Transcript

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{word} = hard to understand, might be this

[Opening remarks missing]

... were developed in which people created peop- -- themselves into beings with a past, into people with a present, and into people with a future. And if they also developed the sentence -- the sense of comparison of getting between these orders, then perhaps you wake up to the fact, gentlemen, that by the nature of the animal in us, man has no past, present, and future, that these are highly frail, and very difficult creations. You believe in the future, gentlemen, but your -- your fathers 20 years ago, or before the crash in '29, believed much more in the future. What has happened in this moment in this country, gentlemen, that the faith in the future has been greatly shaken. There is no prophe- -- prophecy in this country. There are Gallup polls. There is prediction. That's the opposite. That's Egyptian magic in this moment in this country. Prophecy is at a low course.

I got a review out of one of my books, which read literally, "He is a prophet, but he is nothing but a prophet." And so I learned that in America, that's cheap today. Prophets have been -- you are not interested. They are not interest -- it's very interesting in what people are interested and what they are not interested in. It always throws some light on their own soul. I have a disc album, "Make Bold to Be Ashamed." And it was {turned} -- played in a girls' college and the girls said, "We are not interested in shame." Of course, they aren't. They are all shameless.

So if you say, "just a prophet," it means that today prophecy is no longer evaluated, gentlemen. Who is still yearning for the coming of the kingdom? Who is waiting for the Messiah? Who is still believing that the future will change all these rotten institutions around us? You don't. You only hang on for dear life, to what you have, and a little more. And then inflation comes, and you have nothing. Everybody wants to have a promotion, or a -- have bigger salary or something, gentlemen. That's a life without prophecy, because it is nothing but a mechanic increase of the present, or the past. The future is -- has a different quality from the present. Nothing of the future can be {met} by the standards of the present. The same is true of the relation of an Egyptian pharaoh and a tribal chieftain. What the tribal chieftain despises in the Egyptian is their settlement. These people sit at the fleshpots of Egypt and we, the bedouins are free in the desert, and the bedouin will always despise a city-dweller who has settled for good and says, "I can't live anywhere else but in Manhattan."

There are many of these birds with -- among you who say they have to live in

a big city. I think I told you the story of my discussion about -- about the future of America, where all the people came down on me, because I said, "We have to be centralized, and we have to protect ourselves against destruction by decreasing the size of our settlements.

And they all fell upon me and said, "Organization is the trend, and that's all we have done for the last hundred years. And we -- you want us to -- to lose our -- our freedom and all our achievements."

And I said, "But do you really mean to say that man -- Americans who build these skyscrapers are not dominated by the skyscrapers? If I do something, can I -- can't I dismiss it? The same nation that has built skyscrapers is superior to skyscrapers. There is no d- -- no law because I have done something that I forever have to go on doing this. And increase it, even, {in size}. I think it's terrible the idea that because a -- a great nation has -- built two big cities, like Chicago and New York, for the last hundred years that we have to -- to -- pursue this madness."

But that's {now} today. The idea in America, because you only believe in the visible, gentlemen. Prophecy believes in the invisible, and is perfectly immune against what it sees before its eyes.

Well, what I wanted to remind you, gentlemen -- we have done this, and I then have tried to show you that there is a mysterious, inverse ratio -- or inversion -- in our era, that the old Israel was replaced by the new Israel, that the old worlds were replaced by one world, and that now, at this moment, we can definitely say that a third millennium is beginning, in which the problem of race and family, and of breeding and of passion, and of devotion and loyalty will come to the fore, because in a mechanic era, you have lost all reverence, all respect. The greatest deficiency in America today is that people have no reverence. You have no reverence. The girls have no reverence, gentlemen. Without reverence, a society is -- is sterilized. You fear not. The fear of the -- God is unknown in this country -- except among people who haven't gone to college, I mean. But -- and it is even despised.

I read a book the other day in which the man said, "Now it was high time to give up all these old virtues like modesty, or shame, or reverence, or respect. We could do in our modern era very well without them." Just in- -- "indulgence," so to speak, was the -- the key word.

Now this then would be the story of our own world: a thousand years of Church history; a thousand years of world history; and I think we might call the next thousand years "the history of mankind," which is not the dif- -- the same as

the history of the Church, or the history of the world. Now, everybody today speaks of world history. Toynbee, World History. Spengler, Toyn History -- World History, you see. But it's very important for you to keep in mind, gentlemen, that the world is something very specific. The world history is not Church history. The Church history is not world history. And the history of the human races, of the human family, of the -- what I would like to call the "humankind," is again not the history of the world. In the next thousand years, I think the shifting of frontiers and the conquest of the capitol in 1812 by the English would not be mentioned. It would be an uncivilized event.

So gentlemen, world history is the history of wars and peaces, on the battlefield, the shifting of countries. Obviously the world consists of worlds, as I said, in antiquity. Today we call those "countries," don't we? We have taken away from the word "country" its religious separatedness, you see. A mere country was in antiquity an empire. It was a religious unit. An established church still reminds you today in c- -- old -- in -- in European countries of the fact that they were religiously, you see, separated from the rest. They were a settlement by themselves. We have it still here in the state of New York. As you know, the -- the Episcopal Church of the state of New York is still an established church. Does an- -- did anybody know that? Ja. That's why Mr. {Melish} can -- still can function.

The {fact} is still: where you have an established church, you can see it is still a shadow of the old religious connotation of a settlement. It's the -- the settlement between Church and state by which the Church says, "This is a -- has a guardian angel, this unit." The modern idea that nations have guardian angels is a direct reconciliation between the universal Christian Church and the specific spirit of one empire, and its specific, heavenly anointment, you see, an anointment of the Lord of this kingdom, because when we say, "A nation has a guardian angel," we say it is imperishable. It should be there forever. It's an element of creation, you see. Whenever you say somebody has a good angel, you mean God wanted him to exist. Now if you take away the guardian angel from a nation, then you can split Korea or Germany into corp- -- into fragments, you see. And there is no duty of the American people to restore it, because they say the nation doesn't have to be. It's just a transient, you see, attempt of s- -- to some- -- at something. And you can see, whether you say "empire," or "country" or "established church," or "nation," you must believe that as much as the Americans formed the United States of America, another part of the globe has a right to a separate existence.

This has, of course, very tragic consequences. The Americans have suffered in the last 50 years from this very deeply in their policies. Take the city of Trieste. The city of Trieste lies in a Yugoslav territory and had 72 Italian inhabitants,

interspersed with Yugoslavs and -- and Germans. When I celebrated Christmas 1913 in Florence, I run into very difficult times, because my hosts -- these were good Italians -- and had invited me. And we had champagne at Sylvester -- and I never forget it. And they -- we got talking about Trieste, and I said, "But Trieste will be ruined the very minute it ma- -- it made Italian, because the -- it is the great, one port to the Mediterranean of the whole Austrian-Hungarian Empire, and if you -- don't { }, you have one { }. Trieste is the most sovereign point there, for the sea. Vienna and Prague use Trieste. If you make Trieste -- part of Italy, then it is a dead city, because there's Venice, and there is Genoa, and Brindisi, and so nobody needs Trieste up there at the end. So you will kill this city."

