644 PROSPECTS OF THE WESTERN CIVILIZATION
ing to the storm-tossed voyager an everlasting Nirvana in their stony
bosoms and were threatening him with the eternal punishment that had
been inflicted on the Flying Dutchman if he were to be so impious and
so fool-hardy as to reject their offer and sail on past them out into the
blue. From the one shore this ultimatum was being delivered to Western
souls by a Christian heresy in which the stone of Communism had been
substituted for the bread1 of the Gospel, and from the other shore by a
Christian Orthodoxy in which the body of Christ,2 who had 'come that
they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly',3 had
been petrified into a pillar of salt4 by a backward-looking ecclesiastical
tradition, To dare the passage between these two frowning Pillars of
Hercules was a venture that might daunt even a mariner whose moral
had been fortified by a previous success in making his way safely be-
tween Scylla and Charybdis. But, if, at this supremely critical point in his
voyage, the pilgrim were to feel his heart failing, he might recover his
courage and initiative by taking his oracle from Paul's First Epistle to
the Corinthians:

*Covet earnestly the best gifts; and yet show I unto you a more excel-
lent way/5

If a contrite humility was the first of the Christian virtues that were
necessary for the Western pilgrim's salvation, an indomitable endurance
was the second, What was required of him at this hour was to hold on his
course and to trust in God's grace; and, if he prayed God to grant him a
pilot for the perilous passage, he would find the bodhisattva psycho-
pompus whom he was seeking in a Francesco Bernardone of Assisi, who
was the most god-like soul that had been born into the Western World so
far. A disciple of Saint Francis who followed faithfully enough in the
saint's footsteps to participate in the saint's gift of receiving Christ's
stigmata would know, with the knowledge that comes only through
suffering, that his sacrifice had been accepted by the Lord.6 Asperges me
hyssopo et mundabor.7

* Matt, vii, 9; Luke 3d. ir. 2 i Cor. xii, 27; Eph, iv. 12.

3 Johnx. 10. 4 Gen. xix, 26. s i Cor. xiiť3i,

6 Gen. iv. 3-7.

7 Ps. 1. 9, in the Vulgate Latin text; Ps. li. 7, in the English Authorized Version.