ay bring many changes
into the life of man, and may improve his physical condition and
surroundings, and add enormously to his comfort, health, and general
corporal well-being, it is found to produce no corresponding effect
upon his corrupt and fallen nature, which asserts itself as vigorously
now, after nearly two thousand years of Christianity, as in the past.
Pride and self still sway men's hearts. The spirit of independence and
self-assertion and egotism, in spite of all efforts at repression,
continue to stalk abroad. And human nature, even to-day, is almost as
impatient of restraint, and as unwilling to bear the yoke of
obedience, as in the time when Gregory resisted Henry of Germany, or
when Pius VII. excommunicated Napoleon. If, even in the Apostolic age,
when the number of the faithful was small and concentrated, there
were, nevertheless, men of unsound views--"wolves in sheep's
clothing"--amongst the flock of Christ, how much more likely is this
to be the case now. If the Apostle St. Paul felt called upon to warn
his own beloved disciples against those "who would not endure sound
doctrine," and who "heaped to themselves teachers, having itching
ears," and who even "closed their ears to the truth, in order to
listen to fables" (2 Tim. iv. 1-5), surely we may reasonably expect to
find, even in our own generation, many who have fallen, or who are in
danger of falling under the pernicious influence of false teachers,
and who are being seduced and led astray by the plausible, but utterly
fallacious, reasoning of proud and worldly spirits. It would be easy
to name several, but they are too well known already to need further
advertising here.

Then, she has adversaries without, as well as within. For, though the
Church is not _of_ the world, she is _in_ the world. Which is only
another way of saying that she is surrounded continually and on all
sides by powerful, subtle, and unscrupulous foes. "The world is the
enemy of God," and therefore of His Church. If its votaries cannot
destroy her, nor put an end to her charmed life, they hope, at least,
to defame her character and to blacken her reputation. They seize
every opportunity to misrepresent her doctrine, to travesty her
history, and to denounce her as retrograde, old fashioned, and out of
date. And, what makes matters worse, the falsest and most mischievous
allegations are often accompanied by professions of friendship and
consideration, and set forth in learned