They -- they were very angry with me and they said, "It's an Italian city -- has to become Italian."

Now, as you know, after these two world wars, the Americans unfortunately put their finger into this terrible mess and -- or pie -- and divided it -- wisely, you see -- between the Yugoslavs and between the Italians, both of whom are ruining the territory. It's an Austrian-Hungarian city, and as such it was a great port, you see. Now it is half-dead on the one side -- the peasantry is with the Yugoslavs -- and it's half-dead as a city with the Italians. And the Americans I hold responsible for this nonsense. The same as we have done in Korea, by the way. Everywhere. Because you have no understanding, gentlemen, of guardian angels, of the religious character of a -- of a -- of a country. You think it's all geography. You have no reverence. And you have no religion in matters of -- of these things, gentlemen. But these are creatures. These are creations. It's something very different. You cannot. As little as the baby was {heartened} by the -- by the real mother, but by the unnatural mother, in Solomon's judgment. You know this story, when the king was asked to divide the baby. And he said -- to find out -- "Divide her," you see, the baby.

And so the -- the real mother said, "Let her have the baby, but don't cut her up." And so she was found out as the real mother, gentlemen.

You -- have been very cruel mothers to all these entities. And Trieste is the -- one of the most -- saddest stories, because there are three possib- -- three possibilities. The real place of Trieste was a part of the mainland of Europe, its southernmost gateway. That was what made Trieste important, you see. And now you have blocked it. There is nothing to which Trieste can be used whatsoever, except for making constant trouble. It is nothing now but a sore spot. Perfectly meaningless. The inhabitants have been reduced from 72,000 to 28,000. And that's called politics.

It's world politics. Power politics. It is absolute nonsense. It is murder in the

cathedral, in the cathedral of God's creation, because God created the nations, and the countries, and the seas, and the mountains, and He wants us to have some understanding of -- of His purpose. You just look over the whole map, gentlemen. It's similar. South America is full of such riddles. Asia is -- it's just unbelievable. Well, of course we pay the penalty. I mean, for this reason the Russians are now in Albania. Just -- in -- { } the guns on Italy there, on their -- their planes. Nobody is -- likes to mention this -- this blunder which we made, you see. Churchill warned Roosevelt, and said, "You cannot give the Balkans to the Balkan -- Balkanic people, because the Russians will be in there instead." They are. They are in Albania. Because he said -- I mean, Roosevelt couldn't see the world as it was, and no American could.

Well, the greatest story happened in Collier's during the world war, when they suddenly published an article that this -- "This war had to end all wars," of course, the Second World War. You know every war here is fought to end all wars, and -- the First World War was fought on the same proposition -- and so they said, "This nonsense in Europe, with these nationalities must stop." There was one country at that time in Europe which was really neutral, and that was Switzerland. So he proposed that Switzerland should be divided. The French part should be given -- Geneva should be given to Paris, you see; the German part, Zrich and Basel, should be given to Germany; and the Italian part to Italy. And this can be printed in this country, and this man is not sent to jail for high treason and for corrupting the peace of the world.

You think that's just -- why not? It's logical, isn't it? Yes, gentlemen, it's as logical as the bad mother in Solomon's judgment. And she's the only one -- logic is the only thing that doesn't exist in politics. It doesn't exist. Love exists. It is not logical to bring up a baby. It's perfectly useless. It makes expenses. If you -- if a rational woman has a baby, she kills it and puts -- throws it into the river and nobody knows that she's given birth to an illegitimate child. Isn't that true? That's very logical, but it's bad. But you live by this creed that finally the world must be run on logic, because your mach- -- automobile now runs on logic, gentlemen. But you are not an automobile. And you would be very displeased if I would treat you logically.

But this is the world in which we live today. Therefore I think I have to warn you. This is the Greek mind, gentlemen. Your -- our -- our colleges are spreading an -- a total poison about history. You are brought up here with an absolute defiance of the laws of the divine universe. Nobody has told you -- tells you, and you don't believe in the order which I have tried to convey here to you. I see it from your papers. You simply don't believe it. You don't make use of the papers that I have given you. Not one of you has injected any thought or any idea into his reports, of the papers, the text I asked you to read. I am not going to discuss.

And you are grown up enough to read and to draw your own conclusions. But you won't.

The other day in the other class, I had to talk about the solidarity of the human race, which is proclaimed in these great things. What the tribes created, we need. Otherwise we could have no families. The grandfather has to be honored, in -- or a grandmother, and that's the heritage of the tribe. And so on. I talked about the solidarity of all men, gentlemen. The boy came after me -- afterwards and said, "Well, I don't see why you have to talk about solidarity. Doesn't -- isn't evolution taking care of everything?" Isn't evolution taking care of everything?

Now, gentlemen, you can see, if this is evolution, then none of these parts has anything to do with each other. It's the opposite. You can see. What you mean by "evolution," gentlemen, is that there is absolutely no solidarity. Evolution, the last, is eaten by the dogs, gentlemen, and evolution is struggle for existence, survival of the fittest. Has this anything to do with human history? But you are all Darwinians. You think evolution is something so beautiful, because it justifies ruthless competition in commerce. May be that it is right, it boosts the competition in commerce, gentlemen, but if you believe in evolution for the the human race, gentlemen, we are all lost. We all cut each other's throat. But you all believe in evolution after -- have listened three months into this course, gentlemen, which tried to prove to you that there is no such thing as evolution.

There is revolution. There is origin of new things who, in their great love and affection for the already-created order, bent over backward to serve these next -- these older orders with a new branch. Don't they serve all each other? Don't the Jews try to rescue the Egyptians from their darkness, and the tribes from their bloody sacrifices? And don't the -- don't the -- doesn't the Church try to allow everybody to live in freedom on all these four roads into life? Out goes evolution, gentlemen, if you want to understand history. Evolution in history is decadence. If something has revolved and sprung up, fresh, like Christ, you get already in the next generation the corruption by the people who -- who embezzle money or who -- who are heretics. Evolution means decay. You found a fraternity, gentlemen, and after three years already, the people are lazy, and the whole faith and enthusiasm is gone. That's natural evolution. Natural evolution means a loss of energy. That's what we call evolution.

Well, I'm -- I'm only trying to warn you, gentlemen, that history is explicit. What I have tried to show you is that every century and every millennium has added to the human awareness, to the human decision what they should do with their life. It is not a given life, but it is an accepted life. A man's life on earth is accepted, and that's your and my greatness. You accept. And in this moment,

you rise above the animal. The animal cannot accept. It is, it is {fatal}, you see, under the spell, under the instinct. But you and I can accept.

