"As, century after century, the ages roll on, polytheism comes back under the disguise of mariolatry and the adoration of saints; image worship becomes as rampant as in old Egypt; adoration of relics takes the place of the old fetich-worship; the virtues of the ephod pale before those of holy coats and handkerchiefs; shrines and calvaries make up for the loss of the ark and of the high places; and even the lustral water of paganism is replaced by holy water at the porches of the temples. A touching ceremony--the common meal originally eaten in pious memory of a loved teacher--was metamorphosed into a flesh-and-blood sacrifice, supposed to possess exactly that redeeming virtue which the prophets denied to the flesh-and-blood sacrifices of their day; while the minute observance of ritual was raised to a degree of punctilious refinement which Levitical legislators might envy. And with the growth of this theology, grew its inevitable concomitant, the belief in evil spirits, in possession, in sorcery, in charms and omens, until the Christians of the twelfth century after our era were sunk in more debased and brutal superstitions than are recorded of the Israelites in the twelfth century before it." (Some Controverted Questions, Huxley, p. 159.) In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the leaders of the Reformation and the New Learning began their relentless warfare upon the existing formalism and superstition, and from two different points of attack. After centuries of bloody wars, Protestantism succeeded in displacing Catholicism as the dominant religion over a large part of Northern Europe. Roman Catholicism still remained dominant in Southern Europe, and Greek Catholicism in Eastern Europe. In the meanwhile, to the eternal disgrace of the then Christendom, the followers of Mahomet had established his religion in some of the fairest portions of Southeastern Europe. If the Christian nations of the fifteenth century had expended on the practical cause of keeping Mohammedanism out of Europe one tithe of the energy and sacrifice that they did expend on the unpractical dream of recovering the Holy Sepulchre, Europe would have been spared the endless heritage of evil that has followed the introduction of the unspeakable Turk into European politics. But mutual jealousies, prejudices, petty ambitions, dissentions and discords permitted this calamity to occur, the end of which it seems is not yet.