And that brings us to another cusp in this only too risible indent upon the infinite. Religion is an attempt, a noble attempt, to suggest in human terms more-than-human realities. The seat of Peter has always lain beyond the Alps. The church, like the poet, is an ambassador from abroad; from the strangest of countries, that lying within our own bosoms. And what is the virtue of an ambassador? Surely, tact. The one thing that makes ambassadors useless or dangerous is too great a zest to blurt out truths that many of us know, but have agreed not to emphasize. He thinks in the language of his homeland; he must speak--though always, we trust, with winningly foreign accent--the tongue to which he is accredited. The ambassador knows, better than any other, that truth is condiment, not diet. It is rough manners to shove truth at people when they are not expecting it. There is always charming significance in popular phrases. “The dreadful truth” is such a one. Truth is always dreaded, not so much because it is gruesome or tragic, but because it is so often absurd. The church, then, comes before us as envoy from the world of spirit to the world of flesh; and here is the anomaly, that only too probably these worlds have small interest in common. So is our envoy but demi-potentiary. In medieval time the problem was simple; flesh and spirit were assumed to be deadly enemies one of the other. But nowadays we lean toward a casuistry far more perplexed; that body is soul’s noblest ally, that whatever makes flesh satiate and merry is so much gain for soul. Blithe, ruddy doctrine! Yet, sadly enough, it is even possible that truth is neither Trojan nor avoirdupois. Flesh and spirit sometimes look terribly incommensurable. Saint Paul did not fully plumb the real tragedy of the situation. The most bitter wisdom of the human voice is the very opposite of Paul’s cry. Transpose it so: _Video deteriora proboque, meliora sequor._