History, gentlemen, is the acceptance of our destiny, and evolution is the mere undergoing of our destiny. And therefore evolution is nothing -- you can't be happy with evolution, gentlemen. But acceptance is greater than evolving.

Every one of these steps has been explicit, has been articulate, and has found its -- its -- therefore its expression in great layers of speech, of language, of script. Think of prophecies, think of tattoo, think of temple-building, and think of script, think of poetry in Greek. It is the { } now with our own era. And I have asked permission now to give you today at least an inkling of how the Church in the first millennium has tried to encompass its task so that really and truly the people in the Church would universalize, would open up the tribes to the empires, the empires to the Greeks, the Greeks to the Jews, and vice versa.

As you know, there are four Gospels. As you know, there are 12 Apostles. As you also know, there are a thousand years of history in -- from the Church, as we set them aside, where only the events in the history of the Church are interesting. Anybody who tries to tell you, gentlemen, that between the birth of Christ and the Crusades other parts of history are important, is just wrong. What is in these first thousand years? It's the great councils of the Church who define the Trinity; Constantine becomes a Christian; the persecutions of the -- of the Christians, they are martyred; there is St. Augustine; the Christian -- the Germanic tribes invade the Christian -- the Roman Empire and become baptized and Christianized; even the Russians do this -- undergo this -- the Poles, and the Slavs; the Muslims start a new religion in competition with Christianity; the Christians define their own era and slough off the remnants of antiquity; there is -- great monasteries founded everywhere in Europe on which all our knowledge of antiquity today depends, because they only copied the manuscripts of the ancient writers. Wherever you look, gentlemen, in the first thousand years, anything is Church -- monks, bishops, confessors, martyrs, missionaries, apostles, evangelists. Nothing else is interesting in the whole em- -- history of the empire, except the relation of the emperors to Christianity. We mark them, because there is a Diocletian persecution; or there is the terrible Nero, with burning the Christians at stake; or there is the Constantine building Constantinople, and Justinian building the Hagia Sophia, the -- the -- one of the most wonderful cathedral in Christendom, or the -- later the churches in Ravenna. Has anybody been to Ravenna? Go there. It's the greatest monument of the first millennium of Christianity, the churches of Ravenna. They are the center, so to speak, of the thousand -- first millennium, and were built in the 6th century, and the high point of Christianity can still be realized there, what the Church in itself really performed.

Now what did it? In the history of the Church -- I'd like to invite you -- there are four aspects. The first is the one of the martyrs. The second is the one of the fathers, the patres -- the patristic era. The sec- -- the third is one of the monks. And the third is that of the Christian kings. Christian kings had not existed before. Now take a man like Alfred, or Charlemagne, to give you immediately some insight -- what I have in mind. Charles the -- Louis the -- the Pious. Or later Louis the Saint. Here you would put the martyrs. Who's the first martyr after Christ?

(St. Stephen.)

And the last would be those killed in 304, in the -- to the -- in the persecution of the emperor Diocletian. Then you get the patres. Well, you have heard names, beginning perhaps with Origen, who was a heretic all told; and to -- goes down to -- well, for you it's enough to know St. Augustine. There are of course many later. Johannes of Damascus -- John of Damascus, Ambrosius. Give me another name. Jerome, Hieronymous. One more? Who knows some fathers of the church?

(Cardinal Newman.)

Wie?

(Newman?)

No. That's all in the first thousand years. Newman is not a father of the Church. He's a convert.

(Bonaventura.)

What?

(Bonaventura?)

He's too late. I -- need some of the famous, like Ambrose and St. Augustine. They'll all -- in the 4th century or 5th century of our era, you see. That's the time of the fathers. What you mean is the time of scholastics, you see. It -- what you -- that's a -- you see, the Church in quite a different state, when she has no longer the leading role in the world, when there is a world history prom- -- eminent in the 19th century. Is -- don't you remember? I gave you this picture of the church of the soul, the church of culture, the church of mind, and the church of nature. The Church leads only originally, gentlemen, as long as she's in charge of the soul and of culture. Later the Church recedes into the background {company},

and as she should -- she should serve, after she is established.

Well. Now, here are four aspects then of the history of the Church in the first thousand years. These aspects try to encompass the fullness of their task. There are four Gospels: Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and John. And there is writ- -- I think no texts about which more lies have been spread than this text, in the last 150 years. It's called "Biblical criticism." That's one of the ways in which the modern Devil has taken -- gotten hold of the modern mind, by telling him that we could, by mere criticism, so to speak, improve on the Gospel. I don't think we can. It is now a kind of sobering-up, and most of the Biblical criticism, as with Homer and Homeric criticism, you know {better}, has been dismissed. We believe again that Homer wrote the Homeric poems. But for 150 years, you couldn't become a professor of Greek if you said that. And in the same way, you were not allowed to believe in the four Gospels. You had to say that everything was derived from Mark.

Gentlemen, the four Gospels are something -- a very interesting story, how the Gospel went to the tribes, to the empires, to the Greeks, and to the Jews. The first Matth- -- Gospel is of course Matthew, and not Mark, after the simple reason, gentlemen, which every orator and every writer of articles know, that it is much {later} to be short than to be long. Mark is shorter than Matthew. If you write something for the first time, you have to be longer. Mark has cut out all the -- Jewish stuff out of Matthew, because it went through Rome. And Pe- -- we know that Mark is -- was the assistant of Peter in his sermons in Rome to the Gentiles. All this has been overlaid in your textbooks, and your encyclopedias, except the Catholic encyclopedia -- which is just fundamentalist, and doesn't explain anything. You -- you read always that Peter was a Jewish Christian, and Paul was a Gentile Christian. Of course, this is nonsense. Peter went to the Gentiles in Rome and he ate with the emperor -- captain in -- in Ceasarea. The Bible says so, that he discovered a Gentile Christianity first.

But however -- I can't go into the details. What you have to know of -- believe me, as I can't prove it all to you. I've written such a book on this. But Matthew turns toward the 12 tribes of Israel, and tries to explain why bloody sacrifice now can disappear, because the Scripture is fulfilled before your eyes. So Matthew is stuffed with quotations from the Old Testament, and it's a real, legal, lawyer's proof that everything is fulfilled which the Scriptures say and therefore the law is no longer in force. And it's a very eloquent plea. If you want to understand Matthew, you must think of him standing before the tribunal in Jerusalem and pleading the case of the Messiah, and proving it by chapter and verse, from old Scripture. That's Matthew. Has anybody ever read Matthew here? I hope you have. Well, you will know that it is just stuffed with argument from Isaiah, and Deuteronomy, et cetera.

