hasn't. The mediaeval conception of the Church, before Luther's day, was
consistent, at any rate, if you once grant the premises on which it was
based."

"What premises?"

"That the Almighty had given it a charter, like an insurance company,
of a monopoly of salvation on this portion of the Universe, and agreed to
keep his hands off. Under this conception, the sale of indulgences,
masses for the soul, and temporal power are perfectly logical
--inevitable. Kings and princes derive their governments from the Church.
But if we once begin to doubt the validity of this charter, as the
Reformers did, the whole system flies to pieces, like sticking a pin into
a soap bubble.

"That is the reason why--to change the figure--the so-called Protestant
world has been gradually sliding down hill ever since the Reformation.
The great majority of men are not willing to turn good, to renounce the
material and sensual rewards under their hands without some definite and
concrete guaranty that, if they do so, they are going, to be rewarded
hereafter. They demand some sort of infallibility. And when we let go
of the infallibility of the Church, we began to slide toward what looked
like a bottomless pit, and we clutched at the infallibility of the Bible.
And now that has begun to roll.

"What I mean by a mitigated orthodoxy is this: I am far from accusing Mr.
Hodder of insincerity, but he preaches as if every word of the Bible were
literally true, and had been dictated by God to the men who held the pen,
as if he, as a priest, held some supernatural power that could definitely
be traced, through what is known as the Apostolic Succession, back to