Bossuet, in his sermon on the Unity of the Church, sees her history movingly prefigured by the march of the Israelites through the wilderness: ‘leaving Egypt and the darkness of idolatry she crosses, in search of the Promised Land, a measureless desert where she finds nothing but fearsome rocks and burning sand; no soil, no cultivation, none of earth’s fruits; a terrifying drought; no bread but such as must be sent down from heaven; no refreshing water but such as must be drawn by a miracle from the heart of a rock; all nature sterile in her regard and nothing good but by grace ... In the horror of this vast solitude, she appears surrounded by enemies, marching always in battle array, never resting but in tents, ever ready to move on and to fight; a stranger, whom nothing can fix. nothing satisfy; who casts a passing glance on all things but will neither stop nor stay, and yet is happy in this state, because of the consolations granted her on her journey, and the glorious and immutable rest which will be the end of her course.’

This comparison was never more pathetically applicable to the Church as a whole than in our day of ‘after-Christians’ ; nor to the Church in any country more than in modern France. For that reason, perhaps, French Catholics have gone very far towards a vivid realisation of the manifold aspects of Catholicism, of its universal appeal, of its touch on life at every point;