MATHETΩN

What cunning fellows were the Church in their heyday! They wooed a new and brutish lord, the Sword of State, and for the most part they won him.

Then came Democracy and rebuked the Church with every other archy. Yet they retained some tokens of their old allegiance: Holy Matrimony was still handled by the greasy palms of lawyers; Christ’s Mass and Easter turned gaudy tricks upon the government calendar still.

But Democracy pressed on, turning the world upside-down. Is marriage a law? Then it must be implemented as the State deems equal. Are Christmas and Easter government holidays? Then they may not be religious ones.

He whom they pretend to imitate prophesied: “They that take the sword shall perish with the sword.” And yet the Church had not yet perished by the Sword of State: still, they wept petulantly at the ceremonial scratch and were the jest of bystanders.

Are the Church lessoned at last? Will they return repentant to their first lord? Lo! they strain, a million arms outstretched, toward the Sword of State! Their greed for it has never been so acute. They organize and sue and fight, they pule and pant and rage.

They will not be sated until the very gilt of angels is the grime on Caesar’s feet.