The true makes of history are the spiritual men whom the world knew not, the unregarded agents of the creative action of the Spirit. The supreme instance of this-the key to the Christian understanding of history-is to be found in the Incarnation- the presence of the maker of the world in the world unknown to the world. ... The Incarnation is itself in a sense the divine fruit of history-of the fullness of time-and it finds its extension and completion in the historic life of the Church.

The moment that the state came into conflict with the higher power, the moment that it set itself up as an end in itself, it became identified with Augustine's earthly city and lost all claims to a higher sanction than the law of force and self-interest. Without justice, what is a great kingdom but a great robbery, magnum latrocinium?

But the West did not last long enough. Its folk myths and heroes became stage properties of Hollywood before the poets had begun to get to work on them.

Law describes the way things would work if men were angels.

If man limits himself to a satisfied animal existence, and asks from life only what such an existence can give, the higher values of life at once disappear.

Thus Christian humanism is as indispensable to the Christian way of life as Christian ethics and a Christian sociology.

The sublimated idealism of the Enlightenment, the spirit of the League of Nations and of the United Nations Charter have not proved strong enough to control the aggressive dynamism of nationalism.