METHODS OF RELIGIOUS TEACHING 309 



darkness and degradation the bonds on the human mind 

 slowly loosened. Men began to read again the long-neglected 

 works of the Greek thinkers, and thereupon a new life 

 stirred in the ashes of civilization. Wycliffe, Luther and 

 others appealed from the Church to the Bible. No event in the 

 history of the human intellect had results more momentous. 

 It conferred on every man the right and the possibility of 

 private judgment. The old stagnant atmosphere gradually 

 disappeared. Men began to think otherwise than by rule 

 like so many beetles. At first the reformers, as yet unre- 

 formed, were as intolerant as the orthodox. Witness Luther's 

 denunciation of Aristotle " truly a devil, a horrid 

 calumniator, a wicked sycophant, a prince of darkness, a real 

 Apolyon, a beast, a most horrid impostor on mankind, one in 

 whom there is scarcely any philosophy, a public and pro- 

 fessed liar, a goat, a complete epicure, this thrice execrable 

 Aristotle." Witness the murder of Servetus by Calvin. 

 Witness the persecutions of Catholics and rival Protestant 

 sects. But the power, and with it, the habit, the tradition 

 of being intolerant, soon passed from the Reformers. Since 

 many divergent minds studied a book in which there were 

 numerous obscure passages, many divergent sects arose. 

 Where all were at variance none could be persecuted. In 

 the clash of opposing sects religious persecution and a 

 uniformity of prejudice became impossible. Thus a new 

 mental atmosphere developed. Man now approached religion 

 with something of the spirit of the old Greeks. Fundamental 

 and unambiguous doctrines were not repudiated by the mass 

 of the people, any more than they had been by the Greek 

 populace ; but every man thought more and more for him- 

 self. The real change, therefore, was in the mental training. 

 At length it had become possible for Christianity to associate 

 itself with a high and progressive civilization. At last a year 

 of Europe had become better than a cycle of Cathay. 



489. We are told sometimes that the Church, which 

 insisted on a uniformity of prejudice, exercised a softening 

 and civilizing influence during the Dark Ages. The intense 

 rancour, the constant mendacity and unfairness, the often in- 

 sane ferocity of ecclesiastical contention is a sardonic com- 

 mentary on this humorous statement. Probably in all 

 history there is no instance of a society in which ecclesi- 

 astical power was dominant which was not at once stagnant, 

 corrupt, and brutal. At the present day every community 

 and every section of a community is Jawless and non-progres- 

 sive in exact proportion to the intellectual authority not 



