The knowledge that Christ was both God and man must be the central fact in the life of every Christian. Because He was a man, He has given an example for us to follow; because He was God, He has given us the strength to follow His example, and for every Christian the central lesson to be learnt from Christ is to love, to give and to endure.

Looking back over two thousand years, the details of Christ’s life on earth can seem very far away. The setting can seem so very different from anything that we have known; the barren, stony hillsides of Judea, the crowded market places, the small white flat-roofed houses, the groups of orientals moving slowly along the dusty roads. Yet so many of the details are commonplace enough. The birth in poverty, the childhood in a poor household, the years as a workman, and then apparent success, apparent failure, death. All that could have happened, all that has happened, in any country, and in any time. The setting alters, but the rhythm of human life and the problems of human choice remain the same. Everything that is fundamental, the capacity of loving, the power of giving, the will to be alive, joy and agony and death, remain unaltered since Christ lived at Nazareth. Yet if only we could see it, they are no longer the same as they were before the Word took flesh and dwelt amongst us. The life that we know, and the death that we know, confronted Christ. He was man as well as God. He lived and died.

Very illusive is the thing we call Freedom or Liberty, presenting a variety of notions to the men and women who in every age pursue it. Lord Acton, concerned mainly with its political aspect, saw liberty as ‘the delicate fruit of a mature civilization,’ and declared that’ the most certain test of the real freedom of a country ‘was’ the amount of security enjoyed by minorities.’ (But then, as Creighton remarked, Acton demanded that history, as primarily ‘a branch of the moral sciences, should aim at proving the immutable righteousness of the ideas of modern liberalism —tolerance and the supremacy of conscience.’) Dr. Johnson argued that private liberty was the essential thing—‘Political liberty is good only so far as it produces private liberty.’ The later Johnsonian dictum: ‘we are all agreed as to our own liberty: we would have as much of it as we can get; but we are not agreed as to the liberty of others: for in proportion as we take, others must lose,’ still commands wide assent.

Misgovernment in one form or another provokes the passionate cry- for freedom; the perennial revolt that to achieve its end turns to revolution or is suppressed by force of arms. Misgovernment within—Remota justitia quid reg- na nisi magna Patrocinia? The Augustinian sentence expresses consciousness of robbery that must be stopped.

‘Freedom in the governed to complain of wrongs and readiness in rulers to redress them constitute the ideal of a free state,’ is the ideal free state of Erskine May, distinguished nineteenth century English constitutional lawyer.

In the introductory words to two special articles on Mary the Mother which he was invited to contribute to The Catholic Times, ‘the present writer felt it imperative to point out that’ it would be a grave and lamentable loss if a Catholic’s appreciation of our Blessed Lady was no more than the largely sentimental emotion it often appears to be, or even no more than a solid but unpenetrating admiration for her spotless purity of soul and an awed wonder of her virginal Motherhood of God. These are not without their place and value; but it is yet more important to realise that both her immaculate purity and her divine motherhood play an essential part not only in the historic fact of the Incarnation whereby the world was redeemed, but also in the application of the fruits of that Redemption to all men throughout the world and throughout the ages. We need the wisdom of understanding if the full vision of the Motherhood of Mary is not to escape us............ We cannot properly appreciate the Mother except as inseparably linked with her Son; and there is a sense in which it is true to say that we cannot properly appreciate the Son apart from His Mother. There is no absolute necessity in this; but there is the necessity of God’s love, Who chose this way and no other for restoring humankind to His friendship..........so that only by finding the Child with His Mother can a man find also the wisdom of God which leads to everlasting love. For it is no mere physical necessity which linked these two ....

