to a great idea when it is enslaved by an institution of its own creation.  The political organisation which has grown up round the idea ends by strangling it, and continues to fight for its own preservation by the methods which govern the policy of all other political organisations—­force, fraud, and accommodation.  There is nothing in the political history of Catholicism which suggests in the slightest degree that the spirit of Christ has been the guiding principle in its councils.  Its methods have, on the contrary, been more cruel, more fraudulent, more unscrupulous, than those of most secular powers.  If the Founder of Christianity had appeared again on earth during the so-called ages of faith, it is hardly possible to doubt that He would, have been burnt alive or crucified again.  What the Latin Church preserved was not the religion of Christ, which lived on by its inherent indestructibility, but parts of the Aristotelian and Platonic philosophies, distorted and petrified by scholasticism, a vast quantity of purely Pagan superstitions, and the arcana imperii of Roman Caesarism.  The normal end of Scholasticism is a mummified philosophy of authority, in which there are no problems to solve, but a great many dead pundits to consult.  The normal end of a policy which exploits the superstitions of the peasant is a desperate warfare against education.  The normal end of Roman Imperialism is a sultanate like that of Diocletian.  It is difficult to find a proof of infallible and supernatural wisdom in the evolution of which these are the last terms.  We read with the utmost sympathy and admiration Baron von Huegel’s loyal and reverent appeals to the authorities of his Church, that they may draw out the strong and beneficent powers of institutionalism, and avoid its insidious dangers.  But it may be doubted whether such a policy is possible.  The future of Roman Catholicism is, I fear, with the Ultramontanes.  They, and not the Modernists, are in the line of development which Catholicism as an institution has consistently followed, and must continue to follow to the end.  I can see no other fate in store for the soma of Catholicism; the germ-cells of true Christianity live their own life within it, and are transmitted without taint to those who are born of the Spirit.

We must further ask the institutionalist what are his grounds for identifying the Church of God with the particular institution to which he belongs.  On the institutionalist hypothesis, it might have been expected either that there would have been no divisions in Christendom, or that all seceding bodies would have shown such manifest inferiority in wisdom, morality, and sanctity, that the exclusive claims of the Great Church would have been ratified at the bar of history.  This is, in fact, the claim which Roman Catholics make.  But it can only be upheld by writing history in the spirit of an advocate, or by giving a preference, not in accordance with modern ethical views, to certain