and the oppressed, and compels the
hereditary master to kneel before the spiritual tribunal of the
hereditary bondman.... So successfully had the Church used her
formidable machinery that, before the Reformation came, she had
enfranchised almost all the bondmen in the kingdom except her own,
who, to do her justice, seem to have been very tenderly
treated[29].

This makes it particularly deplorable that in consequence of the great
reaction in religion from the corporate to the personal, to which I have
alluded, the Church's power, as far as Britain was concerned, though so
splendidly exercised in the preceding centuries, should have been almost
non-existent just at the moment when it was most required, in the
Agricultural and Industrial Revolution of comparatively modern times.

III

THE HOPE OF THE PRESENT SITUATION

I fear that a large portion of this lecture has been taken up with the
past. But even so rough and brief a review as I have attempted is a
necessary prelude to a just estimate, both of our present position and
of our future prospects. It is often supposed, indeed, that the study of
history predisposes a man's mind to a conservative view. He studies the
slow development of institutions, or the gradual influence of movements,
and the trend of his thought works round to the very antipodes of
anything that is revolutionary or catastrophic. But there is another
side to the matter. The study of history may so expose the injustices of
the past and their intrenchments that the student reaches the conclusion
that nothing but an earthquake--an earthquake in men's ideas at the very
least--can avail to set things right; that the best thing that could
happen would be an explosion so terrible as to make it possible to break
completely with the past, and start anew on firmer principles and better
ways. After all, as a great Cambridge scholar once said, "History is the
best cordial for drooping spirits." For if on the one hand it exposes
the selfishnesses of men, on the other it displays an exhibition of
those Divine-human forces of justice and sacrifice and good will which
in the long run cannot be denied, and which encourage the brightest
hopes for the age which is upon us.

The fact is, we are in the midst of precisely such an explosion as I
have indicated. The immeasurable privilege has been given to us of being
alive at a time when, most literally, an epoch is being made.
Contem