There is no denying this, and hence the error of Gioberti. He would be both a Christian priest and a Gentile philosopher, at once a disciple of the Gospel and of the Portico, and he labored with an ability and a subtlety to demonstrate by means of a philosophy, considered apart from the use he made of it, worthy of profound esteem, that this was not only possible, but demanded by the deepest and truest principles of ontological science. I do not think that he was at that time an unbeliever, or that he entertained any doubts of the religion he professed. But he had little of the sacerdotal character or the Christian spirit, and I think he was disgusted with what he considered the weakness, tameness, abjectness, the _frivolezza_ of the Catholic populations of France and Italy, and out of patience with seeing them crouching before the haughty infidel, and the domineering heretic or schismatic. He wished to see them men, men of lofty and daring souls, scorning to be trampled on, and indignantly hurling back the invading hosts of barbarians, and boldly and triumphantly asserting the proud prerogatives which belong to them as possessors and guardians of the truth of God. He was right after the wisdom of men, but wrong after the wisdom of God, if Christianity is our standard, and was animated by the spirit of Gentilism, not by the spirit of the Gospel. He failed, for he was too pagan for a Christian, and too Christian for a pagan. The remedy, if remedy is needed, is the return of modern society to real, earnest, living faith in the Gospel. The age is frivolous, because it is educated to be Christian, and is at heart unbelieving. It is not heresy or schism that needs now to be attacked, but unbelief—a moral and intellectual scepticism, which books and schools do not teach us to attack successfully. Here schoolmen, men of routine, with their _probos_, _respondeos_, and _objectiones solvunturs_, stand us in poor stead. Exquisite polish, gracefully-turned periods, charming pleasantries, pretty conceits, and soft, sweet sentimentality for boys and girls in their teens, will stand us in just as little. It is necessary to abandon routine, the easy habit of speaking _memoriter_, and learn to think, to master, not merely repeat, what others have said, but to master for ourselves the principles involved, and to speak out in a tone of strong, impassioned reasoning, in free, bold, and energetic language, in defence of the Gospel itself. CHAPTER XIV. ROME AND THE REVOLUTION.