EMPEROR AND GALILEAN
saviour and liberator had escaped from the peril o deterioration to the lap of the gods. Now the genius of the living emperor was considered holy and that of the dead emperor was consecrated at a ceremony which loosed toward heaven an eagle, symbol of his spirit, from over a burning wax image of his person. Thus the cult of the ruler maintained its virility and became the imperial religion a bond fostering unity. Of course this sapped the strength of the older, deeper faith even while it overshadowed the new cults and mysteries. But it preserved the concept of imperial authority de- spite the fact that this authority was formless and inwardly hollow and that some of those who exercised it were utterly without dignity. The man who bore the tide of emperor might not be holy but his office nevertheless was. This the people honoured whether the pur- ple had been inherited or stolen, whether he who ascended the throne had previously been the son of a slave, a cowherd, or a Sirmian peasant, whether he had been elected by the senate, elevated by the legions, or pushed to the fore by feminine jealousy. The emperor was the emperor because his office was an office sacrosanct and far beyond the reach of contamination by any despicable person who held it. This realistic faith in a universal, spiritual something as a reality of primary sovereign importance transcending the stream of time came into the possession of the young Church as a heritage from antiquity, and defending it has remained an essential task throughout all the cen- turies of Catholic history.
Nevertheless Christian judgment had always been passed on the Empire: give to Gesar what is Caesar's and to God the things that are God's, This saying, so rich in consequences, was not a revolu- tion. It was more than a revolution! Jesus did not quiver with the bitter hatred which His fellow Jews bore toward the Roman rule, but from a higher point of vantage He wrote Rome and Jerusalem on the same line. In both places the new order that in which all things are dependent on God clashed with earthly dominion, whether it was the real Empire of Rome or the hoped-for Kingdom of Israel. For the law of Christ's Kingdom was not concerned with extending control over the level plain of earthly things, but with digging deep to the places where the power of God sunders good from evil In it salvation depends only on moral decision, not on political forms or
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