a course of events was to be expected, and could not have been
prevented. Perhaps it did more good than harm, because it encouraged
independence on the part of the masses. Its only cure was not
authority but education. And the world was not yet ready for universal
education. At certain periods, a tremendous waste of mental and moral
energy is simply inevitable: men cannot help going around and around in
the same circle of ideas in the most pathetically earnest fashion. The
conditions of progress are not always ready. Take the knowledge of the
clergy. It was confined to the classics, the patristics, to massive
tomes of theology, to {205} the bible in its Hebrew and Greek original.
It was not from these fields that enlightenment was to come. The truth
is, that Protestantism was slowly modified and mellowed, almost in
spite of itself, by the pervasive influence of the great world
civilization that grew up around it and to which it was more
susceptible than was the reorganized Catholic Church. Let us look at
this point more closely.

The reformation was an effect as much as a cause. The nations were
coming to their own in the midst of a more complex social life full of
human interests and values. The Confessional Churches which sprang up
were unable to establish themselves securely enough to dominate the
civil powers. The consequence was, that secular civilization was
released from the sway of religion and its supernaturalism.
Government, science, art, industry, and literature flourished in a
freedom they had seldom before experienced. The disorganization of
religious institutions enabled many tendencies, hitherto kept in the
background of men's consciousness, to push to the front and reveal
their power over the human soul. Do we not know that many great
mediaeval doctors had to fight against their love of literature and art?
Protestantism may be said to have been an unintentional cause of the
modern world.

Protestantism broke up into an array of sects and tendencies as it fell
upon the prism of human temperament. Radical sects appeared, like the
Independents, the Quakers, the Baptists, the Pietists, and the
Congregationalists. These were radical in a social way rather than in
an intellectual way. They were subjective variations of the inherited
motives. Largely, they represented a revolt against authoritism, and
{206} emphasized the inner light or a very mild appeal to reason. Yet
we must call them s