One of the greatest works on the philosophy of history is St. Augustine's City of God. Though written in the dark days after the sack of Rome by the Goths, it has perhaps an even more immediate bearing upon these brighter times because it is now that we are in the greatest danger of taking a nationally self-sufficient view of history.

St. Augustine saw that a Christian is a citizen of two worlds—the Earthly City and the City of God. These two cities have been formed by two loves: the earthly, by love of self even to the contempt of God; the Heavenly, by the love of God even to the contempt of self. The earthly city is the state, and although it is a relative good, it must exist to maintain civil order in a sinful world. The city of God is the ultimate good where man's highest loyalty must reside, for as St. Paul pointed out, our true citizenship is in Heaven.

Our Lord himself recognized this double responsibility of man when he told the Pharisees "to render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's and unto God the things which are God's." This shouldn't be too hard to comprehend, and yet history reveals the repeated error and tragedy of man's desire to be a citizen of one world or the other, but not both. Perhaps the difficulty lies in the fact that citizenship itself is a two-fold affair. It involves one's allegiance to a state and it also entitles the citizen to the protection of that state. It may be, therefore, that a double allegiance is too much for most men to bear, or it may be that the protection of the earthly state seems so much more tangible. In any event, the "either-or-ness" has been most unfortunate in its consequences.

To be a citizen of Heaven alone is more difficult for the average American to understand. Few men these days are tempted to go off into the desert and live an other-worldly life in prayer and contemplation with the sole desire of saving their own souls. And yet a more subtle form of this escapism is the chief object of the attack made by politically liberal and radical groups upon Christianity. Socialists and Communists have with good reason charged that much of every man's Christianity is a Sunday escapism with little or no effect upon his daily living, unrelated to his civic responsibilities and to existing evils.

Bad as this may be, the opposite form of single statism would seem to be more devastating in our present situation. When Stephen Decatur made his famous toast to "Our Country, in her intercourse with foreign nations may she always be in the right, but our country, right or wrong," he revealed the stupid tragedy of all the many forms of the American First principle. But he incidentally admitted the existence and necessity of a superior standard of judgment by which the nation is seen to be either right or wrong. Unless our citizenship is in Heaven we cannot be effective and reliable citizens of this country or any country on earth. All we are fitted for without it is to be slaves to a Fascist state, saluting and goose-stepping moronically at the command of a self-appointed leader. We must have a basis for judging even our own country and our most honored institutions.

This nation is in the midst of the most important decisions any people on earth have ever faced. If we make them as members of the Earthly City alone, which as St. Augustine said is formed by love of self even to the contempt of God, we or our descendants will witness the final form of uncritical patriotism: the end of our state in the end of all civilization. But if those in authority, pressed on by us, will recognize their ultimate allegiance to the City of God which transcends all national sovereignty and boundaries there is good hope that the decision will be made for the good of all mankind and not simply for our destruction.

If they or we are fearful in this fatal moment, we might remember the other side of citizenship—as members of the City of God we are also entitled to its protection and its power.

Remember the experience of Elisha and his servant. And Elisha prayed and said, "Lord, I pray thee open his eyes that he may see. And then the Lord opened the eyes of the young man and he saw, And behold the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha."