For we expect the antagonism of the world, especially that part of the world that has seen and rejected Christ.  There we find Satanic activities.  One of the outstanding features of the literature of to-day in the Western world, the world that had known from childhood the story of Jesus, is its utter hatred of Christianity; its revolt from all that Christianity stands for.  This is markedly true in regard to the Christian teaching in the matter of purity.  The contemporary English novel is perhaps the vilest thing that has yet appeared on this earth.  There have been plenty of unclean books written in the course of the world’s history—­we have only to recall the literature of the Renaissance—­but for the most part they have been written in careless or boastful disregard of moral sanctions which they still regarded as existing; but the novel of the present is an immoral propaganda—­it is deliberately and of malice immoral, not out of careless levity, but out of deliberate intention.  You do not feel that the modern author is just describing immoral actions which grow out of his story, but that he is constructing his story for the purpose of propagating immoral theory.  He hates the whole teaching of the Christian Religion in the matter of purity.  He has thrown it overboard on the ground that it is an “unnatural” restraint.  To those who have studied the development of thought since the Renaissance there is nothing surprising in this.

But what does still surprise those who are as yet capable of being surprised is the light way in which the mass of Christians take their religion.  Occasionally, in moments of frankness, they admit that they are not getting anything out of it; but it is harder to get them to admit that the reason is that they are not putting anything into it.  You do not expect to get returns from a business into which you are putting no capital, and you have no right to expect returns from a religion into which you are putting no energy.  What is meant by that is that those Christians who are keeping the minimum routine of Christianity, who are going to High Mass on Sunday (or perhaps only to low Mass) and then making the rest of the day a time of self-indulgence and pleasure; who make their communions but rarely; who do not go to confession, or go only at Easter; who are giving no active support to the work of the Gospel as represented in parish and diocese have no right to be surprised if they find that they do not seem to get any results from their religion; that it is often rather a bore to do even so much as they do, and that they see no point in permitting it further to interfere with their customary amusements and avocations.  I do not know what such persons expect from their religion, but I am sure that they will be disappointed if they are expecting any spiritual result.  Naturally, they will be disappointed if they look in themselves for any evidence of the virtue of hope.  The most that can be looked for under the circumstances is that mockery of hope, presumption.