principle of right. But he did not do so. In his famous Contrat Social, he subjected individual right to the sovereignty of number, constituted, it is true, by the will of all. The social man possesses rights only that he may abdicate them!

But the National Assembly did that which Rousseau had misdone. To its constitution it prefixed its famous declaration of "The Rights of Man." Before the French Revolution, the governing power had its obligations, but the governed were without rights.

The principle of individual right recognised, the condemnation of the ancient order of things followed. Undoubtedly that famous declaration does not contain a complete doctrine; but if the Constituent Assembly did not rise to the idea of duties as the correlative of rights, the reason is that a scientific system cannot be produced by an assembly. But it did its work. It introduced into the world of facts what hitherto had not left the domains of pure speculation.

To sum up in few words the substance of this chapter. Liberty is necessary for the development of individuality. Liberty is the faculty of exercising freely man's inalienable rights.

Before Christ came those rights were not recognised, the only right known being authority, founded on force.

By the Incarnation man's rights are based on dogma, and their exercise is a religious necessity.

The liberty to exercise them had been disallowed throughout the Middle Ages by the growth in Christendom of a theocracy, and through the union of Church and State.

The emancipation of liberty begun with the preaching of the Gospel, but interrupted during the Middle Ages, was

recommenced in the sixteenth century, and has been continued ever since.

The development of the principle of individualism, or in other words of liberty, has passed through five stages:1. Leonardo da Vinci made the individual judgment the appreciator of scientific facts.

2. Luther made that same judgment the criterium of religious, ¿e. of sentimental, dogmas.

3. Descartes made private judgment the basis of philosophic certainty.

4. Rousseau founded morality on the individual conscience.

5. The French Revolution established politics on individual right.

Thus the work which ought to have been done by the Church has been begun, and is in progress, outside of her.

That work flows logically from the Incarnation, as logically as do the religious and moral dogmas of Christianity; if the movement has been abrupt and often disastrous in its consequences, the reason is to be found in its having been wrought apart from the Church, that is, through a negative, instead of a co-ordinative process.

CHAPTER XIII

THE SOCIAL ASPECT OF THE INCARNATION

"Sail on !" it says, "sail on, ye stately ships,
And with your floating bridge the ocean span;
Be mine to guard this light from all eclipse,

Be yours to bring man nearer unto man.”—LONGFELLOW.

The Ideal Man must have a double aspect, individual and social-The social Christ is the Church-a necessary consequence of the Incarnation-The characteristics of the individual Christ must also characterize the social Christ-The marks of the Church-the marks also of its members-The Communion of Saints a consequence-The organization of the ChurchThe object to be secured by organization is the preservation of all rights -The Church contains the ideally best organization-The election of bishops-essential to the welfare of the Church-the assembly of councils also essential-The State interferes and assumes the right of nominating bishops-The history of the struggle in France-Had not the rights of the Church been invaded there would have been no Papacy, no ecclesiastical tyranny, no Reformation-Summary of argument and conclusion.

AN is individual and social. The perfect man is he whose individuality is most completely developed, and whose solidarity is also most completely developed. Christ, according to the Christian hypothesis, is the ideal man.

Therefore He is the ideal of individuality and solidarity. Therefore Christ must exist as a man individually, and as a society universally.

There must be the personal Christ, the ideal man, and there must be the social Christ, the ideal society.

The Incarnation necessitated the Church. Destroy the idea of the Church and you lop the dogma of the Incarnation of half its reality, you make it inconsequent.

If we have an ideal of a perfect man, we have an ideal of a perfect society; and if Christ be the satisfaction of our wants, we must find in Him the ideal society as well as the ideal personality.

That we have such an ideal, none can deny; every one has a theory of government, and a theory is the development of a preconceived ideal. The sentiment of liberty and the desire for order are the principle of every government, and we must find this satisfaction in Christ.

Every form of government the world has seen has been an idol of the ideal which shall harmonize and balance authority and liberty. Men have tried patriarchal government, theocracies, monarchies, aristocracies, democracies, intelligent despotisms, constitutional royalties, and none have proved completely satisfactory. In a lifetime men will sway from one extreme to another; we have scen it in France, one day a republic, next day imperialism.

Through all the aberrations of the human mind and the Utopias of socialism, the pursuit of the ideal is conspicuous.

"Ordo ducit ad Deum," said one of the greatest geniuses of the Church and of Humanity. Order is necessary for man, for without it his liberty is not assured to him, and without his liberty he cannot accomplish his destiny.

If there be a society of Christ, a prolongation of His personality, it must be organized, so as not to be a house divided against itself, but in unity.

As God is immanent in the world, keeping all the varieties of being in it bound into an indissoluble whole, so Christ is immanent in the Church, gathering all differences into one entirety and operating continually the renovation of the spiritual creation.

Religion, as its name implies, is a tie uniting man with man and all men with God. That tie is charity, which is represented as double, love towards our fellows and love towards God.

The assertion that "outside the Church is no safety," means that outside of truth is no truth. Truth is, in itself, eternal, immutable, and infinite, like life. This infinite verity is therefore in God, it is God Himself manifested, or the Word incarnate. What is the Church? It is Jesus Christ, the social Man, existing wherever there is a sparkle of truth. Wherever there is truth there is Christ, wherever Christ is there is the Church, the circle moves with its centre. Consequently, "outside the Church is no safety," means nothing more nor less than that apart from truth is nought but error.

I said that Christ was the centre and the circumference of all truth. He is the centre in His personality, He is the circumference in His Church.

Wherever truth is, there is the Church, I have said. Let us now see what are the characteristics of the Church, which is the body of Christ, inasmuch as it is the body of all who are members of Christ, and all are members of Christ who hold a truth and do not break or ignore the link that attaches them to the Absolute.

The Church has the marks of unity, sanctity, catholicity, apostolicity, and infallibility. Such, at least, are the marks attributed to her by all Catholic theologians.

If these be the characteristics of the Incarnate Word,