individuals; now they spring from large political bodies, such as the Liberals of Spain and Belgium, the Libres-Penseurs of France, and the Freemasons of Italy. To the same great force must be added (from the present point of view) a new and anxiously regarded power—Socialism. The Church is very sensible of approaching danger from this quarter, and therefore, instead of its traditional practice of fierce opposition to every new movement, we find it attempting a compromise by patronising ‘Christian Socialism.’ This sociological force is not in direct intellectual opposition, and does not spend much time in discussing the Church’s credentials; the thinkers of the modern world, it says, are fairly divided about the religious problem, and that problem has assumed most portentous dimensions—hence we busy people must be content with a mild scepticism, and if the Church crosses our path in reforming this world, so much the worse for it.
A fourth influence of a less tangible and definable character, but infinitely more dangerous in tendency and more rapid in growth, may be set down under the name of Erotism. It may be thought that this is no new danger, but the world-old revolt of human nature against that moral law whose enforcement was boldly undertaken by Christianity. But there are two considerations which make that influence, old as it is, present rather a new aspect. The first is the decay of superstition and the enfeeblement of popular faith
