build up a kingdom during the absence of the
Lord.

On the contrary, she was to recognize herself as the affianced bride
of a rejected king and coming bridegroom.

She was to walk in separation from the world, refusing the seductive
enticements of her would-be lovers and with an upward and heavenly
look serve while she waited for a returning Lord.

The Lord did not come.

The Church grew weary of her vigil.

She exchanged the heavenly for the earthly look.

She met the Devil and felt the magic of his bewitching glances.

He had led her Lord to the mount of temptation. He had shown Him all
the kingdoms of the world and their glory. He offered them to Him on
condition that He would turn His feet out of the pathway that led to
the sacrificial cross. He offered them on condition that He should
refuse to go to the cross and there in the agony of His soul and
body and on the loom of His vicarious sufferings weave the seamless
robe of divine righteousness for sinful men.

The Lord refused.

The Devil turned and slew Him.

He now led the willing Church to the same mountain height of
temptation.

He tempted her with the same temptation he had offered her Lord: The
rulership of the world.

If she would turn aside from a heaven-ordained bridegroom and a king
whose face she could not see, she might win the world as her kingdom
and rule it in spite of the cross.

The offer of world rulership sounded pleasant in her ears.

She yielded.

She fell into the arms of the world.

The world became her paramour.

She became the world's mistress.

Out of that ungodly and sensual alliance was born the illegitimate
child, that woful ecclesiastical offspring, we call the Roman
Catholic Church.

The Roman Catholic Church became the Holy Roman Empire.

The Empire was the Church.

For long and dismal ages the Roman Church exhibited to perfection
the evil, the folly and fatality of that false and deceptive
proposition that the Church is the kingdom of Christ on earth.

Then came the Reformation. It so smote the Catholic Church that men
imagined the tiara to be broken, crushed and scattered to the winds
forever.

They were mistaken.

It came from underneath that blow almost as if it had risen from the
dead.

To-day it is more populous than ever, having a membership of at
least two hundred millions. It has a more intensely emphasized
solidarity. It is filled with enthusiasm, with ever-increasing
arrogance and persi