Page:Rome and the Revolution - Manning.djvu/15

Rh may lay hands upon it. Moreover, to the priesthood is committed the office of making the revelation of God an authoritative reality among men. Priests are teachers, guides, and judges; they are in constant contact and in perpetual conflict with the world. The more like they are to their Master, the more hated they must be; the more faithfully they bear witness against the world which crucified Him, the more they inherit the scandal and the enmity of the Cross. It is inevitable. A holy priesthood must be hated by the world. It is false to say that the priesthood is hated for the sins of priests. The world would not hate them if they were like itself. It hates them because they are unlike it, and because they remind it of their Master.

But last of all, and above all, there is one on whose sole head all those enmities descend at once. They are concentrated upon the Vicar of Jesus Christ, who most nearly represents Him to the world. All the enmities against the Divine truth and the Divine law, against the Church and its morality, against religious orders and the priesthood, fall at once upon the chief witness for the revelation of Christianity, the Head of the Church, the guardian of morality, and the protector of the priesthood. All these things meet eminently in his person, and all the hatred of the world against these things he bears in an eminent degree, and that in our behalf. There is an instinct in the world which tells it that if the shepherd be smitten the sheep of the flock might be scattered; that if the head of the Christian superstition could be