to German and French. There were
also nearly a hundred editions, in Latin and various vernaculars, of _The
Imitation of Christ_. There was so flourishing a crop of devotional
handbooks that no others could compete with them in popularity. For
those who could not read there were the _Biblia Pauperum_, picture-books
with a minimum of text, and there were sermons by popular preachers. If
some of these tracts and homilies were crude and superstitious, others
were filled with a spirit of love and honesty. Whereas the passion for
pilgrimages and relics seemed to increase, there were men of clear vision
to denounce the attendant evils. A new feature was the foundation of lay
brotherhoods, like that of the Common Life, with the purpose of
cultivating a good character in the world, and of rendering social
service. The number of these brotherhoods was great and their popularity
general.

[Sidenote: Clash of new spirit with old institutions]

Had the forces already at work within the church been allowed to operate,
probably much of the moral reform desired by the best Catholics would
have been {27} accomplished quietly without the violent rending of
Christian unity that actually took place. But the fact is, that such
reforms never would or could have satisfied the spirit of the age. Men
were not only shocked by the abuses in the church, but they had outgrown
some of her ideals. Not all of her teaching, nor most of it, had become
repugnant to them, for it has often been pointed out that the Reformers
kept more of the doctrines of Catholicism than they threw away, but in
certain respects they repudiated, not the abuse but the very principle on
which the church acted. In four respects, particularly the ideals of the
new age were incompatible with those of the Roman communion.

[Sidenote: Sacramental theory of the church]

The first of these was the sacramental theory of salvation and its
corollary, the sacerdotal power. According to Catholic doctrine grace is
imparted to the believer by means of certain rites: baptism,
confirmation, the eucharist, penance, extreme unction, holy orders, and
matrimony. Baptism is the necessary prerequisite to the enjoyment of the
others, for without it the unwashed soul, whether heathen or child of
Christian parents, would go to eternal fire; but the "most excellent of
the sacraments" is the eucharist, in which Christ is mysteriously
sacrificed by the priest to the Father and his body a