ulse.] The moral impulse
originated in a different manner, being due partly to the Crusades and
partly to the state of things in Rome. On these causes it is therefore
needful for us to reflect.

First, of the Crusades. There had been wrenched from Christendom its
fairest and most glorious portions. Spain, the north of Africa, Egypt,
Syria, Asia Minor, were gone. The Mohammedans had been repeatedly under
the walls of Constantinople; its fall was only a question of time. They
had been in the streets of Rome. They had marched across Italy in every
direction. [Sidenote: Loss of the holy places.] But perhaps the
geographical losses, appalling as they were, did not appear so painful
as the capture of the holy places; the birthplace of our Redeemer; the
scene of His sufferings; the Mount of Olives; the Sea of Galilee; the
Garden of Gethsemane; Calvary; the Sepulchre. Too often in their day of
strength, while there were Roman legions at their back, had the bishops
taunted Paganism with the weakness of its divinities, who could not
defend themselves, their temples, or their sacred places. That logic was
retaliated now. To many a sincere heart must many an ominous reflexion
have occurred. In Western Europe there was a strong common sense which
quickly caught the true position of things--a common sense that could
neither be blinded nor hoodwinked. The astuteness of the Italian
politicians was insufficient to conceal altogether the great fact,
though it might succeed in dissembling its real significance for a time.
The Europe of that day was very different from the Europe of ours. It
was in its Age of Faith. Recently converted, as all recent converts do,
it made its belief a living rule of action. In our times there is not
upon that continent a nation which, in its practical relations with
others, carries out to their consequences its ostensible, its avowed
articles of belief. Catholics, Protestants, Mohammedans, they of the
Greek communion, indiscriminately consort together under the expediences
of the passing hour. Statesmanship has long been dissevered from
religion--a fact most portentous for future times. But it was not so in
the Middle Ages. Men then believed their form of faith with the same
clearness, the same intensity with which they believed their own
existence or the actual presence of things upon which they cast their
eyes. The doctrines of the Church were to them no mere inconsequential
affair, but an absolute, an act