150 THE GREAT SECRET
being swallowed up by materialism. The only secure religion. the one which can say ‘non posswnus’ (‘we cannot’), has and always will have some potential, because it has the chain of instruction, the real efficiency of the sacraments, the magic of the creeds, the legitimate hierarchy and the miraculous power of the word. It is not perturbed by the rise of atheism and matcriahsm, for those two hell—hounds have been unleashed to guard its portals and savage its enemies.
I know that a good many of my readers charge me with contradiction; they do not understand that I uphold the Catholic Church with one hand, and with the other strike out without pity at all the errors and all the abuses which have been, and still arc, produced in its name and under its wing. Blind Catholics are shocked by my bold interpretations, and the self—styled freethinkers take umbrage at what they call my weakness f’or a religion which has fallen into disrepute because they have left it, or so they think. I am equally out of favour with the Christians of Veuilloc and the philosophers who follow Proudhon. I am not surprised, I was expecting it, I do not distress myself over it, I do not even glory in it. I should much prefer to please everybody because I have a sincere love for all men, but when I have to choose between the truth and the esteem of anyone whoever, even one of my dearest friends, I shall always choose the truth.
Some say that the Roman Church is now no more than a shadow; a ghost staring into the past. which only knows how to move backwards; yet all the time they complain about her encroachments. She gets hold of the women and children, absorbs property, interferes with kings, clamps down on mass movements, and even presses into her service the gold ofJewish bankers and the blood of Voltaire’s France.
This invalid, given up by so many doctors, makes a joke of Sganarelle’s pills and refuses to die; for, in spite of the great thinkers and fine talkers, she holds the keys of eternal life. One feels that if she expired, God would steal away for ever from us, and the immortality of the soul would be gone.
There is a thing profoundly true which may perhaps appear paradoxical: it is that all the dissenting Christian sects only exist by the sublime stubbornness of radical Catholicism. Against whom would Luther and Calvin have protested, may I ask, if the Pope had yielded a little ground and given way to the Lutherans or
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