Page:Vactican as a World Power.djvu/394

 QUO VADIS?

used these words entered more deeply and fully into that rime and space and circumstance, and wrestled with them, wrestled more earnestly with all their forces, than ever mere man had done. This world and none other for what other could it be? is the material of which His rule is to be builded, and the flour that awaits the yeast of His glad tidings. His Kingdom is a witness for the truth, a witness in the world; and yet because it is not of the same substance as this world, it is constantly repudiated. Therefore this "Kingdom not of a world like this" is made to seem of another world of a world beyond, since "this world here" does not permit it to exist on this side of the Beyond.

Even when rightly understood, Christ's saying has often been a word of reproach and judgment directed at the Papacy; and when used correctly, it has revealed the fullness of the sin and tragedy of those who in high office have failed to realize its import. For the command to transform the world of time and space into the Kingdom of God is not fulfilled by merely proclaiming a kingdom which is to be builded somewhere else in the future. Moreover, when one op- poses the "Kingdom not of this world" to the "kingdom of this world here," one runs the great risk that by entering the wo;ld which is to be conquered, one may instead be conquered by it. The tremendous, permanent revolution which Christianity ceaselessly stages in its con- flict with the world has its institutional centre in a Papacy which is the most conservative of all governments. Though often in its history it has seemed to give testimony against its own nature, this nature is nevertheless always the most terrifying witness against whatever is ignominious in its history. When Simon Peter acted in accordance with his merely human self and spoke and acted on the impulse of flesh and blood, he could say and do things which his Master found deplorable, even Satanic. Yet something else too, emanated from him; and of this his Lord said, "Not flesh and blood have revealed it to thee, but My Father in Heaven/' Thus also in the history of the Papal monarchy the denial, the treason and the many weaknesses of Peter have been scandalous, sinful, and deserving of condemnation; but they have been revealed with two-fold clarity in the sharp light of a splendour in which all shadows are etched more darkly. Even so, Peter s throne speaks what flesh and blood do not reveal,

Thcte is no philosophy of the history of the Papacy, and there can

PETER'