to believe would be followed by an abandonment of all moral standards.  They pointed out to the devotees of “liberal religion” that they are in reality the leaders of a moral revolt, that if it does not make any difference what you believe it will soon come to make no difference what you do.  It is a rather silly performance to blow up the dam which holds back the mass of water of an irrigation system and imagine that no more water will flow out than you want to flow out.  When the Protestant revolt blew up the restraining dams of the Catholic Religion they had no right to expect that only so much denial of Catholic truth as it suited them to dispense with would be the result.  Through the broken dams the whole religion of Christ has been flowing out and it is mere empty pretence to claim that all that is of any value is left.  It is impossible to maintain anything of the sort now that all the moral content of the Christian system is openly thrown overboard by vast numbers of the population of the world, in every country that claims to be civilised.  It is useless to say that there has always been evil in the world and that the maintenance of the Catholic religion has never anywhere abolished sin.  That is true, but it is not to the present point.  The social situation is one where there are definite religious and moral ideals strongly maintained and universally recognised, though there are many men and women who violate them; it is quite another situation when the ideals themselves are repudiated and set aside as superstitions.  That is our case to-day.  The Christian theory is confronted with a theory of naturalism in morals, and those who follow that theory do not do so with a feeling that they are violating accepted ideals, but with the assumption that they are missionaries setting forth a new faith.  Those who have revolted from the Kingdom of God have now set up another kingdom and proclaimed openly, “We will not have this Man to reign over us.”  The revolt which began with a breach in the dogmatic system of the Church and denial of the authority of the Catholic Church in favour of the right of private judgment, has ended, as it could not help but end, in open abandonment of the life-ideal of the Gospels.  We now have the application of the right of private judgment in the theory that one’s morals are one’s own concern.  Such things have happened before.  “In those days there was no king in Israel, but every one did what was right in his own eyes.”  The social state depicted in the Book of Judges reflects this revolt.  The result of the same repudiation of authority is seen in modern society where what is right in one’s own eyes is the whole Law and Gospel.  Are we to remain quiescent, or are we to make the attempt to generate moral force?

But how can Christendom generate any more moral force?  The teaching of the Gospel which it proclaims is perfectly plain.  True, but is the adherence of the Church to its statements perfectly plain?  Is there no falling away, no compromise, there?