rude and largely illiterate. Many who could never have made any sense
out of a page of printed matter, very easily understood a picture. It
conveyed truthful information, though in a form that hurt, as cartoons
usually do, and it roused a healthy sentiment against a very malignant
evil in the Church and in the body politic. If the Popes would keep out
of politics, they and their followers would enjoy more quiet nerves.

In the second place, it should be borne in mind that the claim of papal
supremacy is no small and innocent matter. The Popes wrested to
themselves the supreme spiritual and temporal power in the world. They
pretended to be the custodians of heaven, the directors of purgatory,
and the lords of the earth. Across the history of the world in the era
of Luther is written in all directions the one word ROME. It is Rome at
the altar swinging the censer, Rome in the panoply of battle storming
trenches and steeping her hands in gore, Rome in the councils of kings,
Rome in the halls of guilds, Rome in the booth of the trader at a
town-fair, Rome in the judge's seat, Rome in the professor's chair, Rome
receiving ambassadors from, and dispatching nuncios to, foreign courts,
Rome dictating treaties to nations and arranging the cook's _menu,_ Rome
labeling the huckster's cart and the vintner's crop, Rome levying a tax
upon the nuptial bed, Rome exacting toll at the gate of heaven. Out of
the wreck of the imperial Rome of the Caesars has risen papal Rome. Once
more, though through different agents, the City of the Seven Hills is
ruling an _orbis terrarum Romanus,_ a Roman world-empire. The rule
extends through nearly a thousand years. How deftly do cunning priests
manipulate every means at their command to increase their power!
Learning, wealth, beauty, art, piety,--everything is used as an asset in
the ambitious game for absolute supremacy which the mitered vicegerent
of Christ is playing against the world. Rome's ancient pontifex maximus
--the pagan high priest of the Rome before Christ--had been a tool of
the consuls and the Caesars; the new pontiff makes the Caesars his
tools. Princes kiss his feet and hold the stirrup for him as he mounts
his bedizened palfrey. An emperor stands barefoot in the snow of the
Pope's courtyard suing pardon for having dared to govern without the
Pope's sanction.--The forests of Germany are reverberating with the
blows of axes which Rome's missionaries wield against Donar's Oaks. The
s