retraced its steps so far as to acknowledge that if Christianity
were true--true, really and actually--the Catholic Church was the
only possible embodiment of it. Not only did the shrewdest
agnostic minds of the time acknowledge this--such men as Huxley
in the previous century, Sir Leslie Stephen, Mallock, and scores
of others--but even popular Christianity itself began to turn in
that direction. Of course there were survivals and reactions, as
we should expect. There was a small body of Christians in England
called Anglicans, who attempted to hold another view; there was
that short-lived movement called Modernism, that held yet a third
position. But, for the rest, it was as I say.

"It was the Catholic Church or nothing. And just for a few years
it seemed humanly possible that it might be nothing.

"And now for the causes of the revival.

"Briefly, I should say they were all included under one head--the
correlation of sciences and their coincidence into one point. Let
us take them one by one. We have only time to glance very
superficially at each.

"First there was Psychology.

"Even at the end of the nineteenth century it was beginning to be
perceived that there was an inexplicable force working behind
mere matter. This force was given a number of names--the
'subliminal consciousness,' in man, and 'Nature' in the animal,
vegetable, and even mineral creation; and it gave birth to a
series of absurd superstitions such as that now wholly extinct