"Of course some resisted, for such is human nature. But there is this most notable circumstance, never to be forgotten,-they were always wrong and the Pope was always right,-not once, but always. In all the great controversies of the Primitive Church, those about Easter, the baptism of heretics, and the penitential discipline, we at this day are living on the doctrinal victory of Rome. What becomes now of the assertion of Janus that the Popes were unable to carry out their own views? For a time men rebelled, but the Popes were right, and the Church came to see that they were right, and that what they merely tolerated, as they tolerate Gallicism now, was wrong. All the men of talent of the Church, all the men of science and progress - Tertullian, Hippolytus, Origen-were condemned, as a philosophical German might be now. The growls of Tertullian over a decree of Pope Zephyrinus, and his ironical contempt for the title of Bishop of Bishops, are at once a proof that the voice of the Sovereign Pontiff reached beyond the limits of his own local Church, and that the flippant contemptuousness of Janus has not even the merit of originality."

Again we say that all this proves nothing except what nobody would attempt to deny, that Rome has been able, by the employment of means which will not bear the light of day, by impudent forgeries and crimes even more atrocious, by obtaining a hold over kings by awakening their superstitious terrors or their jealousy of liberty, to crush opposition within her own domain. Bloody wars and cruel massacres have been the instruments she has employed, and she has thus built up a power in virtue of which she asserts her own views on dogma and ritual. The assertion that therefore she was always right and the noble men of the past who opposed her were always wrong is sublimely impudent, but as an argument utterly worthless. What was to be proved was that from the first her authority was admitted; what is proved is that though resisted at the time, and resisted in such a way as to show that it had no solid foundation at all, it has subsequently been able to assert itself, and to brand all those who at the time denied its assumptions as heretics.

It is not necessary that we should be long detained by the Councils which were held in that medieval period when the Popes acquired the power which they wielded with such relentless severity. That these assemblies should be reckoned as gatherings of Christian ecclesiastics, and their doings form any part of the history of the Church, is sad enough. To one or two of them only is it possible to allude. The Second Lateran Council is memorable because of the influence exerted in it by the celebrated Hildebrand, and the settlement it effected relative to the election to the Papacy, which it vested virtually in the hands of the high spiritual aristocracy. The cardinal bishops were to take the initiative, and in fact to

make the choice, for though the assent, first of the cardinal priests, then of the laity, and finally of the Emperor himself was required, it is clear that the power would belong to the Sacred College. The decree on this subject, which was only signed, however, by seventy bishops, was guarded by one of the most terrible of anathemas. The offender against it was thus cursed :-" May he endure the wrath of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and that of St. Peter and St. Paul, in this life and the next. May his house be desolate, and no one dwell in his tents. Be his children orphans, his wife a widow, his sons outcasts and beggars. May the usurer consume his substance, the stranger reap his labours. May the world and all the elements war upon him, and the merits of all the saints which sleep in the Lord confound and inflict visible vengeance during this life!"

Before the next great Council of the Lateran, an assembly of a thousand bishops and a whole troop of lesser dignitaries, held (1139) under the presidency of Innocent II., the influence of Hildebrand had made itself felt, and the result is seen in the tone taken by the Pope. The subordination of the laity to the clergy, of the clergy to the bishops, and of all the bishops to himself was the burden of his opening address, which was conceived in a spirit of remarkable arrogance. He was the feudal head of the Church, and all its officers were to regard themselves as holding the same relation to him as barons and knights to their liege lord. Carrying out this, he despised and excommunicated all who had received any position from his rival, the anti-Pope. "Each of these degraded prelates" (says Milman) "was summoned. The Pope assailed those that appeared with malignant reproaches, wrenched their pastoral staves out of their hands, himself stripped the palls from their shoulders, and without mercy took away the rings by which they were wedded to their churches!" How fitting a representative this man of Him whose yoke was easy and His burden light, who "endured the contradiction of sinners against Himself," who when "He was reviled reviled not again, when He suffered threatened not "! But the New Testament is just the one book to which these pontiffs dare not appeal, the example of their professed Master that to which they bear the least resemblance.

The Lateran Council of 1215 was under the direction of Innocent III., than whom a prouder priest never wore the tiara. It was he who placed our own island under interdict, and before whom that wretched creature King John abased himself in a style unworthy of his manhood, to say nothing of his kingship, and only obtained absolution by consenting to hold his kingdom as a fief of the Holy See. It was he who had to deal with the heretics of Languedoc, the ill-fated Albigenses, and organised the most cruel persecutions

against them. It was he who, in order to carry out his cruel plans more completely, founded the terrible tribunal of the Inquisition. "Under that young and ambitious priest" (says Gibbon) "the successors of St. Peter attained the meridian of their greatness; and in a reign of eighteen years he exercised a despotic command over the emperors and kings whom he raised and deposed, over the nations whom an interdict of months or years deprived, for the offence of their rulers, of the exercise of Christian worship. . . Innocent may boast of the two most signal triumphs over sense and humanity, the establishment of transubstantiation and the origin of the Inquisition." An unwavering believer in his office and himself, an uncompromising foe to every kind of heresy, a zealous friend of the Crusades, from which he hoped to derive benefit to his see, although he excommunicated the Crusaders themselves when they incurred his displeasure, a stern and pitiless persecutor, he was one of the most powerful enemies to freedom, one of the worst scourges of humanity which even the Papacy has furnished. Yet, as Paris to-day has "Arcadians" more Imperialist than the Emperor, so, if we are to trust the accounts, there were men at the Council, representatives of Simon de Montfort and the Bishops of Languedoc, who went beyond Innocent himself. What truth there may be in the statements as to his attempts to moderate their passion and injustice it is impossible now to decide, but the deed of the Council remains, and it is one of oppression and cruelty. For the first time the Church dared solemnly to depose a sovereign prince. Count Raymond, of Toulouse, was condemned for heresy, and stripped of his dominions, while the sanction of the Council was given to the bloodhounds who had been let loose to prey on the unfortunate people who dared to worship God after the manner these priests called heresy. We sometimes marvel that there should still be so much of scepticism in the world, and that Christianity possesses so little power compared with what she might have been expected to possess. We read the accounts of such assemblies as this, and the cruelties perpetrated with their consent or at their instigation, in the name of true religion, and our wonder rather is that there is any Christianity at all. If there had not been Divine truth and power in it it must have been stifled beneath these corruptions, or perished as the consequence of the crimes done in its name and professedly on its behalf.

