began, wherever civilization began, with
Pagan Faith. Mediaevalism began, and continued, wherever civilization
began and continued to _confess_ Christ. And, lastly, Modernism began
and continues, wherever civilization began and continues to _deny_
Christ.

You are startled, but give me a moment to explain. What, you would say
to me, do you mean to tell us that _we_ deny Christ? we who are
essentially modern in every one of our principles and feelings, and yet
all of us professing believers in Christ, and we trust most of us true
ones? I answer, So far as we are believers indeed, we are one with the
faithful of all times,--one with the classical believer of Athens and
Ephesus, and one with the mediaeval believer of the banks of the Rhone
and the valleys of the Monte Viso. But so far as, in various strange
ways, some in great and some in small things, we deny this belief, in so
far we are essentially infected with this spirit, which I call
Modernism.

115. For observe, the change of which I speak has nothing whatever to do
with the Reformation, or with any of its effects. It is a far broader
thing than the Reformation. It is a change which has taken place, not
only in reformed England, and reformed Scotland; but in unreformed
France, in unreformed Italy, in unreformed Austria. I class honest
Protestants and honest Roman Catholics for the present together, under
the general term Christians: if you object to their being so classed
together, I pray your pardon, but allow me to do so at present, for the
sake of perspicuity, if for nothing else; and so classing them, I say
that a change took place, about the time of Raphael, in the spirit of
Roman Catholics and Protestants both; and that change consisted in the
_denial_ of their religious belief, at least in the external and trivial
affairs of life, and often in far more serious things.

116. For instance, hear this direction to an upholsterer of the early
thirteenth century. Under the commands of the Sheriff of Wiltshire, he
is thus ordered to make some alterations in a room for Henry the Third.
He is to "wainscot the King's lower chamber, and to paint that wainscot
of a green color, and to put a border to it, and to cause the heads of
kings and queens to be painted on the borders; and to paint on the walls
of the King's upper chamber the story of St. Margaret, Virgin, and the
four Evangelists, and to paint the wainscot of the same chamber of a
green color, spotted with go