through Him were incalculable blessings. Her aid in suppressing
disorder and in establishing a respect for law and government is not to
be overlooked. She presented in her own organization an example of
authority, of system, and of obedience, which, despite many failings
and abuses, was of great value to the world. But there is in human
nature an irrepressible tendency toward growth and progress, and when
this tendency began to show itself in the Middle Ages, it found in the
theological spirit, then personated by the Roman Church, its most
bitter and most powerful enemy. The church, which had hitherto been a
teacher and guide, became the champion of barbarism and the genius of
retrogression. Instead of adapting herself to the growing wants of
mankind, instead of preserving her influence and power by inward
progress proportionate to that which she saw advancing without, she
sought, stationary herself, to keep the world stationary, and to stamp
out in blood the progressive spirit of man. Hence it is that the
blessings of our modern life have been achieved in spite of the Roman
Church, which should have promoted them, and the history of modern
civilization and modern knowledge is in so large a part the history of
emancipation from the tyranny of the theological spirit,--that is, the
clerical opposition to mental and material advancement, both of which
are as necessary to moral advancement as they are to the happiness of
men. This spirit has been the same in every country and in every age,
when the spiritual has exceeded the secular power, and its lamentable
effects may be traced as well in the gloomy Protestant theocracy of
Scotland as in the Catholic Inquisition of Spain. During the period,
however, when the romances of chivalry were principally written and
enjoyed, the convulsions arising from attempts to burst the bonds by
which the minds of men were restrained, had not yet been sensibly felt.
The church was still the controlling intellectual influence. A dark
cloud of ignorance and superstition hung over Europe, to be dispelled