How awesome it seems to tread upon ground embracing a long and momentous history, foretold infallibly by prophet and seer and fulfilled with incontrovertible certainty. Back goes the mind through the centuries to the inception of it all, to the time when the prophet Daniel foretold Rome's supplanting of the Grecian Empire, its blighting rule, and at long last its partitioning under the impact of the barbarian incursions from the north.
Then swiftly comes the rise of that religiopolitical power at which time a church, yet vastly more than a church, was to dominate church and nation for centuries, changing ordinances of God, wreaking havoc upon His faithful people, bitterly opposing the tardy spiritual awakening of the Reformation, finally receiving that long-due stroke of the sword—yet living on despite it, destined to brief recovery and brilliant triumph, but at last to final and everlasting overthrow.
What mighty stirrings move the soul as one stands again in the old Colosseum and sees the dens from which ravenous beasts rushed forth to devour the early Christian victims before the frenzied, pagan mob in the days of the glorious conquest of the church. How one is moved as he treads again the labyrinths of those early underground cities of the saintly, Christian dead, in which refuge was had in times of fiery pagan persecution. What mute but eloquent messages they convey to us!
What mixed feelings fill one when he is passing under the historic arch commemorating the triumph and professed conversion of Constantine, which brought surcease to the church's early tribulation. But alas ! it was only a fatal perversion to her whole concept and practice, until the departing remnants of the early purity were lost in that lowering cloud of apostasy which grew darker and darker until finally the gross darkness of the midnight of the world settled like a deadly pall over the earth.
See everywhere marks of the Papacy's rise to dizzy heights of power, not only ecclesiastical but temporal, ruling and ruining, laying hands on all things human and divine, inscribing her pontifical insigne on every monument of the past—Colosseum, catacombs, everything. Imperial and relentless was that reign. Hear just now, this Sunday evening, the pealing chorus of church bells from her five hundred church edifices in the city, some of which, like that historic Lateran,—claiming to be the mother of all the churches of the world, and reaching back in founding days to Constantine,—are interwoven with the most momentous events of human history thereafter.
See the giant palace of the Vatican, and St. Peter's enthroned now in Vatican City, with its own postal system, coinage, diplomatic corps, telephone system, radio station, multiple colleges, and the other accouterments to its ramified system and power. See the swarming monks and friars and priests on every hand and from every land. See the marks of blighting superstition and perversion. Watch the penitents climbing the Scala Sancta, or sacred stairs, on hands and knees, or kissing the images of the saints. Gaze at pagan temples transformed into Catholic churches with practically the same pagan ritual or pagan columns surmounted with the statue of a saint.
What a picture! What a story ! Words fail, as past, present, and prophesied future troop before the mind, struggling for utterance and vying with each other in interest and momentous concern. The system is more than human, but in no sense divine. It is a mystery in its power and appeal, but not the Mystery of godliness. It is baffling in its uncanny shrewdness, and is adroitly winning its way back to power and prestige. And this message and movement that we represent, fellow worker, is its direct antithesis.
The halt in Rome's willful career, effected by the French General Berthier in 1798, and the serious setback when troops poured through the famous Porta Pia in 187o, as they wrested the city from papal control, will soon be overcome. Once more she will sit a queen, proudly believing herself secure. Then will come our day of grief and testing, yet radiant. nevertheless, with hope, and pledged with the immutable promises of God's speedy deliverance for His children.
O Rome! Mighty are thy fascinations; imponderable are thy plans. Little wonder that the world, whose pathway is unlighted by the torch of prophecy, wonders after thee. Yet God rules and overrules. And, great God and living Father, we thank Thee for Thy divine portrayal of the sure outline, and for understanding to read the meaning aright ! Give us renewed confidence in Thy limitless power, and grant us, we pray, spiritual grace and power for the bearing of our appointed witness, as we present to a perishing, bewildered, disillusioned world the meaning of it all through the everlasting gospel in the setting of the third angel's message. And accept, we pray, our pledge of renewed fealty in this last, momentous hour. Amen.
L. E. F.