reverently
performed, its festivals generally observed. Its clergy were honored and
liberally sustained. Never since has the Roman Church attained to greater
dignity, magnificence, or power.

But "the noon of the papacy was the midnight of the world."(96) The Holy
Scriptures were almost unknown, not only to the people, but to the
priests. Like the Pharisees of old, the papal leaders hated the light
which would reveal their sins. God's law, the standard of righteousness,
having been removed, they exercised power without limit, and practised
vice without restraint. Fraud, avarice, and profligacy prevailed. Men
shrank from no crime by which they could gain wealth or position. The
palaces of popes and prelates were scenes of the vilest debauchery. Some
of the reigning pontiffs were guilty of crimes so revolting that secular
rulers endeavored to depose these dignitaries of the church as monsters
too vile to be tolerated. For centuries Europe had made no progress in
learning, arts, or civilization. A moral and intellectual paralysis had
fallen upon Christendom.

The condition of the world under the Romish power presented a fearful and
striking fulfilment of the words of the prophet Hosea: "My people are
destroyed for lack of knowledge: because thou hast rejected knowledge, I
will also reject thee:... seeing thou hast forgotten the law of thy God, I
will also forget thy children." "There is no truth, nor mercy, nor
knowledge of God in the land. By swearing, and lying, and killing, and
stealing, and committing adultery, they break out, and blood toucheth
blood."(97) Such were the results of banishing the word of God.

4. THE WALDENSES.

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Amid the gloom that settled upon the earth during the long period of papal
supremacy, the light of truth could not be wholly extinguished. In every
age there were witnesses for God,--men who cherished faith in Christ as the
only mediator between God and man, who held the Bible as the only rule of
life, and who hallowed the true Sabbath. How much the world owes to these
men, posterity will never know. They were branded as heretics, their
motives impugned, their characters maligned, their writings suppressed,
misrepresented, or mutilated. Yet they stood firm, and from age to age
maintained their faith in its purity, as a sacred heritage for the
generations to come.

The history of God's people during the ages of darkness that fo