This was the first attempt to appeal to the legalistic mind of the -- the tribal inheritance of the people. And gentlemen, that's said in honor of Israel. The law is discovered in the tribe, the discipline of the tribe, we may call it perhaps preferable to the "law," and that you must think that we too admire the discipline of any tribe today. I at least do. It's a much higher discipline than you and I have, this tremendous discipline. And in order to allow people to believe that their tribal discipline can be broken takes them quite something.

You know the chieftain in -- of the Germanic tribe, who was on the verge of becoming a Christian, suddenly asked the missionary, "Do you mean to say that my ancestors are in Hell?"

And the missionary said, "I'm sorry to say, I guess so."

And he said then, "I stay with them. Then I stay with them. And good night, Christianity." And he was right. He was a great chieftain. He had this discipline of the tribe. Now perhaps you begin -- understand the heroism of the tribe. Better be in Hell with your ancestors, you see, than go out to Coney Island with the -- with the boys.

It's lost here in this country, but it is there in everybody. There is this deep feeling of identification with the past. By the way, is Mr. {Green} here? Didn't you want to go to Dummerston?

(Yeah.)

Here, I have some -- something about it. Here, it just comes to mind. I beg your pardon for interrupting, but I would be sure that I otherwise would have {forgetten} it.

So the discipline of the tribe is overcome in Matthew, because the discipline of Jesus is shown, the lamb that is led to the slaughter. The victim, you see, reconciles the -- the victimizer, the slaughterer, the -- the chieftain who -- or the medicine man who comes -- who perpetrate the sacrifice. It's repeated in the Letter to the Hebrews, by the way, this same argument: that the high priest is at the same time the victim.

Now you come to -- that's the first aspect, gentlemen: the Gospel must be preached to the Jews. Now it must be preached to the -- to the -- to the tribes, I mean. And the Jews themselves contain this tribal element and has to be eliminated. From Matthew, it goes as to Rome. Mark takes the Gospel to Rome and Peter says, "Well, these -- these Romans, of course, don't know the Old Testament," and so he begins with the baptism in the Jordan and doesn't go into Scrip-

ture, because the Old Testament doesn't mean anything to a man who comes from Egypt, or from Persia. They -- he has to be convinced by the spirit, and not by the -- by argument. And so the omission of the -- a Biblical text is it -- is the proof that Mark was read as our own tradition says, in Rome, and used of course in the other big centers of ancient country life, of ancient imper- -- empire life. And Mark therefore becomes then the patriarch of Egypt. That's a very profound tradition, because from Egypt all this came. I have tried to tell you the story. Now why is Mark the patriarch of Alexandria? Because the Gospel of Mark is the Gospel for the Gentiles in the sense of the empires, in the sense of the people who believe in Isis and Osiris. And for them, it is terribly important that the -- that the grave is empty. To this day, the Abyssinian Church in Jerusalem -- I told you this, I think -- have a procession to the empty grave in Jerusalem because in -- in the grave of Osiris, the -- the corpse has to be found, and has to be patched together, the 42 parts of Egypt, you see, the 40 parts -- the {42} districts formed the body of Osiris. And in Jerusalem, the grave must be empty, because God is not in this country, in these fragments, in this corpse, which represents the land.

So the -- the -- the -- it is a very great tradition which sends then Matthew to the Abyssinians, where they have to this day Sabbath and Sunday, circumcision and baptism, side by side, and which sends Mark to Alexandria, where -- the patriarch of Egypt. You can however look over the whole Protestant literature of the last 200 years, and it isn't even mentioned, these profound facts. Or they are dismissed as pseudo, as legend. But they explain everything. They explain the meaning of the Gospels.

You see, I've been fed on all this literature. It took me 50 years before I discovered in the first thousand years of the Church the history of Christ always began with the fact that Herod was no longer a son of David. You can read any of these liberal textbooks. They don't even mention the fact that Israel had collapsed, because Herod was no longer from the blood of David, and a -- a Gentile governed in Israel. And therefore the whole ancient covenant was in danger of becoming a joke, and being dismissed as a hallucination, as an illusion. That's why Jesus came. That's His acquittal. He didn't do it wantonly, but it was the last minute in which the prophecies of old could be saved. Otherwise He would be a blasphemer. But not -- nobody mentions this today. So Jesus is made into a nice young man of the YMCA in Jerusalem who -- dos -- does good.

And you believe it, too.

He was the man who took it upon Himself to renew the stream of history through eternity, when everything was at an end.

Now the next Gospel is Luke, gentlemen. As far as I can see, it was -- is writ-

ten toward the prophets. That was written to the prophetic Israel, which of course, the mass of the people in Israel never understood. They were tribesmen. They were lawful people. But the prophetic spirit is vindicated in Luke. That's why Luke is so very careful to point out that Jesus never called Himself the Messiah, but waited until Pontius Pilate said -- "You said it." You see, "You are the Son of -- are you the Messiah?"

And then Jesus, you see, is satisfied with His own creation at this moment by His maker and says, "You said it."

Luke is -- is -- is of the purest, prophetic instinct, so to speak, and wants to justify Jesus in the eyes of the really religious people, the best people, the people who understood the living spirit of God, and the decency and the reverence that this im- -- imposed, you see, on -- on any living soul His discretion, His -- His abashment -- bashfulness. A man who says, "I am the Messiah" is -- just belongs in the lunatic asylum. Isn't that true?

But our ministers never preach on this topic. It's too disagreeable. It's risky, gentlemen, to -- to find out what your mission is. Or you become a fanatic, or a fool, if you say, "I am the savior of mankind." Nobody can say that. And it certainly is not an example for any one of us. How could we imitate a man who has been not bashful and not humble in spirit? Luke -- is a very wonderful book in this respect, because it shows that Jesus made the impossible possible. And that's written against the prophets -- or not "against," but towards the prophetic front, toward the Pharisees, because the Pharisees, gentlemen, by and large, were the great people of Israel. They were very -- you would be proud if you were a Pharisee. They were the good people. Today there is a funny notion about the Pharisees, you see. The Pharisees were the only ones who still believed in the prophecy, in the prophets, and not in Herod, and not in assimilation, and not in Greek culture, and not in Roman power. The Pharisees were stubborn mules, Israelites.

(Sir, were the Pharisees the good people who were damning something better?)

Very good. Excellent. True. They were the real Israelites. And Jesus {stepped} and said, "You can't be an Israelite anymore." You can imagine how they hated Him. You would have, too, my dear man. You would all have been found on the side of the {realisters}.

Now, and the fourth group, gentlemen, and that's perhaps the most surprising. John, who wrote in Ephesus, in the great city of the Diana of Ephesus, and on Patmos in the Greek archipelago -- he wrote against the Greeks. If you read today explanations, they all make you believe what -- the first sentence in the --

in the John -- Gospel of John -- John refutes, that he wrote -- for the Jew. But modern Biblical criticism is a conspiracy, gentlemen, of the first order. Homer and the Bible have suffered more from the spirit of the 19th century than any other group of, so to speak, creations of -- of the spirit. Homer had to be dissolved into little folklore-poems, and the Bible had to be dissolved into -- into -- well, I really don't know into what yet -- into a -- into a mosaic of artificial compositions -- here a fragment, and there a fragment, and then dovetailed, and then cut out, and then --. Nothing of the kind, gentlemen.

