heresies; he must lead his men as well as guide
his flock; he must be the Church's steward as well as her consecrated
arch-head; he must be the reformer of manners as well as the preserver
of faith; he must be the understander of men's venial mistakes as well
as the censor of their mortal sins.

Battles for belief are no longer fought only with books and dogmas,
opinions and theories. Everything may serve nowadays, from money, which
is the fuel of nations, to wit, which is the weapon of the individual;
and the man who would lose no possible vantage must have both a heavy
hand and a light touch.

By his character and natural gifts, Leo the Thirteenth is essentially
active rather than contemplative, and it is not surprising that the
chief acts of his pontificate should have dealt rather with political
matters than with questions of dogma and ecclesiastical authority. It
has certainly been the object of the present Pope to impress upon the
world the necessity of Christianity in general, and of the Roman
Catholic Church in particular, as a means of social redemption and a
factor in political stability. This seems to be his inmost conviction,
as shown in all his actions and encyclical letters. One is impressed, at
every turn, by the strength of his belief in religion and in his own
mission to spread it abroad. In regard to forms of faith, the opinions
of mankind differ very widely, but the majority of intelligent men now
living seem to hold a more or less distinct faith of one sort or
another, and to require faith of some sort in their fellow-men. Common
atheism has had its little day, and is out of fashion. It is certainly
not possible to define that which has taken the place of the
pseudo-scientific materialism which plagued society twenty or thirty
years ago, and it is certainly beyond the province of this book to
examine into the current convictions with which we are to begin the
twentieth century.

Unprejudiced persons will not, however, withhold their admiration in
reviewing the life of a man who has devoted his energies, his
intelligence and his strength, not to mention the enormous power wielded
by him as the head of the Church, to the furtherance and accomplishment
of ends which so many of us believe to be good. For the pontificate of
Leo the Thirteenth has differed from that of his predecessor in that it
has been active rather than passive. While Pius the Ninth was the head
of the Church suffering, Leo the Thir