is almost entirely in the student's own hands.

[Side note: The dangers of the hour and how to meet them]

If the Irish priest on the foreign mission is to become a force
in the future, his course of philosophy must be both solid and
practical.

The last half century has not only changed the arms of his
adversaries but transferred the conflict to new grounds.

Protestantism is dying. The mere veneer of Christianity is fast
fading off among the sects.

The cobwebs of neglect are overspreading the works of theological
controversy; but in the domain of ethics and metaphysics activity
daily grows in intensity.

The student would do well to keep this fact before his eyes. It
is proper that a priest should be conversant with the errors of
the past and the arguments by which they are met. Many of these
errors he will discover exhumed, draped in new disguises, and
paraded as the fruit of modern "thought." But it will be well
also, in his studies, not to ignore the fact that the Agnostic
and the Socialist are, under his very eyes, digging what they
confidently assure us is to be the grave of Christianity.

Agnosticism and Socialism are the two great forces to be reckoned
with in the immediate future.