There can be no lasting peace in international affairs until the nations of the world learn to worship God. Worship is the chief act of religion, which is not confined to church or reserved for certain occasions, but is a life-long task and a whole-time endeavour characterized by swift readiness to obey. The universe cannot escape from the laws which hold it fast to God’s throne. Governments cannot hope for order and peace unless they follow nature’s rules. For obedience to law is the pledge of justice, the foundation of peace. There is no medium between law as a dictate of reason and lawlessness with violence for its sanction. When violence is the rule in national life anarchy is its fruit, and when this is carried beyond the borders of the nation the world is plunged in war. Man was not made for servitude, since he is freeborn, and when his freedom is placed in jeopardy by the lawless domination of force, the primary law of his nature urges him to fight for his existence as a free man. As it is with men and families, so it is with nations. The law of men and of states, unless it is to be a pure tyranny, is one of liberty making for full co-operation and a protection against the bondage of servitude. The dignity of human destiny requires the liberty to serve in obedience to authority under the reign of law. The law of nature is by origin divine, since God is the author of nature.

The war has given many education authorities a new and complicated problem to solve. These are the authorities of evacuation and of reception areas. In the former, between twenty and thirty per cent, of elementary school children have been evacuated to and have remained in the reception areas, a small percentage have made private arrangements for shelter in the country, leaving, perhaps, seventy per cent, of the children remaining at home.

Correspondingly the reception areas have had their school rolls increased in number in the same proportion, this necessitating in many cases modifications of the school organization.

The fact, however, remains that the well-planned evacuation scheme for school children in school parties has broken down through lack of complete support from the parents living in the vulnerable areas. A twenty or thirty per cent, response leaves the education authority of the evacuation area with the major task of education still to be carried out within its own precincts. At the same time the teaching staffs, in the first place, left with the evacuated children and were billeted in the reception areas. A large proportion have now, however, been recalled. Taking first the problem as affecting the children who refused to be evacuated, the President of the Board of Education, after much pressure, announced in the House of Lords on November 1st, 1939:

In the month of December, 1939, His Eminence Cardinal Hinsley stirred England with a broadcast address, which he called ‘The Sword of the Spirit.’ The address was published and had an immense circulation. In the month of August, 1940, His Eminence inspired the Catholic laity, and, one imagines, a great part of the clergy also, by launching the movement which he likewise called ‘The Sword of the Spirit.’ This movement, like the addresses from which it takes its title, may be said to be, or at any rate is intended to be, the response of the soul and mind and will of the Catholic body in England to the spiritual and intellectual and moral necessities of the time. These necessities were, for those who had eyes to see, plain and evident enough in time of peace. They became clamant with the outbreak of war.

England had inherited from the Middle Ages with all their traditions an admirable series of Christian institutions—for example, the great Cathedrals, the great Universities, and the Common Law—and the whole body of theological and philosophical and moral principles that gave life to these institutions and to the civilisation that they served. During the century that followed (shall we say?) Catholic Emancipation, the life of England and the institutions that served it at first gradually and then more and more rapidly ceased to be Christian. Take one example: In the year 1829, I believe it to be true that each of the Fellows in each of the Colleges of Oxford and Cambridge was not only expected to be a Christian, but was also required to be a celibate and in Orders.

Various answers are given to the question, ‘What are we fighting for?’ but it now seems to be commonly accepted that wTe are fighting for something greater than our national independence, for something vastly more important than the British Empire. It is not precisely democracy; we use the word indeed, but with a certain hesitation as we remember how signally we failed in another war ‘to make the world safe for democracy.’ Freedom is now more often the slogan. We are fighting against totalitarian powers which restrict the use of freedom and claim a quasi-religious authority over their subjects, and ire know that we cannot conquer them merely by an appeal to national feeling, and still less by the aid of material resources. We too need a religious impulse to enable us to meet unflinchingly the armies of fanaticism. And as we cannot all appreciate the Catholic spirit which alone can extirpate the newest heresies, we have to appeal to something which is the result of the Catholic influence on Europe, but which is understood by all. And that is freedom.

Group action is the keynote to our modern society. No longer are men working as individuals, be it in business, in politics, or in religion. This group action is largely instinctive, but there is a desire for it and a realisation that through it something can be achieved, though unfortunately the ‘something’ is rather uncertain.

This desire for group action, this longing to be with and work with others, can be found in many spheres: Hitler and his mass regimentation, Mussolini’s fascist spirit, our own youth movements, in big business, and among Catholics.

Never before in the story of the Church has there been such interest in the doctrine of the Mystical Body of Christ. In all parts of the Church theologians and other thinkers are writing about and discussing the doctrine and working out its implications.

