POSE OF THE PAPACY.

CHAPTER I.

GENERAL NOTIONS.

No one who is given to serious reflection, can gaze over the face of
the earth at the present day without being struck by the religious
confusion that everywhere reigns. Who, indeed, can help being
staggered as well as saddened by the extraordinary differences, the
irreconcilable views, and the diversities of opinion, even upon
fundamental points, that are found dividing Christians in Protestant
lands! The number of sects has so multiplied, that an earnest enquirer
scarcely knows which way to turn, or where to look for the pure
unadulterated truth. A spiritual darkness hangs over the non-Catholic
world; and chaos seems to have come again.

Yet, amid this almost universal confusion, one bright and luminous
path may be easily descried. As a broad highroad runs straight through
some tangled forest, so this path runs through the ages, from the time
of Christ, even to the present day.

We can trace its course, from its earliest inception in apostolic
times, and then in its development age after age, down to our own day:
from Peter to Gregory, from Gregory to Leo, and from Leo to Pius X.,
now gloriously reigning. We refer to the mystical (and one might
almost say the miraculous) path trodden by the Popes, each Pontiff
carrying in turn, and then handing on to his successor, the glorious
torch of divine truth. Though clouds may gather and thunders may roll,
and tempests may rage, and though the surrounding darkness may grow
deeper and deeper, that supernatural light has never failed, nor grown
dim, nor refused to shed its beams and to illuminate the way.[3]

The continual persistency of the Papacy, to whom this steadily burning
torch of truth has been entrusted, is unquestionably one of the most
certain, as it is one of the most startling facts in the whole of
history. It stares us full in the face. It arrests the attention of
even the least observant. It puzzles the historian. It taxes the
explanatory powers of the philosopher, and will remain to the end, a
permanent difficulty to the scoffer and to the sceptic, and to all
those who have not faith. As a fact in history, it is unique: forming
an extraordinary exception to the law of universal change: a portent,
and a standing miracle. Its persistence, century after century, in
spite of fire and sword; of persecution from without, and of treachery
from within; in prosperity, and in adversity; in honour and dishono