What are the four Gospels? The four Gospels are the same Gospel at four different spaces -- moments of its existence. You can only understand the Gospels if you begin to see that the spirit moves in sundry places from place to place. One is written in Jerusalem. One is written in Rome. One is written in -- probably in Greece. It is tradition that Luke was written in Boeotia, in Thebes, where the famous Oedipus comes from, for the prophetic Judaism which was all over the empire at that time. There were Jews everywhere, good people, and -- by the way, proselytized Romans and Greeks, who -- who adhered to the pure faith of the prophets. And then John, written for the consumption of the poets and the scientists of the Greek tradition. Or the stoics, and the Gnostics, and the philosophers and the people who wrote the plays for the Roman mob and populace.

I've already given you evidence that Jesus had to be the -- made the poem that a human being was great- -- a greater poem than all poetry. And that's the content of John's Gospel which begins, "In the beginning, there was the power to give names." That's the logos, the power of naming. And then this name fell upon Jesus. He became the Son of God, because he kept under His father's word all his life, as a maleable creature all the time -- every day coming forth afresh. It is very clearly all said in the -- we have in a letter of -- by the way, of the New Testament, He's explicitly -- it is -- says explicitly, "We are God's poem." That's the Greek word, poema { }, as men. "We are God's poem."

So the four Gospels tell you the march of the -- of the Church. In order to penetrate into these four regions, the Church had to write its Gospel in four forms. So these forms cannot be reduced. When you always hear of the Synoptics, gentlemen, you must know that's a conspiracy, because the Synoptics are an attempt to reduce the Gospel to one Gospel. If you ever understand the spirit at all, you must know that, for example, the family of spirit is laid out in a father, a mother, a son, and a daughter. And they have -- it takes four before you know what the family is like. If you only see one individual, you know nothing. The four Gospels cannot be reduced one to the other. You only know the Gospel, because there are four forms of it. That's the Gospel. The Gospel cannot be reduced to one.

All the attempts of modern man to have the harmony of the Gospels or to tell the story of Jesus are just without any reverence for the workings of the spirit, gentlemen. If I experience the world war, and my wife experienced the world war, and my -- our children experience the world war, the war -- world war is only experienced if you take together the way I have experienced it, my wife has experienced it, and my children have experienced it. It cannot be reduced to my experience. It's impossible. It's ridiculous. The attempt is made by statistics, and by all this nonsense. Gentlemen, any real event -- look here at this class, this course. I experience it one way. The loafers experience it another way. Here, our friend who comes here visiting experiences it in quite another way -- he looks into this. And the people who try to do some work here look at it another way. I cannot experience the course; you cannot experience the course; he cannot experience the course. We can only experience the course together, only af- -- if we should let our experiences stand as they are. Gentlemen, a war -- the world war is not yet ready, because the experiences of the Japanese with the bomb, and your experience, which is non-existent -- of the world war -- and my experience, and to me -- it's just a repetition of the First World War, and to the boys who went to the front in the first place -- these experiences all differ.

Perhaps you take this down, gentlemen: in -- only a group can experience an event. The individual experience is nothing. Don't think you can ever make experiences. What do you experience when you go on a -- on a charter trip in a bus to the country, or to Rome, with all these guided tours, gentlemen? It's impossible for you there to make any experience. It's somebody else's experience which you repeat. The man who -- who makes the tour, who prepares the tour, you see, the promoter -- he is the only one who forces you to make the same experience -- his experience. If you want to go to Europe as an experience, you cannot do it in a guided tour. It's impossible. But you {can't make} experiences, you see, gentlemen. The modern man, because he has been told that he must make the experience, never makes an experience. If you are reasonable, you have an alter ego. You have a friend. Two people already can make real experience, two friends. That's why students must have friends, gentlemen, because it takes three -- four people together to make a real experience.

Now the Gospels testify to this, gentlemen. They show how in going to other people I must talk a different language. And it remains the same Gospel. I wouldn't believe in Christ if He had written one book. That would have made Him too much of a -- of an equal to me. And I would have said, "Well, I -- books I can write, too." But this amount of faith of Him, that He waited until four different generations, and four different people, so to speak, capitalized on His Gospel, that's perfectly convincing to me. That no human being -- simple human being can do.

So gentlemen, the four Gospels to this day argue and demonstrate the divinity of Christ by their very existence, because the same spirit creates different creatures. The four Gospels and the four Evangelists are -- one perhaps written in 35, the other written in 45, the next written in 55, and the last written in 6- -- in 68 or something; that is, decade by decade, they articulate in different manner to the r- -- whole world the same truth: that man can enter their orders, you see, but he must come out unscathed. He cannot become a tribesman, although he can have a father and a family, you see. He cannot become a Greek, although he may write poetry. And so on and so forth.

Freedom of man, gentlemen, is proclaimed in the Gospel, and the freedom is exemplified in the four Gospels according to the greatest necessity of the tribes, the empires, the Greeks, and the Jews. The same then, gentlemen, is true of, of course -- this is the first conquest, so to speak, of the whole universe by the Gospel. And you can see, once one tribe, one empire, one group is already successfully attracted by this new style, the battle is won. It is decided. You have only then to repeat the performance. Instead of going to the Roman Empire, you go to the Chinese Empire, you see. There's -- there's nothing but repetition. The principle is solved, you see, that this is the message for any inhabitant of a, you see, settled country. Can you see this? This -- this principle had to be solved. The -- the key had to be found, you see, which would unlock the door of the mentality of this kind of people, understood? Yes or no?

(I { }.)

Well, that's all I want to know.

Gentlemen, still the achievement of the Gospels' age is the willingness to die. It seems a small thing for the Christians to die, if this brought together the whole world -- mankind in one faith. You can easily imagine that if a victim was -- was in order -- in antiquity to pacify the gods of the city, that Agamemnon could slaughter his own daughter in order to have a favorable wind for sailing against Troy -- think of Iphigenia, you see -- if Antigone could be killed because she had buried her -- her brother, then the -- the -- the Christians thought it was a very moderate price that they should be sacrificed for the unity of the Church. You must not think in modern terms that a Christian was -- died as a martyr for his faith. They never felt that way. They felt that they were the seed for a tremendous harvest. If you -- you are all such ridiculous -- such atoms in the universe, that you think of yourself and your conviction as anything important. You -- the Christians of course formed a body of Christ; they were His walking life on earth. And they said, "What He started, we continue. And how small is the price? Soldiers fall on the -- { } field of battle. Boys have accidents in the driving of their car. Athletes break their legs in skiing, or in -- in football, and we have the

great privilege in risking our life for the union -- unity of mankind of God's creature, man, of His Son." It seems so very -- the way modern books deal with the martyrs -- it is just funny to me. I mean, Titus -- Andronicus and The Lion, and The Cocktail Party, I mean, Shaw, it's all terrible. They have no idea what a martyr was. A martyr was a member in a tremendous strategy. He was not a single individual who had gotten into a subversive organization.

