cism. The temper of the Catholic world may change, and, as a
matter of fact, does change. It is not the same, indeed, in any two
countries, or in any two eras. And it may have a new and unsuspected
future in store for it. It may absorb ideas that we should consider
broader, bolder, and more rational than any it seems to possess at
present. But if ever it does so, the Church, in the opinion of
Catholics, will not be growing false to herself; she will only, in due
time, be unfolding her own spirit more fully. Thus some people associate
Catholic conceptions of extreme sanctity with a neglect of personal
cleanliness; and imagine that a clean Catholic can, according to his own
creed, never come very near perfection. But the Church has never given
this view her sanction; she has never made it of faith that dirt is
sacred; she has added no ninth beatitude in favour of an unchanged
shirt. Many of the greatest saints were doubtless dirty; but they were
dirty not because of the Church they belonged to, but because of the age
they lived in. Such an expression of sanctity for themselves, it is
probable, will be loathed by the saints of the future; yet they may none
the less reverence, for all that, the saints who so expressed it in the
past. This is but a single instance; but it may serve as a type of the
wide circle of changes that the Church as a living organism, still full
of vigour and power of self-adaptation, will be able to develop, as the
world develops round her, and yet lose nothing of her supernatural
sameness.

To sum up, then; if we would obtain a true view of the general character
of Catholicism, we must begin by making a clean sweep of all the views
that, as outsiders, we have been taught to entertain about her. We must,
in the first place, learn to conceive of her as a living, spiritual
body, as infallible and as authoritative now as she ever was, with her
eyes undimmed and her strength not abated, continuing to grow still as
she has continued to grow hitherto: and the growth of the new dogmas
that she may from time to time enunciate, we must learn to see are, from
her own stand-point, signs of life and not signs of corruption. And
further, when we come to look into her more closely, we must separate
carefully the diverse elements we find in her--her discipline, her pious
opinions, her theology, and her religion.

Let honest enquirers do this to the best of their power, and their views
will undergo an unlooked-for