The passive virtues, fostered under an overruling Providence for the defence of threatened external authority in religion, and producing admirable effects of uniformity, discipline, and obedience, served well in the politics of the Reformation and post-Reformation eras, when nearly all governments were absolute monarchies; but the present governments are republics or constitutional monarchies, and are supposed to be ruled by the citizens themselves.  This demands individual initiative, active personal exertion and direct interference in public affairs.  Vigilant and courageous voters rule the nations.  Therefore, without injury to entire obedience, the active virtues in both the natural and supernatural orders must be mainly cultivated; in the first order everything that makes for self-reliance, and in the second the interior guidance of the Holy Spirit in the individual soul.  This, the Exposition maintains, is the way out of present difficulties.  That it is the Providential way out, is shown by most striking evidence:  the diversion of the anti-Catholic forces from the attack against authority to one against the most elementary principles of religion—­God, conscience, and immortality; the drift of Anglo-Saxon and Teutonic minds of a religious cast towards the Church, calling for spiritual attractions in accordance with the independence of character peculiar to those races; the hopeless failure of the post-Reformation methods to meet the needs of the hour; and especially the Vatican decrees, which have set at rest all controversy on authority among Catholics.  The needs of the times, therefore, call for virtues among Catholics which shall display the personal force of Catholic life no less than that which is organic.  These must all centre around the cultivation of the Holy Spirit in the individual soul.

“The light the age requires for its renewal,” says the Exposition, “can only come from the same source.  The renewal of the age depends on the renewal of religion.  The renewal of religion depends upon the greater effusion of the creative and renewing power of the Holy Spirit.  The greater effusion of the Holy Spirit depends on the giving of increased attention to His movements and inspirations in the soul.  The radical and adequate remedy for all the evils of our age, and the source of all true progress, consist in increased attention and fidelity to the action of the Holy Spirit in the soul.  ’Thou shalt send forth Thy Spirit and they shall be created:  and Thou shalt renew the face of the earth.’”

The following extract gives the synthesis of the twofold action of the Holy Spirit, showing how external authority and obedience to it are amply secured by the interior virtues: