ur autorite pour l'abolir. Mais, je vous prie,
de quelles voies Dieu s'est il servi dans ces derniers siecles pour
retablir la veritable religion dans l'Occident? _Les rois de Suede_,
_ceux de Danemarck_, _ceux d'Angleterre_, _les magistrats souverains
de Suisse_, _des Pais Bas_, _des villes livres d'Allemagne_, _les
princes electeurs_, _et autres princes souverains de l'empire_,
_n'ont ils pas emploie leur autorite pour abbattre le Papisme_?"

Indeed, wherever the tremendous alternative of everlasting torments is
believed in--believed in so that it becomes a motive determining the
life--not only persecution, but every other form of severity and gloom
are the legitimate consequences. There is much ready declamation in
these days against the spirit of asceticism and against zeal for
doctrinal conversion; but surely the macerated form of a Saint Francis,
the fierce denunciations of a Saint Dominic, the groans and prayerful
wrestlings of the Puritan who seasoned his bread with tears and made all
pleasurable sensation sin, are more in keeping with the contemplation of
unending anguish as the destiny of a vast multitude whose nature we
share, than the rubicund cheerfulness of some modern divines, who profess
to unite a smiling liberalism with a well-bred and tacit but unshaken
confidence in the reality of the bottomless pit. But, in fact, as Mr.
Lecky maintains, that awful image, with its group of associated dogmas
concerning the inherited curse, and the damnation of unbaptized infants,
of heathens, and of heretics, has passed away from what he is fond of
calling "the realizations" of Christendom. These things are no longer
the objects of practical belief. They may be mourned for in encyclical
letters; bishops may regret them; doctors of divinity may sign
testimonials to the excellent character of these decayed beliefs; but for
the mass of Christians they are no more influential than unrepealed but
forgotten statutes. And with these dogmas has melted away the strong
basis for the defence of persecution. No man now writes eager
vindications of himself and his colleagues from the suspicion of adhering
to the principle of toleration. And this momentous change, it is Mr.
Lecky's object to show, is due to that concurrence of conditions which he
has chosen to call "the advance of the Spirit of Rationalism."

In other parts of his work, where he attempts to trace the action of the
same conditions on