; but the majority will be
silenced, and will make a lip-submission to authority. The disastrous
results of the rebellion, and of the means taken to crush it, will be
apparent in the deterioration of the priesthood. Modern thought, it will
be said, has now been definitely condemned by the Church; war has been
openly declared against progress. Many who, before the crisis of the
last few years, believed it possible to enter the Roman Catholic
priesthood without any sacrifice of intellectual honesty, will in the
future find it impossible to do so. We may expect to see this result
most palpable in France, where men think logically, and are but little
influenced by custom and prejudice. Unless the Republican Government
blows the dying embers into a blaze by unjust persecution, it is to be
feared that Catholicism in that country may soon become 'une quantite
negligeable.' The prospects of the Church in Italy and Spain do not seem
very much better. In fact the only comfort which we can suggest to those
who regret the decline of an august institution, is that decadent
autocracies have often shown an astonishing toughness. But as head of
the universal Church, in any true sense of the word, Rome has finished
her life.

A more vital question, for those at least who are Christians, but not
Roman Catholics, is in what shape the Christian religion will emerge
from the assaults upon traditional beliefs which science and historical
criticism are pressing home. We have given our reasons for rejecting the
Modernist attempt at reconstruction. In the first place, we do not feel
that we are required by sane criticism to surrender nearly all that M.
Loisy has surrendered. We believe that the kingdom of God which Christ
preached was something much more than a patriotic dream. We believe that
He did speak as never man spake, so that those who heard Him were
convinced that He was more than man. We believe, in short, that the
object of our worship was a historical figure. Nothing has yet come to
light, or is likely to come to light, which prevents us from identifying
the Christ of history with the Christ of faith, or the Christ of
experience.

But, if too much is surrendered on one side, too much is taken back on
the other. The contention that the progress of knowledge has left the
traditional beliefs and cultus of Catholics untouched is untenable. It
is not too much to say that the whole edifice of supernaturalistic
dualism under which Cathol