d not the words themselves. In these and all languages it is the most
beautiful of prayers. But you know that people came to look on a Latin
paternoster as the most powerful of spells--potent in heaven, if said
straightforward; if repeated backward, a charm which no spirit in hell
could resist.

So it is, in my opinion, with all forms--forms of words, or forms of
ceremony and ritualism. While the meaning is alive in them, they are not
only harmless, but pregnant and life-giving. When we come to think that
they possess in themselves material and magical virtues, then the
purpose which they answer is to hide God from us and make us practically
into Atheists.

This is what I believe to have gradually fallen upon the Catholic Church
in the generations which preceded Luther. The body remained; the mind
was gone away: the original thought which its symbolism represented was
no longer credible to intelligent persons.

The acute were conscious unbelievers. In Italy, when men went to mass
they spoke of it as going to a comedy. You may have heard the story of
Luther in his younger days saying mass at an altar in Rome, and hearing
his fellow-priests muttering at the consecration of the Eucharist,
'Bread thou art, and bread thou wilt remain.'

Part of the clergy were profane scoundrels like these; the rest repeated
the words of the service, conceiving that they were working a charm.
Religion was passing through the transformation which all religions have
a tendency to undergo. They cease to be aids and incentives to holy
life; they become contrivances rather to enable men to sin, and escape
the penalties of sin. Obedience to the law is dispensed with if men will
diligently profess certain opinions, or punctually perform certain
external duties. However scandalous the moral life, the participation of
a particular rite, or the profession of a particular belief, at the
moment of death, is held to clear the score.

The powers which had been given to the clergy required for their
exercise the highest wisdom and the highest probity. They had fallen at
last into the hands of men who possessed considerably less of these
qualities than the laity whom they undertook to govern. They had
degraded their conceptions of God; and, as a necessary consequence, they
had degraded their conceptions of man and man's duty. The aspirations
after sanctity had disappeared, and instead of them there remained the
practical reality of the five senses. The