The one discouraging feature, from the Christian point of view, is the backwardness of Christendom in its great enterprise.
As early as 1553 he had ceased to trust Sylvester and Adashev, owing to their extraordinary backwardness in supporting the claims of his infant son to the throne while he himself lay at the point of death.
The public schools of Rio de Janeiro are defective both in organization and administration; the non-attendance of children from the higher classes, and the antagonism of the Church to schools under purely secular administration, must be held responsible for the backwardness of these schools.
The south-western Ozarks were settled originally by mountaineers from Kentucky and Tennessee, and retained a character of social primitiveness and industrial backwardness until after the Civil War.
Danby, while communicating the "Popish Plot" to the parliament, had from the first expressed his disbelief in the so-called revelations of Titus Oates, and his backwardness in the matter now furnished an additional charge of having "traitorously concealed the plot."