Their record is as poor as their opportunity was great, and the modern world is, in strict proportion to the growth of education, passing disdainfully by the open doors of their churches. Of the twelve million inhabitants of the three greatest cities of Europe hardly two millions attend church; and if it were not for the incessant, feverish, and highly organised efforts of the clergy themselves, churchgoing would show a further rapid and enormous shrinkage. Yet even in this last phase we find them mumbling to ill-instructed congregations about their glorious record in Europe (crowned by a war of four hundred million people), about the wickedness of an age which prefers the indulgence of its passions to their serene guidance, and about the terrible doom which they foresee for Europe if it does not return to its medieval guardians.
As I observed in dealing with the political organisation, Christianity is not a set of ideas but a wealthy and powerful corporation. Once it was a body of men holding certain beliefs: now it is, in essence, an organisation for the enforcement of those beliefs. It is, in the main, this professional or corporate interest which sustains Christianity in Europe: but it is losing heavily. I have shown (Decay of the Church of Rome) that the oldest branch of the Church has lost about a hundred million followers in a hundred years. I do not think that the Protestant Churches, being more progressive and less offensive in their tactics, have lost so heavily, but the extraordinary decay of church-
