Here Fénelon has adequately interpreted the permanent and complete requirements of the religious life and spirit. “You tell me,” he says to his adversaries, “that ‘Christianity is not a school of Metaphysicians.’ All Christians cannot, it is true, be Metaphysicians; but the principal Theologians have great need to be such. It was by a sublime Metaphysic that St. Augustine soared above the majority of the other Fathers, who were, for the rest, as fully versed in Scripture and Tradition. It was by his lofty Metaphysic that St. Gregory of Nazianzum has merited the distinguishing title of _Theologian_. It is by Metaphysic that St. Anselm and St. Thomas have been such great luminaries of the Church. True, the Church is not ‘a school of Metaphysicians,’ who dispute without docility, as did the ancient sects of philosophers. Yet she is a school in which St. Paul teaches that Charity is more perfect than Hope, and in which the holiest Doctors declare, in accordance with the principles of the Fathers, that Love is more perfect, precisely because it ‘abides in God, not in view of any benefit that may accrue to us from so doing.’” “I know well,” he writes to a friend, “that men misuse the doctrines of Pure Love and Resignation; I know that there are hypocrites who, under cover of such noble terms, overthrow the Gospel. Yet it is the worst of all procedures to attempt the destruction of perfect things, from a fear that men will make a wrong use of them.” Notwithstanding all misuse of the doctrine--“the very perfection of Christianity is Pure Love.”[190] CHAPTER XII THE AFTER-LIFE PROBLEMS AND DOCTRINES Moving on now to the questions concerning the After-Life, it will be convenient to consider them under five heads: the chief present-day positions and perplexities with regard to belief in the After-Life in General; the main implications and convictions inherent to an Eschatology such as Catherine’s; and then the principal characteristics, difficulties, and helps of her tendencies and teachings concerning Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven. And throughout the Chapter we shall busy ourselves directly only with the After-Life in the sense of a heightened, or at least an equal, consciousness after death, as compared to that which existed before death: the belief in a shrunken state of survival, in non-annihilation, appearing to be as certainly the universal minimum of belief as such a minimum is not Immortality. I. THE CHIEF PRESENT-DAY PROBLEMS, PERPLEXITIES, AND REQUIREMENTS WITH REGARD TO THE AFTER-LIFE IN GENERAL. Now I take our chief present-day problems, perplexities, and resultant requirements with regard to the After-Life in general, to fall into three groups, according as those problems are predominantly Historical, or Philosophical, or directly Practical and Ethical. 1. _Three Historical Difficulties._