The history of Christ's Church on earth has ever been a story of storm and stress. The faithful heart of today mourns in discouragement over the evils that afflict the Church in the opening decade of the twentieth century; yet it needs but a glance at the past to convince us that the severest trials of the Spouse of Christ have happened in times long gone by. She has seen the tempest arise out of the clear sky; the clouds of persecution have hung low, at times even enveloping her in their gloomy shadows; she has seen the lightning's flash and heard the loud roar of the thunders of human wrath, while the hurricane swept over the face of the earth overturning the fondest memorials of her progress, and levelling to the dust the proudest monuments of her civilization. She has prostrated herself to the ground and with buried face has called upon the mercy of God to comfort her sorrow and heal her wounds. And when the storm has passed, she has lifted up her eyes to behold the glory of a newer day, the rainbow of hope, telling of that ancient promise: "For, behold, I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world." The story of the past has been told too often to need repetition in this place. Our interest lies entirely with modern days, with the struggle of the Church against the spirit of anti-Christ incarnate in all the movements of error from the sixteenth century until our own times. And thus, while we are seeking the causes of that anti-Christian spirit, we cannot help regarding with interest the influence exerted by the Protestant Reformation upon the intellectual and moral life of Europe. The abandonment of the old faith led, by a natural sequence, to estrangement from Christianity itself. This is so palpable that it is surprising how the innovators could have overlooked the fact that to abuse and ruin the one meant the wounding and destruction of the other. Indeed, had not organized Catholicity existed at the time, and in its then form, there would have been no concrete Christianity to reform, but only some archaeological remnants out of which it would have been difficult to construct even an imperfect idea of the religion of Christ.