alleged to justify the Papal Inquisition, or the censorship of the
bishops' courts, or the appellate jurisdiction of the Curia, the fact
remains that these institutions were so organised and so conducted that
the most flagrant abuses were only to be expected. A system which, if
staffed with saints, would have been barely tolerable, became iniquitous
when it was committed to the charge of petty officials, ill-paid, ill-
supervised, and ill-selected. To a great extent the crimes and follies
of the medieval Church were those of a complex bureaucracy in a
half-civilised state. Such a system fails through being too ambitious;
the founders have neither the technical experience requisite for a
satisfactory arrangement of details, nor the subordinates who can repair
the defects of the machine by the efficiency and honesty with which they
tend it; and yet because the aim is grandiose, because the supporters of
the scheme proclaim their readiness and their capacity to regenerate the
State and human nature, they are hailed as the prophets of a new order;
they are allowed to plead the excellence of their motives in extenuation
of all and any means; and they end by creating new evils without
appreciably diminishing the old.

But if the Church as a scheme of government was a doubtful blessing to
those who gave her their allegiance, the Church as a home of spiritual
life was invested with a grandeur and a charm which were and are
apparent, even to spectators standing at the outer verge of her domain.
We may compare the religion of the Middle Ages to an alpine range, on
the lower slopes of which the explorer finds himself entangled in the
mire and undergrowth of pathless thickets, oppressed by a still and
stifling atmosphere, shut off from any view of the sky above or the
pleasant plains beneath. Ascending through this sheltered and ignoble
wilderness, he comes to free and windswept pastures, to the white
solitude of virgin snowfields, to brooding glens and soaring peaks robed