unlikely means. There is nothing in the present danger of the Holy See which has not often been before. Its existence in the world is a perpetual miracle: divinely founded, it has been divinely preserved. The power of the Pontiff forms an exception in the history of the world. His spiritual power needs no human aid. Neither kings nor emperors have been able to arrest nor have presumed to patronise it. His temporal power has subsisted for a thousand years by a continuous intervention of Divine Providence. It has never possessed a military force able to cope with the weakest temporal prince. It has existed in the midst of mighty antagonists, any one of which might have crushed it; and, by some strange gift of perpetual stability, it has survived all shocks. Always threatened, but always safe—as the Apostle says: 'We suffer persecution, but are not forsaken; we are cast down, but we perish not: always bearing about in our body the mortification of Jesus, that the life also of Jesus may be made manifest in our bodies. For we who live are always delivered unto death for Jesus' sake: that the life also of Jesus may be made manifest in our mortal flesh.' (2 Cor. iv. 9-11.) The Pontiffs have thereby represented to the world the union of weakness and power. Five-and-forty times they have been driven out of Rome, or have never entered it. Expulsion, banishment, dethronement; this has been their history. No line of kings has ever survived such vicissitudes—their lines have been broken, and their dynasties have passed away. But the line of the Pontiffs is indefectible, and their throne has