Throughout the country there are people mourning their loved ones, parents, sons and daughters killed fighting or helping behind the scenes; even babes in arms, children on the high seas, sent away for safety, have met a cruel death. In the streets, once so familiar, are unsightly ruins, houses crumbling, churches, convents, public buildings, the houses of the very poorest, all overwhelmed by the common wanton destruction wrought by an unseen hand. How trite and unconvincing seem our condolences with the afflicted! We hardly know what to say, our tongues stammer and falter, as indeed must always be the case when speaking of the mysteries of faith. For death is a mystery, though an inevitable fact: ‘Who is the man that shall not see death, that shall deliver his soul from the underworld?’ (Ps. lxxxviii, 49). The Saints of God made themselves familiar with the thought of death and the next world, and we may well turn for guidance to one who had lived with such thoughts always before him, to one who had seen Death with his scythe mowing down men, women and children, now by the sword, now by pestilence, now by the creeping onslaught of old age, to one who himself died amid the destruction of all he had loved, the overthrow of all he had so laboriously built up, to St. Augustine of Hippo.

The Incarnation may be said to have for Its object the drawing of men from misery to happiness. Being the act of God It is the greatest of all rhetorical acts and therefore the greatest of all works of art. And as from the fatherhood of God all paternity is named in heaven and earth, so from His creative power all art is named. In the Incarnation we do not only know a fact of history or a truth of religion; we behold a work of art, a thing made. As a fact of history It is the most interesting and illuminating of all historical happenings. As a truth of religion It is of primary and fundamental importance. But It is as a work of art that It has a saving power, power to persuade, power to heal, power to rescue, power to redeem.

But the word ‘art,’ in spite of the obsequious worship which the modern world gives to the works of painters and sculptors and musicians, is not a holy word in these days. Art, the word, which primarily means skill and thus human skill and thus human skill in doing and making, has, in literary circles and among the upper classes, come to mean only the fine arts, and the fine arts have ceased to be rhetorical and are now exclusively aesthetic; they aim only to give pleasure.

Rome, the colossus, insatiable, brooking no rival, had meant then, as Augustine and others realised, a never- ending series of wars, some of them necessary in self-defence, others, perhaps, wars of pure aggression. But now a more appalling spectre was showing its head: the barbarian hordes. Rome had at least stood for law and equity. But these barbarian hordes simply wasted and ravaged. Augustine may well be portraying them when he asks:

‘What else is it but robbery on a huge scale to wage war first on our near neighbours, and after subduing them to attack those more remote; and so, through mere lust of power, to grind down and make subect peoples who have never done us any harm?’ So, too, when he asks again:

’ What else are kingdoms wherein there is no justice, save robberies on a large scale? Take the case of a robber- band. It is made up of men who act under some sort of leader, who have some sort of social pact among themselves and divide their booty by mutual agreement. Supposing now that, owing to the numbers who join it, this evil institution so grows that it is able to establish itself in definite localities and have a centre whence it conducts operations —why, then, it proceeds to attack cities, to subjugate other peoples, and ends by acclaiming itself a kingdom. A rise in rank ‘which was in no sense due to those robbers having laid aside their evil ambitions but simply to their ever growing impunity.’

The Catholic layman should glory in the name of Catholic. It is no accident that, of the four marks of the true Church, Catholicity is the character that has prevailed. We are called Catholics, because the note of Catholicity in a sense contains and implies the others. Catholicity means unity diffused, spread abroad—unity everywhere. Unity absolutely demands a Hierarchy, oneness with the Apostolic tradition. Holiness means unity of belief and practice; the integral, personal unity of one who has perfectly harmonized faith and morals, whose life is the expression of his convictions of the one and only truth. Catholicity, therefore, means unity, vital and organized, unity magnificent, unity transcendent. Catholicity is the stupendous, resplendent unity of past and present, of all ages stretching out into the eternal years. The Catholic is one with Christ and one with all with whom Christ is one. The Catholic is the totalitarian Christian.

