And as for the effect of such words and methods, our Lord Himself is
quite explicit. "Make no mistake," He cries to the modern humanitarian
who claims alone to represent Him. "Make no mistake. I am _not come to
bring peace_ at any price; there are worse things than war and
bloodshed. I am _come to bring not peace but a sword_. I am come to
_divide families_, not to unite them; to rend kingdoms, not to knit
them up; I am come _to set mother against daughter and daughter against
mother_; I am come not to establish universal toleration, but universal
Truth."

What, then, is the reconciliation of the Paradox? In what sense can it
be possible that the effect of the Personality of the Prince of Peace,
and therefore the effect of His Church, in spite of their claims to be
the friends of peace, should be _not peace, but the sword?_

III. Now (1) the Catholic Church is a Human Society. She is constituted,
that is to say, of human beings; she depends, humanly speaking, upon
human circumstances; she can be assaulted, weakened, and disarmed by
human enemies. She dwells in the midst of human society, and it is with
human society that she has to deal.

Now if she were not human--if she were merely a Divine Society, a
far-off city in the heavens, a future distant ideal to which human
society is approximating, there would be no conflict at all. She would
never meet in a face-to-face shock the passions and antagonisms of men;
she could suppress, now and again, her Counsels of Perfection, her calls
to a higher life, if it were not that these are vital and present
principles which she is bound to propagate among men.