a
greater man than the abbot. There remained a lingering influence over
individuals, who had not yet risen above a belief that it could control
their state after death. This decline of its ancient influence should be
a cause of rejoicing to all intelligent men, for an ecclesiastical
organization allying itself to political power can never now be a source
of any good. In America we have seen the bond that held the Church and
State together abruptly snapped. [Sidenote: Return of things to the
ancient Christian times.] It is therefore well that, since the close of
the Age of Faith, things have been coming back with an accelerated pace,
to the state in which they were in the early Christian times, before the
founder of Constantinople beguiled the devotional spirit to his personal
and family benefit--to the state in which they were before ambitious men
sought political advancement and wealth by organizing hypocrisy--when
maxims of morality, charity, benevolence, were rules of life for
individual man--when the monitions of conscience were obeyed without the
suggestions of an outward, often an interested and artful prompter--when
the individual lived not under the sleepless gaze, the crushing hand of
a great overwhelming hierarchical organization, surrounding him on all
sides, doing his thinking for him, directing him in his acts, making him
a mere automaton, but in simplicity, humility, and truthfulness guiding
himself according to the light given him, and discharging the duties of
this troublesome and transitory life "as ever in his great Taskmaster's
eye."

For the progressive degradations exhibited by the Roman Church during
the Age of Faith, something may be offered as at once an explanation and
an excuse. Machiavelli relates, in his "History of Florence"--a work
which, if inferior in philosophical penetration to his "Prince," is of
the most singular merit as a literary composition--that Osporco, a
Roman, having become pope, exchanged his unseemly name for the more
classical one Sergius, and that his successors have ever since observed
the practice of assuming a new name. [Sidenote: Connexion of religious
ideas in Italy with its ethnical state.] This incident profoundly
illustrates the psychical progress of that Church. During the fifteen
centuries that we have had under consideration--counting from a little
before the Christian era--the population of Italy had been constantly
changing. The old Roman ethnical element had