informed to control by their
votes--that is, by sheer weight of numbers--the educated and the
well-informed. Yet such was the case. And the result was--since
all these matters act and react--that the idea of authority from
above in matters of religion was thought to be as 'undemocratic'
as in matters of government and social life. Men had learnt, that
is to say, something of the very real truth in the theory of the
Least Common Multiple, and, as in psychology and many other
sciences, had presumed that the little fragment of truth that
they had perceived was the whole truth."

Mr. Manners paused to draw breath. Obviously he was enjoying
himself enormously. He was a born lecturer, and somehow the rather
pompous sentences were strangely alive and strangely interesting.
Above all, they fascinated and amazed the prelate at the head of
the table, for they revealed to him an advance of thought, and an
assurance in the position they described, that seemed wholly
inexplicable. Such phrases as "all educated men," "the
well-informed," and the rest--these were vaguely familiar to him,
yet surely in a very different connection. He had at the back of
his mind a kind of idea that these were the phrases that the
irreligious or the agnostics applied to themselves; yet here was a
man, obviously a student, and a statesman as he knew, calmly
assuming (scarcely even giving himself the trouble to state) that
all educated and well-informed persons were Catholic Christians!

He settled himself down to listen with renewed interest as Mr.
Manners began once more.

"Well," he said, "to come more directly to our point; let us next
consider what were those steps and processes by which Catholic
truth once more became the religion of the civilized world, as it
had been five centuries earlier.

"And first we must remark that, even at the very beginning of
this century, popular thought--in England as elsewhere--had
retraced its steps so far as to acknowledge that if Christianity
were true--true, really and actually--the Catholic Church was the
only possible embodiment of it. Not only did the shrewdest
agnostic minds of the time acknowledge this--such men as Huxley
in the previous century, Sir Leslie Stephen, Mallock, and scores
of others--but even popular Christianity itself began to turn in
that direction. Of course there were survivals and reactions, as
we should expect. There was a small body of Christians in England
called Anglicans, who att