This totalitarian mark is conspicuous in the lives of the Church’s martyrs whose eminent charity led them to the last limit of self-sacrifice: their heroic constancy makes them one with the King of martyrs with Whom they are identified even to the shedding of their blood.

There must be many to-day whose minds are troubled because they find it impossible to accept without reservation the opinions and the policy which have been generally adopted with regard to the war, and because, in consequence, their patriotism—their love of their patria and desire to serve it—cannot find, at least without much self-searching, the outlet which the majority have accepted. Are they to resign themselves to the idea that this mental tension is inevitable; to the idea that they must seem, and be, less patriotic than those who can accept the situation without any misgivings or detachment of mind?

The question, if it is considered adequately, reveals itself as a very large and very deep one; for it involves far more than the particular problem of war, and leads back to the ultimate principles of human society. Before attempting such a general consideration, however, we may note two particular preliminary points, since they seem to show that the presence even of the complete non-participant is not without its value to a nation in days such as these.

Some men profess to look first at examples, some at the exemplar. The difference of air about the two has often been commented on; that they get along together for the most part as well as they do is due to the fact that the former do admit the existence of an exemplar, and that the latter do concern themselves with the production and improvement of the examples. The first standpoint has been subtly expressed in the lines

Though Plato no doubt was a corker, yet our philosopher Is that it's must be ready for dinner when dinner is ready for we;

whereas the others would be chiefly concerned to adapt the dinner hour to their own needs. They will still be able to go amicably in to dinner because both will at least agree that dinner is desirable. They will agree on the existence of standards, wherever they are to be found, and a world to be conformed to them and indeed demanding their embodiment. And to that extent, a wide one, they present us with the classical ideal. For the classical world, now or two thousand years ago, is a world which recognises standards, standards of thought and action, to be discovered, recognised, accepted, and imposed both on individual and communal life. That ideal is not particularly non-Christian, not particularly Christian; it transcends these categories. And like other ideas which transcend categories, it is realised as the same yet very differently in each. The armies of Constantine and Julian, they too had standards, the cross and the eagles, and the demands made on each by the ideals thus represented were very different yet in a tray the same.

The subject of the Hebrew Prophets and National Crises is one that could hardly be exhausted in a book of slender bulk. I can, therefore, only sketch out some outline of this great and, at the present time, very important matter.

First of all, we have to consider the wonderful phenomenon of these Prophets. It is not just a natural thing. It has a supernatural element, made up of all that is natural. The supernatural is not built on the natural, but with it. To some, the prophecies, as recorded, would seem to be nothing more than a very fine forecast by one who paid attention to the laws of nature; just as you might account merely by chemical laws for the writing which a person makes on a page, but that would not account for everything, all the intellectual and spiritual values, contained in it.

Another unique element is that, in almost every page, there is a denunciation of the people that recorded those things. You have the phenomenon of a little people transmitting to posterity only one group of writings (I do not think we have any other Hebrew literature of the time of Isaias), and those writings a most appalling account of their own doings. Now that is a very strange phenomenon because, in point of fact, if you asked England to-night to set up a book in English about the size of the Bible, and to transmit it to posterity, what would they put in it?

Jesus told us that the night cometh when no man can work. He, the dayspring from on high who came to give light to them that sit in darkness and the shadow of death, who was proclaimed as the light come to lighten the Gentiles and the glory of his people, told us—what?—that the night cometh. Others had told us before of this night. Nox est perpetua una dormienda, ‘ there is one everlasting night in which we must sleep,’ but it was not the same message. Catullus knew not the dayspring from on high, nor of the world where there is no sun, for the Lamb is the light thereof. He knew only of the earthly day with its changeable sun in a cloudy heaven. In his soul there was only the pale light of reason amid the clouds of passion. All that he saw would be swallowed up in that one everlasting night of death, where there would be no loneliness and no fellowship, for there would be nothing. Our last night will not be like that; it will be followed by a day and ‘the Lamb is the light thereof.’ It will not be a night of annihilation, an end of all things, but a night of refreshment, of preparation, of vigil, a night, though, most certainly, dark and when no man can worrk. It will, too, be a night of suffering.