ly in discrediting, upheld by an organisation which its history
for the last five centuries has exposed to the distrust and hatred of
men as the sworn enemy of mental freedom and growth, the pretensions of
Catholicism to renovate society are among the most pitiable and impotent
that ever devout, high-minded, and benevolent persons deluded themselves
into maintaining or accepting. Over the modern invader it is as
powerless as paganism was over the invaders of old. The barbarians of
industrialism, grasping chiefs and mutinous men, give no ear to priest
or pontiff, who speak only dead words, who confront modern issues with
blind eyes, and who stretch out a palsied hand to help. Christianity,
according to a well-known saying, has been tried and failed; the
religion of Christ remains to be tried. One would prefer to qualify the
first clause, by admitting how much Christianity has done for Europe
even with its old organisation, and to restrict the charge of failure
within the limits of the modern time. To-day its failure is too patent.
Whether in changed forms and with new supplements the teaching of its
founder is destined to be the chief inspirer of that social and human
sentiment which seems to be the only spiritual bond capable of uniting
men together again in a common and effective faith, is a question which
it is unnecessary to discuss here. '_They talk about the first centuries
of Christianity_,' said De Maistre, '_I would not be sure that they are
over yet_.' Perhaps not; only if the first centuries are not yet over,
it is certain that the Christianity of the future will have to be so
different from the Christianity of the past, as to demand or deserve
another name.

Even if Christianity, itself renewed, could successfully encounter the
achievement of renewing society, De Maistre's ideal of a spiritual power
controlling the temporal power, and conciliating peoples with their
rulers by persuasion and a coercion only moral, appears to have little
chance of being realised. The separation of the two powers is sealed,
with a completeness that is increasingly visible. The principles on
which the process of the emancipation of politics is being so rapidly
carried on, demonstrate that the most marked tendencies of modern
civilisation are strongly hostile to a renewal in any imaginable shape,
or at any future time, of a connection whether of virtual subordination
or nominal equality, which has laid such enormous burdens on the