e sinner paying the priest to pray
for him; the corporeality of spirits; the forbidding of the Bible to the
laity; the descent to shrine-worship and fetichism; the doctrine that
man can do more than his duty, and hence have a claim upon God; the sale
by the priests of indulgences in sin for money.

But there is another, a very different aspect under which we must regard
this Church. Enveloped as it was with the many evils of the times, the
truly Christian principle which was at its basis perpetually vindicated
its power, giving rise to numberless blessings in spite of the
degradation and wickedness of man. [Sidenote: Statement of what the
Church had actually done.] As I have elsewhere (Physiology, Book II.,
Chap. VIII.) remarked, "The civil law exerted an exterior power in human
relations; Christianity produced an interior and moral change. The idea
of an ultimate accountability for personal deeds, of which the old
Europeans had an indistinct perception, became intense and precise. The
sentiment of universal charity was exemplified not only in individual
acts, the remembrance of which soon passes away, but in the more
permanent institution of establishments for the relief of affliction,
the spread of knowledge, the propagation of truth. Of the great
ecclesiastics, many had risen from the humblest ranks of society, and
these men, true to their democratic instincts, were often found to be
the inflexible supporters of right against might. Eventually coming to
be the depositaries of the knowledge that then existed, they opposed
intellect to brute force, in many instances successfully, and by the
example of the organization of the Church, which was essentially
republican, they showed how representative systems may be introduced
into the state. Nor was it over communities and nations that the Church
displayed her chief power. Never in the world before was there such a
system. From her central seat at Rome, her all-seeing eye, like that of
Providence itself, could equally take in a hemisphere at a glance, or
examine the private life of any individual. Her boundless influences
enveloped kings in their palaces, and relieved the beggar at the
monastery gate. In all Europe there was not a man too obscure, too
insignificant, or too desolate for her. Surrounded by her solemnities,
every one received his name at her altar; her bells chimed at his
marriage, her knell tolled at his funeral. She extorted from him the
secrets of his life