of a Savior whose own existence is open to dispute.
Superstition will be stirred to its depths. The bestial instinct of
spiritual slavery inherited from ancient semi-human progenitors will be
intensely stimulated. The sacred function of priests will be heightened
and intensified. Nor must it be forgotten that the pecuniary offerings
of the pilgrims will fill the coffers of Holy Mother Church, who
promises heaven to her dupes and seizes wealth and power for herself on
earth.

Superstition is scotched, but not slain. It has life enough to be a
peril to civilisation. The faith which wrecked "the grandeur that was
Greece and the glory that was Rome"--the faith which buried the science,
art, philosophy and literature of antiquity under a monstrous heap of
brutal rubbish, out of which they were slowly and painfully excavated
after the lapse of a thousand years--this same faith is still a danger
to the highest welfare of mankind; to its reason, its conscience, its
sense of dignity, and its spirit of brotherhood; above all, to freedom
of thought, which is the sole guarantee of real and durable progress.

If we turn to Russia, we see at a single glance the fruits of
superstition and its twin-sister tyranny. The Czar is the head of the
Church and the head of the State; not like Queen Victoria, whose sacred
function is only indicated in Latin on our coinage, but in literal,
prosaic fact. By means of a swarm of ignorant, and often drunken
and immoral priests, the masses of the people are kept in wretched
subjection--hewers of wood and drawers of water, toilers for the huge
army of officials, aristocrats, and princes--and conscripts for the
army; while the best and noblest, in whom there still throbs the pulse
of freedom, blacken the highways to the mines of Siberia, where hell is
more than realised on earth, and the dreams of sour-blooded theologians
are outdone in misery and horror. *

Over the rest of Europe, even in France, the secular State is often as
insecure as the footsteps of travellers over thin crusts of volcanic
soil. Bismarck, the Titan, whose great work, with all its defects
and failings, may appeal from the clamorous passing hour to the quiet
verdict of history, only kept the Catholic Church and its Jesuits in
check for a generation. He could not impair its vitality nor diminish
its latent power. It is in Germany that the Coat of Christ is being
exhibited, with priests and professors joining hands at the brazen
ce