seems to have filled it, if we may judge by the witness of Dante?
Little but bitter conflicts, racial and religious; faithless
rebellions, both in states and in individuals, against the Christian
regimen; worldliness in the church, barbarism in the people, and a
dawning of all sorts of scientific and æsthetic passions, in
themselves quite pagan and contrary to the spirit of the gospel.
Christendom at that time was by no means a kingdom of God on earth; it
was a conglomeration of incorrigible rascals, intellectually more or
less Christian. We may see the same thing under different
circumstances in the Spain of Philip II. Here was a government
consciously labouring in the service of the church, to resist Turks,
convert pagans, banish Moslems, and crush Protestants. Yet the very
forces engaged in defending the church, the army and the Inquisition,
were alien to the Christian life; they were fit embodiments rather of
chivalry and greed, or of policy and jealous dominion. The
ecclesiastical forces also, theology, ritual, and hierarchy, employed
in spreading the gospel were themselves alien to the gospel. An
anti-worldly religion finds itself in fact in this dilemma: if it
remains merely spiritual, developing no material organs, it cannot
affect the world; while if it develops organs with which to operate on
the world, these organs become a part of the world from which it is
trying to wean the individual spirit, so that the moment it is armed
for conflict such a religion has two enemies on its hands. It is
stifled by its necessary armour, and adds treason in its members to
hostility in its foes. The passions and arts it uses against its
opponents are as fatal to itself as those which its opponents array
against it.

In every age in which a supernaturalistic system is preached we must
accordingly expect to find the world standing up stubbornly against