temporal empires. It has produced more illustrious men than any European
monarchy. And it aimed to accomplish far grander ends,--even obedience
to the eternal laws which God has decreed for the public and private
lives of men. It is invested with more poetic interest. Its doctors, its
dignitaries, its saints, its heroes, its missions, and its laws rise up
before us in sublime grandeur when seriously contemplated. It failed at
last, when no longer needed. But it was not until its encroachments and
corruptions shocked the reason of the world, and showed a painful
contrast to those virtues which originally sustained it, that earnest
men arose in indignation, and declared that this perverted institution
should no longer be supported by the contributions of more enlightened
ages; that it had become a tyrannical and dangerous government, to be
assailed and broken up. It has not yet passed away. It has survived the
Reformation and the attacks of its countless enemies. How long this
power of blended good and evil will remain we cannot predict. But one
thing we do know,--that the time will come when all governments shall
become the kingdoms of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ; and Christian
truth alone shall so permeate all human institutions that the forces of
evil shall be driven forever into the immensity of eternal night.

With the Pontificate of Leo the Great that dark period which we call the
"Middle Ages" may be said to begin. The disintegration of society then
was complete, and the reign of ignorance and superstition had set in.
With the collapse of the old civilization a new power had become a
necessity. If anything marked the Middle Ages it was the reign of
priests and nobles. This reign it will be my object to present in the
Lectures which are to fill the next volume of this Work, together with
subjects closely connected with papal domination and feudal life.

AUTHORITIES.

Works of Leo, edited by Quesnel; Zosimus; Socrates; Theodoret; Fleury's
Ecclesiastical History; Tillemont's Histoire des Empereurs; Gibbon's
Decline and Fall; Beugot's Histoire de la Destruction du Paganism;
Alexander de Saint Cheron's Histoire du Pontificat de Saint Leo le
Grande, et de son Siecle; Dumoulin's Vie et Religion de deux Papes Leon
I. et Gregoire I.; Maimbourg's Histoire du Pontificat de Saint Leon;
Arendt's Leo der Grosse und seine Zeit; Butler's Lives of the Saints;
Neander; Milman's Latin Christianity; Biographie Universelle;
Enc