that man has an immortal soul is to exclude the truth that he also has a
body. It is this Body of hers, then--this humanity of hers which
enshrines her Divinity--that claims and uses earthly things; it is this
Body that _dwells in houses made with hands_ and that claims too, in
honour to herself and her Bridegroom, that, so long as her spirituality
is not tarnished, these houses shall be as splendid as art can make
them. For she is not a Puritan nor a Manichee; she does not say that any
single thing which God has made can conceivably be of itself evil,
however grievously it may have been abused; on the contrary, she has His
own authority for saying that _all is very good_.

She uses, then, every earthly beauty that the world will yield to her,
to honour her own Majesty. It may be right to set diamonds round the
neck of a woman, but it is certainly right to set them round the Chalice
of the Blood of God. If an earthly king wears vestments of cloth of
gold, must not a heavenly King yet more wear them? If music is used by
the world to destroy men's souls, may not she use it to save their
souls? If a marble palace is fit for the President of the French
Republic, by what right do men withhold it from the King of kings?

But the world does withhold its wealth sometimes? Very well then, she
can serve God without it, in spite of her rights. If men whine and
cringe, or bully and shout, for the jewels with which their forefathers
honoured God, she will fling them back again down her altar stairs and
worship God in a barn or a catacomb without them. For, though she does
not _serve God and Mammon_, she yet _makes to herself friends of the
Mammon of iniquity_. Though she does not and never can serve God and
Mammon, she will and can, when the world permits it, make Mammon serve
her. For the Church is the Majesty of God dwelling on earth. She is
there, in herself, utterly independent of her reception. If it is _her