You have no idea any more from the whole process that re-created the human race that you are the beneficiaries, gentlemen.

(Hasn't the time for martyrs has really passed -- )

What?

(The time for martyrs has really passed, largely. I mean --)

That's what you think. It never has, gentlemen. Never has. Never has. It is not { }, no. But at this moment you allow me not -- no -- you see, we can't afford it, because I have only two meetings. So please, we can talk about this privately.

It is true that after the Diocletian persecution, gentlemen, the strategy of the Gospel, that martyrs had to wait for the opening of the gates to these four great orders -- Greeks, Jews, tribesmen, empires -- that this was no longer the only way. After the martyrs, we have the fathers. You can say that the martyrs died for the coming of the Church. And the Church is anywhere where you square the circle, where you open up the doors to the -- to the red Indian, to the farmer, to the man of his cla- -- professional class, to the Greek, and to the Jew. Where you have this, there is the Church. The -- they died for it. The fathers had to live for it. The great difficulty for our understanding at this moment, of the history of the Church perhaps, is that you do not take seriously the necessity that death and life have to be created in their meaning, but you don't know either to die nor to live. You just only know to play, and to be under narcotics. If you go to the hospital, they give you anesthesia. That's not the way to die. And if you live, you try to make everything into play. That's nothing to live. Life is serious, gentlemen, and death is fruitful. And you do -- want to live a sterile death, gentlemen, and a playful life.

And so, it is very ha- -- difficult that you all are just Greeks, to talk to you about the history of the Church, which is serious business. Serious business means that the martyrs knew what they were doing when they died. Every death of one martyr made a thousand communicants. It was a very fruitful propaganda. And a good word for "propaganda," as you know, is "propagation" of the Gospel. It means literally "propagation." The denaturalization by the word

"propaganda" must not faze you. Propaganda is the poison, and propagation is the medicine. And you have nothing of course in the world, without its abuse. Propagation is positive. I'm trying to propagate the truth, gentlemen. I'm not making propaganda for the truth. Can't you see the difference?

But today you -- you cast out the propagation with the propaganda, and you say it's propaganda when it is propagation. And you swallow advertising as not propaganda. Propaganda is nonsense, is -- is -- that is, not "nonsense," but it is the -- the appearance of the real thing. The real thing is propagation. A man who begets children is propagating the race, is he not? And the man who advocates over the radio for others that they should have many children is making propaganda. What's the difference, gentlemen? The propagator is part of the tree which he tries to increase, and to make prosper. And the propagandist is outside this stream of life, that he tries to persuade others to swim in. A propagandist can -- can laugh while he is talking big, can he not? The propagator cannot. He's part and parcel of the same plantation.

Now, the fathers had to propagate the Gospel, gentlemen, for those who would live to become 80 and 90. All these fathers of the Church -- now I know the four I wanted to give you -- Anthony, the father of the monks, of the desert; Ambrosius, the first author of our Christian hymns; St. Augustine, who translated the death of the martyrs into the death of the Roman Empire in his City of God; and Jerome, who translated the Bible into another tongue, into Latin. They are the four fathers which you must know by name: Antony, Ambrose, Augus- -- St. Augustine, and Jerome. The reason is, gentlemen, that in these four so-called fathers, the process is repeated of the four Gospels. That is, they take the Gospel now to the living, and show ways in which you can live in this Roman Empire, and still remain a child of God. Gentlemen, when Constantine became emperor -- oh, pardon me, I have made a mistake. The -- the man I must also name is Athanasius. I'm sorry. It is another "A" -- strange how many of these people started with "A." Anthony, Athanasius, Ambrose, St. Augustine, and Jerome.

Why do I tell you this, gentlemen? Perhaps it is of -- for -- of you for some practical -- of some practical importance. On May 26 is Trinity, as far as I know, and -- the Sunday of Trinity. In 325, the emperor of Rome bowed to the Trinity. What does this mean, gentlemen? The emperors of Rome for 300 years had been gods, and this is still in our tradition known that Caesar was God, because the Caesars of Rome was the -- were for you and me, so to speak, the representative of the pharaohs, of the god-kings, god-emperors of antiquity. The empire founders. Anywhere where an empire -- there is an empire, the -- the leader is -- is God, or the son of God. So in the Roman emperor, gentlemen, in 300, who became a Christian, there was a terrible danger for Christianity. These martyrs had declined to throw incense to the emperor. Now the emperor said, "Live with me.

Come to my court. We'll love each other." But the people for 300 years had knelt before him and called him "God." If Jesus was not also God, then the emperor was still higher than He. Then the emperor just, so to speak, invited Jesus into his palace, and remained emperor, and he didn't go to church, and became a man.

The question of the Trinity, gentlemen, is the question of Mr. Hitler in our days. If you abolish the Trinity, then Hitler is Christ. I've heard these people say to me, ministers of the Gospel, "Of course, you have to admit that Hitler is Christ." You laugh off this, gentlemen, but Huey Long wanted very much to be a second Christ. You'll have this here every day in this country if you give up the Trinity. The Trinity means that no other mortal, except Christ, can be deified. And that's a very practical gospel, gentlemen. If you have despotisms, if you have Lenin's corpse worshiped in the Kremlin to this day, and if you have Mr. Stalin deified in his own time, and then now he has to be debunked at great expense later, you don't see the real -- nobody today seems to understand the Trinity. It's the only salvation of human freedom. Jesus, the man, the servant, the despised one, is God. You buy for this very small price of recognition of His divinity your freedom from all other divinities on earth, even for medicine and its divine authority. A Christian has not to bow to medical authority. He can still say, "I don't want to be operated on." You see it in Christian Science, that there is such a freedom. Don't you understand that as soon as you dismiss the Trinity, all the powers around you establish themselves as God. The corporations. They say, "We are God." You're children, gentlemen. You are running today into a polytheistic society which every corporation says to its men, "We are your God; you have to adore us." And they have seniority, and they have pensions. They never fail to in- -- to invoke all these benefits, and so these poor employees do not any longer dare to run away. And there they are, enslaved.

But you laugh at the Trinity as though it was an indifferent matter. Gentlemen, your own personal freedom is vouchsafed by nothing but this little formula of the Trinity, because it puts the servant of servants, the lowest of the lowest above the office-holder of a big corporation, of an empire, and all the rich people in Palm Beach, Winter Park, and Miami, et cetera. You worship the rich in this country. I have seen it. People fall down on their knees, in -- in spirit, before this man {Greenwald} of DuPont. I've never felt such contempt for the Dartmouth student body than when this happened here, when he came here and gave his lecture, and the boys said, "Now we have seen the truth. Now we have seen the light," just because a -- a man married the daughter -- the richest heiress in the land. Despicable. And certainly pagan. Absolutely pagan.

So please don't despise the Trinity, gentlemen. So far it has made for all our decency in human intercourse. That we are all human beings comes only from the Trinity. And that had to be said for the living, not for the dead. That's Atha-

nasius. It took him 40 years to erase the Aryan heresy that Jesus was only like the Father, and not identical with Him. And that was the whole point. The Caesars had to be -- had been gods in their own right, you see. They had never been called "god-like." They were God. Therefore if you said Jesus was only god-like, you see, He belo- -- remained under Caesar, and Caesar was not dethroned. And the fact that Constantine left Rome and the pope stayed in Rome would have made no sense. The whole reason why Constantine had to leave, you see, was that he wanted to express his humiliation that he was no longer a Caesar, no longer a god in his own right.

So you -- I hope you -- make you feel that the history of the Church is terribly interesting, very exciting, because in every century something new had to be gospelized. In the {fourth} century they had to say first that Caesar was not God. The old Christians didn't have to say anything, because they were just crucified if they said this, you see. But now they had to be taught. So the Gospel of the Trinity takes rather the place of the martyrdom of the Christians. If the emperor can say the Trinitary formula, he no longer has to execute the ...

[Tape interruption]

... being fed by the hermit they would lie down with him peacefully. And the hermit would attract monks and abbot and abbot. And the farmers would come and settle -- clear the land around them. The -- if you want to understand the hermit, gentlemen, compare him to the modern inventor, or to the -- because -- or to the medieval artist. He's the trailblazer of an -- to -- to lead people into parts of the universe on which no existence had been deemed possible. It's like a man going into the Arizona desert, without irrigation, and saying, "We can make a living." Not with technical means, but just as an act of faith.

You underrate, gentlemen, the history of mankind if you do not see that our world explorers, Mr. -- Admiral Byrd, and Scott, and Percy, and Franklin, and Columbus, are the secular versions of the Christians of the first thousand years. World history translates into terms of the world, everything the Church has done in the first thousand years. First you must encourage the human soul that this is God's world, before people can go then later and see -- and say there are no dragons, there are no ghosts." The ghosts have been laid by the hermits. And after the ghosts had been laid, it was easy to go to the North Pole, because you didn't expect any ghosts there any longer, just the North Pole, you see. As long as you expect ghosts, you don't go there as a geographer. {It's just} the same type of man, who first -- somebody has to come, you see, and tell you that your soul will not be ruled there. You may lose your life, you see, or your health, or your leg, you see. But you are not fighting against demons, and against the winds of the gods. It isn't forbidden to go there. You understand? This taboo had

first to be broken.

Then we come to -- to St. Augustine, gentlemen. The martyrs had lived their voluntary death in the empire, gentlemen, but St. Augustine translates it into The City of God and said, "In every minute, man has to l- -- survive the order of his own time. The city of man is never the City of God." And he introduces this, what we have inherited as the separation of Church and state. It has taken all the time new forms and will have to take new forms in your time, gentlemen. State and Church are the constant dividing line between present and future. Now you cannot be a Christian in a -- as a -- and a citizen without a dilemma. The old Christians of -- before Constantine had solved this dilemma by not being citizens. Very simple. They died for not being citizens. Now you had to live. Being a citizen, not being a citizen, you see. And that's any Christian's problem ever since. St. Augustine is an eternal character, because the city of man and the City of God are in all of us. Every one of us still lives from the end of time his prophesied destiny, and he lives under the laws of the country, you see. The state is for the immediate-now. The Church is for the constant direction of all history. They always clash, because your immediate-now under the tax laws of the United States is a very precarious one, you see. You have to pay so much to Uncle Sam. And you have to pay it; otherwise you go to prison. That's the state. It has nothing to do with the Church, obviously; nothing with the destiny of -- of man, because the tax laws may be rotten. The country may be overtaxed. So your soul is not in your paying taxes. It cannot be, you see. You just do it.

Now what's your relation of your yearning for a higher justice and your having to fulfill the state's -- the government's justice, you see? You have two justices. Everyone has, gentlemen. Any attempt to believe that there is only one justice are just wrong. There are always two laws: a higher law and a lower law. And the statute law is always lower, because it can be changed. The eternal law cannot be changed. That's our law of existence.

You -- again, we are in a very fallen state today, because America has lost this -- this -- this discrepancy between the messianic law -- justice and the momentary justice. You think it's all the same. Mrs. Roosevelt thought she could make -- bring Heaven to earth. She can't. I mean, we had a messianism, a humanitarianism of the state in the last 20 years, and most of you are totally corrupted by this. You actually think that the state can make you happy -- or you -- you thought so. It's, I think, vanishing, but it -- that was the Gospel. You see, the identity of the secular state with the eternal state. And St. Augustine is the man who had a -- again, as against Hitlerism, you see. As -- as Athanasius said, "No ruler must be worshiped as infallible." And the pope is only infallible inasfar as he says that, you see. The pope is made infallible to combat the infallibility of Caesars. He's not infallible for himself, for his own power, but he is infallible in stating that no

mortal man is God, because otherwise there is nothing to proclaim in the Gospel.

Now, gentlemen, in the same manner, I think, it had to be proclaimed by St. Augustine that no Christian government in itself can take away from us our yearning for a better government. The prophecy is -- rescued by St. Augustine in his City of God.

Jerome, of course, by his translation into the -- into the next language, frees us from our mother complex. The mother tongue is not the only tongue in which the life can be expressed, gentlemen. We know today that the spirit has to be transported in every generation. We said -- used to say "translated." I like to use "transported" to shake you up to the fact that translation means "transported." That is, it means -- it carries from one side of an abyss to the other, of bridging the time. Translation is always necessary, gentlemen. You cannot preach the Gospel without translation. Any attempt of a fundamentalist is making 10,000 Jews and 5,000 atheists rightly so. A fundamentalist is the enemy of Christianity, because he makes it impossible for a decent man to believe that the God of the Christians is a living God. He's just a paper god. He -- because a fundamentalist cannot translate. They say the letter makes vivified, but the letter killeth. And this sentence, that "the spirit vivifies, and the letter killeth" is expressed in this tradition of Jerome where the Bible is translated into Latin. There are now, I think 1,018 translations -- into different languages -- of the Bible. And that is another proof of its -- reality, you see. It has been translated into every existing tongue.

The last. No, I think that's enough.

We have -- the globe is -- Antony goes between the worlds. St. Augustine goes between the existing empire and all the next empires, the next governments of the world and moves us on from one to one, and never admits that any one, as it exists, is the perfect one. Athanasius subjugates the state to the Church in the -- in the point of dogma. And Jerome says the Gospel cannot be preached by repetition. It has to be translated.