As we advance, the history of Councils is still written in letters of blood. The red hats which the first Council of Lyons in 1245 decreed should be worn by the cardinals were in truth fitting symbols for the leading men in assemblies who were ready to shed blood like water in order to suppress heresy. Coercion,

and coercion sustained by the power of the civil magistrate and the terrors of the Inquisition, was their one weapon for the defence of what they called truth, and most ruthlessly was it employed. Thus the Council of Lyons, under the guidance of Innocent IV., who, says Dean Milman, blended with the inflexible haughtiness of the Churchmen "the inexorable, passionate hatred of a Guelfic Burgher towards a rival Ghibelline, the hereditary foe of his house, of the Sinibaldi of Genoa," undertook to depose the Emperor of Germany himself. The assembly which undertook to become thus the mere tool of an Italian priest, and for this purpose was ready to light up the flames of war throughout Europe, did not consist of more than one hundred and forty prelates, of whom but very few were Germans. The Council of Vienne became the instrument of another Pope in the destruction and plunder of the great order of the Knights Templars, a body whose deeds of atrocity had been too great to admit of our feeling much sympathy on their behalf, but who were treated with fearful cruelty by the very party to whom they had often rendered great service. The Council of Constance belongs to a different era, and is marked by the new spirit which the long-continued schism in the Papacy had produced. throughout the Roman world. The palmy days of the Papacy were over for a time, and the bishops were resolved to put an end to the disgrace which the dissensions of the rival Popes, and the shocking private characters of some of them, had wrought to the Church. The story of the schism, and of the consequences to which it led, must be reserved for the present. Suffice it to say that even in the desire to secure somewhat more of independence, the Council still found time to try and condemn the two great Reformers of the day, John Huss and Jerome of Prague. It would seem as if, whatever else these ecclesiastical bodies have to do, they could never deny themselves the luxury of sacrificing the stray heretic. It is thus that from time to time they have martyred some of "the men of whom the world was not worthy," and throughout been consistent in their hatred of liberty and their determination at all cost to suppress it.

ANCIENT ANSWERS TO A MODERN QUESTION.

THE poor man's questions have become the questions of the rich. The poor ask in doubt and fear, "What shall we eat ?—what shall we drink?-wherewithal shall we be clothed? The rich ask the same questions in their desire for new dainties, or in their eagerness to astonish their neighbours or to excite the envy of their rivals. To the poor the ancient book speaks words of comfort,

telling them that if they are doing God's work God will take care to supply them with necessaries. The Master will see that His servant has enough to enable him to perform His service, and that vigorously.

But the Great Teacher who speaks to us from that grassy pulpit of the mountain side has apparently other people before His mind besides the poor. He is thinking of those who make these questions the questions of life, who are asking every day and all day long, What shall we eat? and wherewithal shall we be clothed? Now, this latter, though a question as old as sin, as the first figleaf garment of our mother Eve, is especially a modern questionmodern society is moulded and influenced by its dress to an extraordinary extent. We laugh at the Hindoos because they mark their castes by the varieties of costume; but we in this country have almost as firm a custom, and judge each other continually by this conventional standard. Hundreds of thousands of persons make the inquiry, "What shall we put on?"-the question of questions. They give more thought to it than would make them. philosophers, and more care and attention than, properly directed, would make them useful members of society.

The love of finery and ornament is not wrong. The uncivilised tribes, the savages, are especially fond of gay colours and startling contrasts, and one is almost inclined to believe sometimes that the modern world is really going back to barbarism in this respect. The love of these things, like all other natural instincts, needs to be chastened and trained by education. But that excessive love of ornament and luxury in dress which is characteristic of our times is wrong just because of its excess. To make this question one's business, and recreation, and even one's religion, is bad and silly, beneath the dignity of human nature, and the duty of a Christian.

So far, then, about the question, which is manifestly one of great and even absorbing interest to many. Now let us see what answers the ancient book of Divine wisdom has to give to this eager question of men. The Bible says a good deal about clothing, only it speaks on this subject as on all others, in a Divine way. It sets the inner before the outer, the spiritual before the material. There is a clothing seen by men, and there is a clothing seen by God; which is the more important is a question admitting of but one reply. The outward graces of character are to the soul what clothing and ornaments are to the body. And just as the garment adapts itself to the form and expresses it to the eye, so the graces of character embody and express the life of the soul. To our eager question, "Wherewithal shall we be clothed?" the Apostle Peter comes forward with an answer, on this wise: "Be ye clothed with humility.” And Peter knew what he was talking about, for he shows some knowledge of character in his exhortation to the Christian wives of his day, "whose adorning let it not be that outward adorning of plaiting the hair, and of wearing gold, or of putting on of apparel, but let it be the hidden man of the heart, in that which is not corruptible, even the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit." This meek and quiet spirit is the spirit of humility, and a most gracious and becoming garb it is. It is becoming in the presence of God,