Orthodox Protestants have openly praised this bold deed of the Pope as highly meritorious for the preservation of the Christian faith. Thus the South African Church Quarterly Review (Episcopal) of January, 1908, said: “The Syllabus and Encyclical of _Pius X._ against Modernism are deserving of the respectful consideration of all Christians.... At the present stage of history the opposing factors are driving with great speed towards a fierce and resolute struggle between Christ and anti-Christ. All who sincerely love Christ, our Lord, must rally under one flag.... Narrow-minded hostility towards the Pope must give way to the desire to be united with the great community which is fighting so valiantly for the old faith of our fathers.... One must be blind, to misjudge the tremendous influence exerted by the last deed of the Pope in favour of the faith.” Even the Evangelical “Kirchenzeitung” admitted that the encyclical is “directed chiefly against the more or less unchristian modern views of the world ... which we must combat.... Undoubtedly it is not only the Pope’s right to lay bare the unchristian tendency of these ideas and their incompatibility with the Christian faith, but it is also his duty and his merit” (November 29, 1908, n. 48). Puny men, entangled in the ideas of their time and surroundings, are easily led to take for their standard the thoughts and actions of their age. They often imagine that they possess not a little strength and independence, when they are intellectually entirely dependent and unable to rise above their time. “It is the fashion, others think that way, therefore I must think so, too”; these are often the principles of their wisdom, and they ask the Church to do likewise. The Church, however, looks back upon a long history, and numerous ideas and opinions she has seen arise and vanish. And whoever can look back upon a great experience, and moreover carries in himself the call to lead the times, feels no restless impulse to be carried away by changing doctrines. The Index. Whenever the subject of Rome’s enmity to science and progress of culture is discussed, there invariably appears on the scene, beside Syllabus and _Galileo_, also the Index. The latter is held by many to be Rome’s permanent means of hindering the progress of humanity in general, and the free scientific activity of the Catholic in particular, and to annihilate the freedom of teaching and learning (_Hoensbroech_, Die Kath. theol. Fakultaeten, 1907, 40 _seq._). They say “the Congregation of the Index has no pity nor consideration for the classical works of literature, and condemns in the name of religion the most admirable products of the human intellect” (Grande Dict. univ. du XIX. siècle, IX, 640, apud _J. Hilgers_, Der Index der Verb. Buecher, 1904, 166; much of what we shall say on this topic is taken from this work by _Hilgers_).