnawed cabbage stalks in the
gutters of Rome? Are the names of any statesmen of, let us say, even a
hundred years ago, reverenced and repeated as is the name of the woman
of Spain called Teresa of Jesus who, four hundred years ago, ruled a few
nuns within the enclosure of a convent? Are any musicians or artists
loved to-day with such rapture as is God's little troubadour, called
Francis, who made music for himself and the angels by rubbing one stick
across another?

Or, again, is any empire that the world has ever seen so great, so
loyally united in itself, so universal and yet so rigorous as is that