Now who shall compute the stupefying and brutalising effects of such a religion? Who will dare say that a principle which so debases reason is not like bands of iron around the expanding heart and struggling limbs of modern freedom?

Who will dare tell me that this terrible Church does not lie upon the bosom of the present time like a vast unwieldy and offensive corpse, crushing the life-blood out of the body of modern civilization? It is not as a religious creed that we are looking at this thing; it is not for its theological sins that we are here to condemn it; but it is its effect upon political and social freedom that we are discussing. What must be the ultimate political and social freedom that we are discussing? What must be the ultimate political night that settles upon a people who are without individuality of opinions and independence of will, and whose brains are made tools of in the hands of a clan or an order? Look out there into that sad Europe, and see it all! See, there, how the Catholic element everywhere marks itself with night, and drags the soul, and energies, and freedom of the people backwards and downwards into political and social inaction—into unfathomable quagmires of death!


INDEX