is also that
through which religion becomes real to the individual. But since all
this lays upon the individual a burden hard enough to be borne (as we
shall see when we come back to Protestantism itself) the Church, as her
organization became more definite and her authority more strongly
established, took the responsibility of the whole matter upon herself.
She herself would become responsible for the outcome if only they were
teachable and obedient.

The Catholic Church offered to its communicants an assured security, the
proof of which was not in the fluctuating states of their own souls but
in the august authority of the Church to which they belonged. As long,
therefore, as they remained in obedient communion with their Church
their souls were secure. The Church offered them its confessional for
their unburdening and its absolutions for their assurance, its
sacraments for their strengthening and its penances for their discipline
and restoration. It took from them in spiritual regions and maybe in
other regions too, the responsibility for the conduct of their own lives
and asked of the faithful only that they believe and obey. The Church,
as it were, "stepped down" religion to humanity. It did all this with a
marvellous understanding of human nature and in answer to necessities
which were, to begin with, essential to the discipline of childlike
peoples who would otherwise have been brought face to face with truths
too great for them, or dismissed to a freedom for which they were not
ready.

It was and is a marvellous system; there has never been anything like it
and if it should wholly fail from amongst us there will never be
anything like it again. And yet we see that all this vast spiritual
edifice, like the arches of its own great cathedrals, locks up upon a
single keystone. The keystone of the arch of Catholic certainty is the
acceptance of the authority of the Church conditioned by belief in the
divine character of that authority. If anything should shake the
Catholic's belief in the authority of his Church and the efficacy of her
sacraments then he is left strangely unsheltered. Strongly articulated
as this system is, it has not been untouched by time and change. To
continue our figure, one great wing of the medieval structure fell away
in the Protestant Reformation and what was left, though extensive and
solid enough, is still like its great cathedrals--yielding to time and
change. The impressive force and