throne of grace, and its priest bars your access to a Redeemer's
blood.

And how was this temple built? Romanists speak of it as a monument of
the piety of the faithful. But what is the fact? Did it not come out of
the foul box of Tetzel the indulgence-monger? Every stone in it is
representative of so much sin. With all its grandeur, it is but a
stupendous monument of the follies and vices, the crimes and the
superstition, of Christendom in the ages which preceded the Reformation.
It has cost Rome dear. We do not allude to the twelve millions its
erection is said to have cost, but to the mighty rent to which it gave
rise in the Roman world. In the centre of the magnificent piazza of St
Peter's stands an Egyptian obelisk, brought from Heliopolis, with the
words graven upon it, "Christ reigns." Verily that is a great truth; and
there are few spots where one feels its force so strongly as here. The
successive paganisms of the world have been overruled as steps in the
world's progress. Their corruptions have been based upon certain great
truths, which they have written, as it were, upon the general mind of
the world. The paganism which flourished where that column was hewn was
an admission of _God's existence_, though it strove to divert attention
from the truth on which it was founded, by the multitude of false gods
which it invented. In like manner, the paganism that flourishes, or
rather that is fading, where this column now stands, is an admission of
the _necessity of a Mediator_; though it strives, as its predecessor
did, to hide this glorious truth under a cloud of spurious mediators.
But we see in this how every successive move on the part of idolatry has
in reality been a retreat. Truth is gradually advancing its parallels
against the citadel of error, and the world is toiling slowly upward to
its great rest. Thus Christ shows that He reigns.

From this silent prophet at the Pope's door, let us skirt along the
Janiculum, to the gate of San Pancrazio. The site is a commanding one;
and you look down into the basin in which Rome reposes, where many a
cupola, and tower, and pillared facade, rises proudly out of the red
roofs that cover the Campus Martius. If it is toward sunset, you can see
the sheen of the villas which are sprinkled over the Sabine and Volscian
hills, and are much struck with the fine amphitheatre which the
mountains around the city form. What must have been the magnificence of
ancient Rome, with her