Now, when the soul sees that the authority which governs is animated by the same divine Spirit, with whose promptings it is its inmost desire to comply, and appreciates that the aim of the commands of authority is to keep it from straying from the guidance of the indwelling divine Spirit, then obedience to authority becomes easy and light, and the fulfilment of its commands the source of increased joy and greater liberty, not an irksome task or a crushing burden. This spiritual insight springing from the light of faith is the secret source of Catholic life, the inward principle which prompts the obedience of Catholics to the divine authority of the holy church, and from which is born the consciousness of the soul’s filiation with God, whence flow that perfect love and liberty which always accompany this divine Sonship. The aim of the authority of the church and its exercise is the same as that of all other authority—secondary. The church herself, in this sense, is not an end, but a means to an end. The aim of the authority of the church is the promotion and the safeguard of the divine action of the indwelling Holy Spirit in the soul, and not a substitution of itself for this. Just as the object of the authority of the state is to promote the common good and to protect the rights of its citizens, so the authority of the church has for its aim the common good of its members and the protection of their rights. And is not the patriotic spirit that moves the legislator to make the law for the common good and protection of his fellow-countrymen identically the same spirit which plants in their bosoms the sense of submission to the law? Consequently, to fix more firmly and to define more accurately the divine authority of the church in its papal exercise, seen from the inside, is to increase individual action, to open the door to a larger sphere of liberty, and to raise man up to his true manhood in God. It does, indeed, make all the difference in the world, as the poet Goethe has so well said, to “look at the church” with “Sir Philistine” in a “narrow and captious” spirit from “the market square” stand-point, or to gaze on the church from the inside, where all her divine beauty is displayed and, in a free and lofty spirit, fully enjoyed. VII.—THE VATICAN COUNCIL (_continued_).