Page:From Rome to Rationalism (1896).djvu/3



is a familiar practice of the rhetorical defender of a religious sect to compare the calm security of his Church amid the ceaseless conflict of its adversaries to the security of an island that is sheltered by a rockbound coast from the sleepless fury of the ocean. Its members are taught to smile at the convulsive movements to which each succeeding age gives birth, to regard them as the waves of a restless element that spends its vain fury for a time on their frontiers only to fall at length in helpless confusion at their feet and retire into its native depths. Storm after storm has lashed their iron shores, until men’s hearts were troubled at the deepening gloom and the wild chaos of the elements; but the sun has shone forth once more in radiant triumph, and the whitened cliffs have smiled grimly on the retreating sea—a typical picture of permanence in this restless universe. But the fatal fallacy of rhetoric lurks here, as in so much of the ornate language with which shallow speakers calm the disquietude of unreflecting multitudes. There is no immoveability in the universe: from the tiny atom to the most colossal sun all is motion and change. The constancy of an iron-bound coast is an illusion, a hasty and superficial estimate. Slowly, but surely, each line of beetling cliffs that seems to scorn the fury of the ocean is falling a victim to its ravages. Each wave that breaks in seeming impotence has inflicted an irreparable injury upon it, and prepared the way for its successor; each tide that gently murmurs at its feet is weakening its foundations. And the days will come when its worn and enfeebled structure will yield, and the fairest lands become a prey to the devouring waves.

Thus also do those think who have seriously pondered over the vicissitudes of the Churches during the last few centuries. Their internal conflicts have weakened the bonds of union, and dissipated their forces in fratricidal strife; political power has emancipated itself from their usurped dominion, and often in reaction resorted to violent measures; while the waves of thought that have swept over civilized Europe during the last century and a half have riven their foundations and devastated some of their fairest provinces. No strain is more familiar to their prophets of these latter days than the decay of faith