Page:Essays on Catholicism, Liberalism, and Socialism.djvu/327

are completely subjected. He calls himself the way, and every way is a center; he calls himself the truth, and the truth occupies the mean in all things; he is the life, and life, which is the present, is the middle term between the past and the future; he passes his life alternately applauded and abused, and dies placed between two thieves.

And on this account he was an object of scandal for the Jews, and of contempt for the Gentiles. They both had some idea of the divine thesis and the human antithesis, but they imagined, and humanly speaking they were not mistaken, that this thesis and this antithesis were irreconcilable and altogether contradictory; human intelligence cannot of itself comprehend the supreme synthesis which reconciles them. The world had always seen the rich and the poor, but it could not conceive the possibility of uniting in one person the extremes of poverty and wealth. But even this, which appears absurd to reason, satisfies it completely when the person in whom these contradictions are united is a divine person, who must either have appeared in this way in the world or not at all. His coming was the signal of the universal conciliation of all things, and of universal peace among men. The poor and the rich, the humble and the powerful, the happy and the unhappy, were all united in him, and in him alone, because he alone was at the same time very rich and very poor, very powerful and very humble, most happy and most afflicted. Here is that pacific fraternity which he taught to all those who received the divine word. Here is that evangelical fraternity which all the Catholic doctors have taught in an uninterrupted succession, and without intermission. The moment our Lord Jesus Christ is denied,