bitter papal encyclical, strangely contrasting with the courteous
politeness of modern state-papers, was issued, November 1, 1870,
denouncing the acts of the Piedmontese court, "which had followed the
counsel of the sects of perdition." In this his Holiness declares that
he is in captivity, and that he will have no agreement with Belial. He
pronounces the greater excommunication, with censures and penalties,
against his antagonists, and prays for "the intercession of the
immaculate Virgin Mary, mother of God, and that of the blessed apostles
Peter and Paul."

Of the various Protestant denominations, several had associated
themselves, for the purposes of consultation, under the designation of
the Evangelical Alliance. Their last meeting was held in New York, in
the autumn of 1873. Though, in this meeting, were gathered together many
pious representatives of the Reformed Churches, European and American,
it had not the prestige nor the authority of the Great Council that had
just previously closed its sessions in St. Peters, at Rome. It could
not appeal to an unbroken ancestry of far more than a thousand years;
it could not speak with the authority of an equal and, indeed, of
a superior to emperors and kings. While profound intelligence and a
statesmanlike, worldly wisdom gleamed in every thing that the Vatican
Council had done, the Evangelical Alliance met without a clear and
precise view of its objects, without any definitely-marked intentions.
Its wish was to draw into closer union the various Protestant Churches,
but it had no well-grounded hope of accomplishing that desirable result.
It illustrated the necessary working, of the principle on which
those Churches originated. They were founded on dissent and exist by
separation.

Yet in the action of the Evangelical Alliance may be discerned
certain very impressive facts. It averted its eyes from its ancient
antagonist--that antagonist which had so recently loaded the Reformation
with contumely and denunciation--it fastened them, as the Vatican
Council had done, on Science. Under that dreaded name there stood before
it what seemed to be a spectre of uncertain form, of hourly-dilating
proportions, of threatening aspect. Sometimes the Alliance addressed
this stupendous apparition in words of courtesy, sometimes in tones of
denunciation.

THE VATICAN CONSTITUTION CRITICISED. The Alliance failed to perceive
that modern Science is the legitimate sister--indeed, it is the