here. Social and religious
teachers, students of history and social movements have seen the
approach of this revolt for a long time, have been watching its rise and
growth. When they have pointed out the end of the path that we have been
travelling, they have been disposed of by calling them pessimists. These
"pessimists" pointed out long ago that the denial of the obligation to
believe would be followed by an abandonment of all moral standards. They
pointed out to the devotees of "liberal religion" that they are in
reality the leaders of a moral revolt, that if it does not make any
difference what you believe it will soon come to make no difference what
you do. It is a rather silly performance to blow up the dam which holds
back the mass of water of an irrigation system and imagine that no more
water will flow out than you want to flow out. When the Protestant
revolt blew up the restraining dams of the Catholic Religion they had no
right to expect that only so much denial of Catholic truth as it suited
them to dispense with would be the result. Through the broken dams the
whole religion of Christ has been flowing out and it is mere empty
pretence to claim that all that is of any value is left. It is
impossible to maintain anything of the sort now that all the moral
content of the Christian system is openly thrown overboard by vast
numbers of the population of the world, in every country that claims to
be civilised. It is useless to say that there has always been evil in
the world and that the maintenance of the Catholic religion has never
anywhere abolished sin. That is true, but it is not to the present
point. The social situation is one where there are definite religious
and moral ideals strongly maintained and universally recognised, though
there are many men and women who violate them; it is quite another
situation when the ideals themselves are repudiated and set aside as
superstitions. That is our case to-day. The Christian theory is
confronted with a theory of naturalism in morals, and those who follow
that theory do not do so with a feeling that they are violating accepted
ideals, but with the assumption that they are missionaries setting forth
a new faith. Those who have revolted from the Kingdom of God have now
set up another kingdom and proclaimed openly, "We will not have this Man
to reign over us." The revolt which began with a breach in the dogmatic
system of the Church and denial of the authority of the Ca