While this Christian Church, little by little, was emerging from the general dissolution of the Roman Empire, there also emerged gradually at its head a new figure, the Pope.

We must face this fully; for it is at the very foundation of our subject. Beyond all questions of our agreement or disagreement with the Papacy lies the fact that this is one of the most remarkable phenomena in social history. The Papacy, even to-day, is one of the strongest forces in European society; it illustrates the value of a positive and definite programme, however imperfect, as against any programme of mere negation. This is a point which needs to be emphasized most strongly by those of us who feel bound most uncompromisingly to combat whatever we judge to be hollow or excessive in the claims of the Roman Church. Whatever may be said of the line of Japanese Emperors, at least in this West of ours there is no succession of sovereigns comparable in length to that of the Popes; and that is all the more remarkable because, even at the most worldly times of the Papacy, the armies which any Pope could directly command have been so insignificant in number. Lamentably as Roman Catholicism (like many other Churches) has often employed physical coercion, it has never relied preponderantly upon brute force. The Pope's dominion has always been, in the main, what it has professed to be—a power exercised rather over men's minds than over their bodies.