io8 Contemporary Evolution. 



which marks the formal end of Christendom, was almost 

 immediately preceded by the culmination of his spiritual 

 power through the universal acceptance by the whole 

 Church of his official infallibility, than which no step 

 could be more calculated to give vigour, precision, and 

 unanimity to the action of the whole body. 



Moreover, even material inventions and improvements 

 have strikingly co-operated in the same direction. The 

 facilities afforded to locomotion, and the transmission of 

 intelligence by railways and the electric telegraph, set at 

 defiance the old restrictions as to the publication of bulls 

 and other machinery of Church government. 



It is also undeniable that outside the Church's organ- 

 isation there has gone on a movement, parallel with 

 the latter phases of the movement distinctive of the 

 Christian theocracy. In England, besides the great 

 tractarian and ritualistic development of Anglicanism, a 

 movement towards increased orthodoxy or towards eccle- 

 siasticism (e.g., as evidenced architecturally), has gone on 

 even in nonconformist bodies. In Germany, while on the 

 one hand rationalism is increasing, on the other an upward 

 reaction is setting in amongst evangelical Christians which 

 the Bismarckian persecution cannot but aid in developing. 

 Even in Holland there has been, and is,* a powerful and 

 extensive movement in an upward direction. 



* See Contemporary Review, November, 1873, P- 955- 



