trative system that had become universal among secular powers
during the decadence of Mediaevalism, and from which it had taken its
colour, and it kept even pace for the future with the progressive
intensification of this absolutism. This was natural, though in many
respects deplorable, and it can be safely said that adverse criticism of
the Catholic Church today is based only on qualities it acquired during
the period of Renaissance autocracy and revived paganism; qualities that
do not affect its essential integrity or authority but do misrepresent
it before men, and work as a handicap in its adaptability and in its
work of winning souls to Christianity and re-establishing the unity of
Christendom. Fortunately this very immobility has saved it from a
surrender to the new forces that were developed in secular society
during the last two centuries, as it did yield to the compulsion of
those that were let loose in the two that preceded them. It has never
subjected questions of faith and morals to popular vote nor has it
determined discipline by parliamentary practice under a well developed
party system, therefore it has preserved its unity, its integrity and
its just standard of comparative values. On the other hand, it has held
so stubbornly to some of the ill ways of Renaissance centralization,
which are in no sense consonant with its character, that it has failed
to retard the constant movement of society away from a life wherein
religion was the dominating and coordinating force, while at the present
crisis it is as yet hardly more able than a divisive Protestantism to
offer the regenerative energy that a desperate case demands.

I do not know whether secular society is responsible for the decadence
of religion, or the decadence of religion is responsible for the failure
of secular society, nor does it particularly matter. What I am concerned
with is a condition amounting to almost complete severance between the
two, and how we may "knit up this ravelled sleeve" of life so that once
more we may have an wholesome unity in place of the present disunity;
for until this is accomplished, until once more religion enters into the
very marrow of social being, enters with all its powers of judgment and
determination and co-ordination and creative energy, just so long shall
we seek in vain for our way out into the Great Peace of righteous and
consistent living.

Of course there is only one sure way, one method by which this, an