Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 3.djvu/665

 MODERN PROGRESS. ^49 the reformers were as rigid as the orthodox in setting bounds to dogmatic independence. The review which we have made of the follies and crimes of our ancestors has revealed to us a scene of almost unrelieved black- ness. We have seen how the wayward heart of man, groping in twilight, has under the best of impulses inflicted misery and de- spair on his fellow-creatures while thinking to serve God, and how the ambitious and unprincipled have traded on those impulses to gratify the lust of avarice and domination. Yet such a review, rightly estimated, is full of hope and encouragement. In the un- rest of modern society, where immediate relief is sought from the mass of evils oppressing mankind, and impatience is eager to over- turn all social organization in the hope of founding a new struct- ure where preventable misery shall be unknown, it is well occa- sionally to take a backward view, to tear away the veil which con- ceals the passions and the sufferings of bygone generations, and estimate fairly the progress already effected. Human develop- ment is slow and irregular ; to the observer at a given point it ap- pears stationary or retrogressive, and it is only by comparing pe- riods removed by a considerable interval of time that the move- ment can be appreciated. Such a retrospect as we have wearily accomplished has shown us how, but a few centuries since, the in- fliction of gratuitous evil was deemed the highest duty of man, and we learn how much has been gained to the empire of Chris- tian love and charity. We have seen how the administration of law, both spiritual and secular, was little other than organized wrong and injustice ; we have seen how low were the moral stand- ards, and how debased the mental condition of the populations of Christendom. We have seen that the Ages of Faith, to which romantic dreamers regretfully look back, were ages of force and fraud, where evil seemed to reign almost unchecked, justifying the current opinion, so constantly reappearing, that the reign of Anti- christ had already begun. Imperfect as are human institutions to-day, a comparison with the past shows how marvellous has been the improvement, and the fact that this gain has been made almost wholly within the last two centuries, and that it is advancing with accelerated momentum, affords to the sociologist the most cheer-