The fundamental difference between Catholicism and Protestantism lies
ultimately in the old conflict between liberty and discipline, or rather
in the degree to which each is valued. The most ardent lover of liberty
has to admit that his own personal inclinations cannot form a
satisfactory standard of conduct. He must in certain matters subjugate
his will and his inclination to the prevailing laws and principles and
beliefs, and he must sacrifice his private aims and desires to the
common interest, even when his reason and will may not be convinced.
That is a simple matter of compromise, and the sacrifice is made as a
matter of expediency and duty rather than as a matter of emotion. But
there are other natures to whom it is essential to live by emotion, and
to whom it is a relief and delight to submerge their private
inclinations in some larger national or religious emotion. We have seen
of late, in the case of Germany, what tremendous strength is generated
in a nation which can adore a national ideal so passionately that they
can only believe it to be a blessing to other nations to have the chance
given them, through devastation and defeat, of contributing to the
triumph of German ideals. I do not mean that Catholicism is prepared to
adopt similarly aggressive methods. But what Hugh did not find in
Anglicanism was a sense of united conviction, a world-policy, a faith in
ultimate triumph, all of which he found in Catholicism. The Catholic
believes that God is on his side; the Anglican hopes that he is on the
side of God. Among Anglicans, Hugh was fretted by having to find out how
much or how little each believed. Among Catholics, that can be taken for
granted. They are indeed two different qualities and types of faith, and
produce, or perhaps express, different types of character. Hugh found in
the Roman Church the comfort of corporate ideals and corporate beliefs;
and I frankly admit that the more we became acquainted with Catholicism
the more did we recognise the strong and simple core of evangelicalism
within it, the mutual help and counsel, the insistence on reparation as