THE ETERNAL STRUGGLE 379
cal nature. Princes of the Church, goverments and whole countries could declare open warfare on the Pope and the Curia without transcending the limits of what might be called a family quarrel. But a satirical phrase, or a verse of the Bible on the lips of a preacher, could reveal like a flash of metaphysical lightning the gulf that yawned between Christ and his viceroy on earth — a flash like that which occurred in the night, when the servant of the High Priest heard Peter deny Him thrice.
Despite his weakness, there were given to him the Keys of the Kingdom of Heaven and with them fullness of authority to make divinely binding decisions for the Church of the New Testament. The struggle between the See of Peter and its antagonists is a struggle over those Keys. When there is strife over something else, it is not a war to the death but only a conflict of far less gravity. What is to be believed concerning the natural and the supernatural, toward what goal the individual soul and mankind are finally to be directed, how the goods of the visible and invisible universe should be used, what truth is a norm of all truths, what law is a norm of all laws, and what court holds final jurisdiction over what we are and do to reach decisions contingent upon these questions, to ward off and to grant, to bind and to loose, to close and to open, are powers conveyed with those Keys, with which one single human being is entrusted by another human being, who himself spoke and acted by reason of God's om- nipotence. From this first recipient of the Keys there has descended in mystical succession a dynasty upon which there rests the promise that it is to endure until the return of the Son of Man in glory, hut also the certainty that it will be pushed hard in the combat that must go on forever against the dynasty of its foes.
These contrasted heritages were from the beginning set forth in words of prophecy, among them this: "My Kingdom is not of this world." The phrase has been hurled at the Papacy a thousand times, most frequently by those who have misunderstood its meaning. If one reads the saying correctly it means "My Kingdom is not of a world like this one" (which condemns Me through Pikte). The master was referring not to the place in which the Kingdom was to be situated, but of its derivation and character. Its place is so truly in this world of space, time and human circumstance that because of them He who
