the semblance of the constitutions of the Church and State to the perfect constitution of God's heavenly kingdom. The Church is the most perfect society extant. Her authority emanates from one invisible through one visible head, pervading her entire system, down to the very lowliest official in the service, and binding her many and varied members into a very marvel of unity. And a unity not of bodies alone, such as the State can boast — bodies held together by moral or even physical force and aiming at social order and temporal prosperity — but a unity of souls, and hence of bodies too, whose object is man's spiritual welfare, whose methods are to convince with truth and persuade by love, and whose high destiny it is to bring man into the everlasting possession of the all-good — of God Himself. By reason, therefore, of her divine origin, mission, and ultimate destiny, the Church is as far above the State as God above man, as the soul above the body, as heaven above earth; and as such, while teaching us to give to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, she justly claims that in a conflict of rights our first duty is to give to God and God's Church the things that are God's.
But in this utilitarian age we are apt to reckon claims to our allegiance according to the benefits we receive from the claimant. What, then, has the Church done for mankind, and what the State? Nineteen hundred years ago each started on its beneficent mission. The State being a creation of the people, backed up by the support of the majority,