With this, gentlemen, the Roman Empire has shot its gun, so to speak, shot its ammunition, and we come now the -- to the second half of the Church -- Church's migration into the world 500 to 1000. Very short. One part is the monks who -- who preserve now for the barbarians the literature of antiquity, and say, "These tribes must not start all over again, as though no -- no empires had been lived, and no Greeks' culture. We -- we -- we preserve, we copy, so that in these barbaric city-less tribes, there is still this reverence, this respect for a quite different way of life, an opposite way of life, as a matter of fact. And the monks, gentlemen, the Benedictine monks from the founding of Monte Cassino in 529, to

the days of the University of Paris, are the librarians of the West. And they are the librarians of all antiquity, pagan as well as Christian. Then they hold them against -- up against the actual new tribalism, the new invading, marching, roaming, unsettled hordes -- from the West, the German tribes; from the East, the -- the Moslems. Gentlemen, if you think that an empire was a settlement in a separate part, you must admire divine providence that at that moment made all men move towards each other where tribes had roamed, without any connection with each other on a warpath. And where empires had walled themselves up with Chinese walls in antiquity, the so-called migration of tribes in the Middle Ages is already a tremendous difference, because all the tribes are set in motion and it can only end by their filling the whole globe in knowledge of each other, in knowing each other, in mutual acceptance. An old tribe, gentlemen, as I have tried to tell you, is tattooed, so that if you want to -- to speak a different language, you have to found the next tribe. And we get 100,000 different tribes. The migration of tribes already means diffusion of tribes, and we should perhaps call it the fusion of tribes. All modern nations are fusion of many tribes. The Normans, and the Gauls, and the { }, and the Aquitainians, and the Franks, and the Bavarians, and the Dutch. Gentlemen, what do we have in England? In England is the Angles, and the Saxons, and the Normans, and the Danes, and the Picts, and even the Scot, aren't they? And they're all together. Gentlemen, modern nations are a fusion of tribes. That is, the modern empires have consciously, so to speak, already combined two different forms of ancient ways, in their notion, in their foundation. They have not suppressed the tribal notions, you see, but they have already found a Christian way and made -- li- -- leaving -- making people proud of their -- keeping them proud of their genealogy on the one-hand side, and making them proud of their fusion into civilized nations.

Therefore, the nex- -- last step in this migration of the Church into the world are the Christian kings. They are the outcome of this new fusion. King Alfred is a very good point -- case in point. What -- does anybody know to which tribe he belonged? Who knows this story, a little bit?

(Wasn't he a Saxon?)

What?

(Wasn't he a Saxon?)

Well, there we are. You say he was a Saxon. Let's suppose he was. But they were Romans, of course, in his fold, old Roman in his -- in his kingdom, and so of course he governed a mixture. If you read "The Ballad of the White Horse," the best poem of the last 50 years, by -- by Chesterton, you will find a very careful explanation of how Alfred did fuse the tribes and made England. He's the first

king of England, so to speak, in this deeper sense.

That we today speak of national history as "natural," gentlemen, is the outcome of this fusion of the 500 years of the mission of the royal kings to their tribes. Gentlemen, the story of these tribes is very queer. The king became a Christian and demanded that all others should, too. It was very simple. The -- the whole peoples were baptized at once, as you know. And that's certainly not the way in which Paul was converted, you see. So gentlemen, in the second half of the first millennium, Christendom advances in exactly the opposite manner from the way it advanced in the first 500 years. In the first 500 years of its march, only individual souls are converted. And St. Augustine is perhaps the last great soul so converted. That's why we read his Confessions, because he's the last Christian who becomes the Christian single. You can't, and I can't. We find ourselves in a Christian world and in Christian churches. And therefore, if you become a Christian, it's by habit, or inheritance, or prejudice, or what-not, but not in the old sense that you find yourself really outside the atmosphere of this tradition. If you think you are outside, you may have lost the contact, but it's still around, you see. The atmosphere is everywhere. Therefore, the -- the -- this is also the tradition of the Christian kings. The Christian kings bring in as their great hope and their endowment all their peoples.

But you see, these peoples feel that they have not been corrupted by the persecutions and the philosophers of the Greeks. You read the pride of the Saxons, or the Franks -- what's their pride when they become Christians? They say, "We, as soon as we heard of Christ, have become Christians. You and the Romans for 300 years killed them off -- all off. You refuted them in your books, you Greek philosophers. We are neither Greeks nor Romans anymore, you see. We are superior. We are pure." You don't know this, perhaps -- this tradition. But it's very important. It's a little bit like the Mormons who said, "We have a direct revelation in America. We don't have to wait for these Europeans to be Christians in America." You know, that's the idea of the Book of Mormons: that the 10 lost tribes, or some mysterious other group received a direct revelation here, un- -- in the Rocky Mountains, close to Utah. Where the Christian kings brought people into the storehouse of Christianity, who had never been corrupted or led astray by Egyptian idolatry, or Greek philosophy, gentlemen.

So it took that long until the attempt of Matthew was called into the -- a most rigorous practice. D- -- Matthew had appeared -- appealed to the tribesman in Judah -- in the Jew. The -- King Alfred or Charlemagne, when they baptized the Saxons -- or with Boniface, and all these con- -- missionaries, gentlemen, comes to people who really have never gone any step further than tribalism, who have been unspoiled by any imperial influences, any Jew- -- law, interest, or influence of Judaism or any influence of the -- of the -- Athens and -- and -- and Rome.

And I would like to end on this tone -- note, gentlemen, that it took a thousand years until the intent of Matthew to preach the Gospel to the tribes was put, so to speak, executed in its purest forms, because then -- then only had the Gospel reached, geographically, those areas where pure tribalism still persisted. Matthew had to write for the tribesman in the Jew, for the shepherds of Palestine, but they all adhered officially, you see, to the Temple of Solomon, and to the prophetic tradition. So it was only, so to speak, a -- a remnant of tribalism to which he could appeal, because in the whole Mediterranean space at that time there was a mixture of all these forms. Nothing was ever -- they had to be pure there. But when it came to the year 1000, gentlemen, the people in Iceland in 999 decided to become Christians. And you may very well say that the people of The Edda were the people of whom Matthew had thought, when he wrote his Gospel. That's very mysterious. Can you see the -- my point? And I -- you may say that when Franz Xava went to -- went to Japan, or the famous Jesuit mission went to China in 1685, that then they reached that empire which was nothing but empire, and which was therefore the aim of Mark when he wrote his Gospel in a -- for, you see, Rome. Now that's the way the -- the spirit of God moves, gentlemen, far beyond our little aims, and intents, and purposes. When they wrote, Matthew and Mark, they were just inspired, you see. But it equipped the march of the Church into the future, you see, in this one direction forever.

Thank you.