This world-wide spirit, rooted in the preaching of our Lord, has been taken over in its full breadth and depth by the Catholic Church, and by her alone. The Church is not one society or one church alongside many others, nor is she just a church among men; she is the church of men, the church of mankind. It is this claim that gives her action its persevering determination and its grandeur. The interests of the Church have never been subordinated to purely national interests, nor has the Church ever put herself for long in bondage to any state. Her members belong to this or that nation, and national interests are bound to exert some influence on the Church’s action. There have even been times when the Church seemed to be no more than a handmaid of the German emperor or the French king. But those were only episodes, only brief and passing checks in her world-wide mission. She had to fight hard for it again and again, in bitter struggles, but she won for herself in virtue of her mission to all mankind, her spiritual freedom from princes and peoples, and so secured the sovereignty of the Kingdom of God and the independence of Christian faith and morals. As such a supra-national power which assembles all men and all peoples in one Kingdom of God, she is able, far more than any national organization, such as the Anglican, Swedish, or Russian churches, to evoke the best that lies dormant in the individual peoples and to make it serviceable for the propagation of the Kingdom of God. All peoples, each with their special aptitudes, are her children and all bring their gifts into the sanctuary. The elasticity, freshness of mind and sense of form of the Roman combine with the penetration, profundity and inwardness of the German, and with the sobriety, discretion and good sense of the Anglo-Saxon. The piety and modesty of the Chinaman unite with the subtlety and depth of the Indian, and with the practicality and initiative of the American. It is unity in fullness, fullness in unity.[3] The individual life of men and peoples—the most precious thing in the world and unique in character—flows with its rich and sparkling waters in all the innumerable courses and channels dug by missionaries in far lands; and those countless tributaries flow into the Church, and purified in the Holy Spirit by its infallible teaching, merge into a single mighty stream, into one great flood which flows through all humanity, fertilizing and purifying as it goes. That is the true conception of the Catholic Church. It is a great, supra-national tidal wave of faith in God and love of Christ, nourished and supported by the special powers of every individual nation and of every individual man, purified and inspired by the divine spirit of truth and love.