employ to set it free? Martyrdom? It supplied only a negative force, a resisting and not an attacking force. Alliance with some great prince? None of them dreamed of serving God sufficiently. It was for Gregory VII., by attentively considering the ideas and customs of his age, to discover there the remedy for the abuses which devoured Christianity, and that remedy he saw. The whole of the feudal system rested upon the oath, not such as we now understand it, but upon an oath which bound the heart, the soul, the life, the possessions, the whole being. Gregory VII. comprehended that by giving themselves up in this manner it was impossible for the oath not to become reciprocal; and he saw that if it bound the less to the greater, it should also bind the greater to the less. Moreover, the oath was a religious act, the strength of which lay in the name of God called in witness of the promised faith, and which, in consequence, could not serve as a bond to injustice and oppression. The feudal oath was then politically and religiously susceptible of being annulled: politically, because an act of treachery could be committed by the lord to his vassal, and by the vassal to his lord; religiously, because the name of God can never serve as a title to commit evil, certain, manifest, and persevering evil. That theory possessed the merit of being drawn up in the very heart of European public law, but it had not yet been instrumental to the emancipation of the Church; the eye of a great man was wanting to discover it, and the heart of a saint to apply it. Gregory VII. was the one and the other. He died in exile, having loved justice and hated iniquity, apparently vanquished, but rewarded in the future by the liberty of the Church which was the object of his life and the cause of his death.

The Crusades very soon bore witness to the triumph of the papacy, and placed its influence and its glory above all other, by the magnificent use which it made of them to the profit of the European republic.

But it is dangerous to be exalted, even with justice and by good deeds. A hidden reaction against the Holy See was agitating men's minds; it burst out by the events and doctrines which have filled the history of the last five centuries. I will merely indicate them. In the fourteenth century the sojourn of the popes at Avignon during sixty years; in the fifteenth the great Western schism, which undermined the respect of the nations for the centre of unity; in the sixteenth Protestantism; in the seventeenth Jansenism, that treacherous heresy, which never dared openly to attack the Church, but hid itself in its bosom like a serpent; in the eighteenth rationalism, which believes itself strong enough to attack not only the vicar of Jesus Christ, but the work and person of Jesus Christ himself. At one moment all appeared to be lost; from one end of Europe to the other there was but a vast conspiracy against Christianity, in which the princes and their ministers occupied the foremost places. We know the thunderclap which undeceived them. These kings, who gave their little entertainments to philosophers, were told one day that the head of the King of France, the first king in the world, had fallen before his palace under the ignoble axe of a machine. They fell back a step before God. The French republic brought them other news of Providence; a parvenu soldier intimated to them the order of it. He destroyed on the field of Wagram even the name of the Holy Roman Empire, so long the adversary of the papacy; and even he, having dared to lay his hands upon it, victim of the same faults of which he was the glorious instrument of chastisement, was seen all at once to expire like a fallen star, in the deep and solitary waves of the Atlantic. He left behind him a son adorned with his features, his glory, and his misfortunes-a young heart in whom remembrance and hope daily reconstructed the country. But his father had given him too weighty a name; the King of Rome sank under this burden, like a precious flower which does not attain to its perfection, bowed down

by the etiquette to which a friendly but an imprudent hand had condemned him.

Now, Gentlemen, the papacy has reached a more complete era of its existence than any which preceded it. The reaction which took place in the public mind against it, because of the events of the middle ages, has nearly reached its end. Men have understood that the nature of its development at that epoch arose from circumstances and not from pretensions, and that this development was favourable to the nations, to Europe, and to mankind; that the popes, in the freedom of their election, in the sanctity of marriages, in the observance of ecclesiastical celibacy, in the integrity of the hierarchy, maintained in reality a just and civilising influence. Men have comprehended that the sovereign pontiff could not be in dependance to any Christian princes, and that his independence, which is essential to religion, is also essential to the peace of the divers states. The Roman empire, the Eastern empire, the Western empire, no longer exist; no power can pretend to govern the Holy See, and public opinion accords to it an honourable neutrality in wars between divers powers. on another hand, we examine the spiritual supremacy of the popes, we find it secured by a possession of eighteen centuries, which schism and heresy have alone and in vain disputed. We see Jansenism destroyed, Protestantism inclining towards its fall, the Greek schism degraded in the East under the yoke of the Russians and the Turks, Mahometanism exhausted-in a word, everywhere we see error weak or withered away; whilst the Roman Church, ever the same, and always aided by God, remains firm on the wreck of the past. The scars which events have left upon her shine upon her body, and render it more difficult for the sword to touch her. She has preserved from the era of martyrdom, passive courage against persecution; from the era of the Bas-empire, the knowledge of doubtful positions; from the era of Charlemagne, sovereignty; from the era of Gregory VII., the knowledge of great political ends; from

If,

the era of reaction, a more profound knowledge of herself and others; and from the present era, an invincible trust in God. If you do not yet clearly discover her actual triumph, it is because the triumph of the Church is never, at any given moment, visible. Looking at only one point in the course of time, the bark of Peter appeared ready to sink, and the faithful are always ready to cry, "Lord, save us, we perish!" (1) But in looking back over the succession of ages, the Church appears in her strength; and we understand that saying of Jesus Christ in the tempest, "Man of little faith, why hast thou doubted?" (2)

(1) St. Matthew, ch. 8, v. 25.

(2) St. Matthew, ch. 14, v. 31.

FIFTH CONFERENCE.

OF THE INSTRUCTION AND SALVATION OF MANKIND BEFORE THE DEFINITIVE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE CHURCH.

MY LORD,

GENTLEMEN,

IF I mistake not, a thought has pre-occupied your minds up to this moment. Whilst we have been exposing to you the need of a teaching Church, its constitution, its rational, moral, and infallible authority, the miraculous establishment of its unity, you have said within yourselves, Yes, a teaching Church is necessary to the world, the constitution of the teaching Catholic Church is admirable, her rational and moral authority surpasses all others, and she has given proof of her infallibility; the establishment of her unity in the world, in the midst of so many difficulties and changes, bears the mark of divinity! Perhaps, however, you ask at the same time, "How was it, if that teaching Church is necessary to mankind, that she was established so late? Is it because mankind did not stand in need of teaching before Jesus Christ? Or because God, before the coming of his Son, disdained the salvation of men, and willed not to redeem them before a day and an hour determined upon by him?" But you remember the striking words of St. Paul: "I desire, therefore, first of all, that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgiving