IV. CHRISTIANITY AND THE NEW
ORDER
IT is clear from what has gone before that Christianity is not to be identified either with ethical idealism or with metaphysical intuition.
It is a creative spiritual force, which has for its end nothing less than the recreation of humanity.
The Church is no sect or human organisation, but a new creation—the seed of the new order which is ultimately destined to transform the world. Such, at least, is the Catholic belief, and though the non-Catholic may deny the reality of this faith and the supernatural character of this life, he cannot shut his eyes to the fact that they have actually had a profound influence on the course of history and have been one of the main sources of the spiritual achievement of European civilisation. For, notwith-standing the materialism and secularism that have always been present in our culture, and which to-day seem everywhere triumphant, that achievement has been perhaps the most remarkable that the world has ever known. Europe is not a true racial or geographical unity ; it 92
CHRISTIANITY AND T H E N E W O R D E R
is, in its essence, a spiritual community, and even its vast material expansion in modern times would have been impossible without the moral force and spiritual inspiration that it owes ultimately to the Christian faith.
However secularised a civilisation may become, it can never entirely escape from the burden of its spiritual inheritance. Péguy has said of the Jews that they are a people which has no natural love of spiritual adventures. They ask only to be left alone, like other peoples, to dwell in their own land, to grow rich and to enjoy the good things of life. But the prophetic destiny with which their religion has charged them has forced them time after time against their will to leave their comfortable security and to go out into exile and the wilderness. And the same thing is true of Christendom : it cannot escape from the contagion of the divine fire that has been kindled in its midst.
Why is it that Europe alone among the civilisations of the world has been continually shaken and transformed by an energy of spiritual unrest that refuses to be content with the unchanging law of social tradition which rules the Oriental cultures ? It is because its religious ideal has not been the worship of timeless and changeless perfection, but a spirit that strives to incorporate itself in humanity and to change 93