CHAPTER I.

General notions.

No one who is given to serious reflection, can gaze over the face of the earth at the present day without being struck by the religious confusion that everywhere reigns.  Who, indeed, can help being staggered as well as saddened by the extraordinary differences, the irreconcilable views, and the diversities of opinion, even upon fundamental points, that are found dividing Christians in Protestant lands!  The number of sects has so multiplied, that an earnest enquirer scarcely knows which way to turn, or where to look for the pure unadulterated truth.  A spiritual darkness hangs over the non-Catholic world; and chaos seems to have come again.

Yet, amid this almost universal confusion, one bright and luminous path may be easily descried.  As a broad highroad runs straight through some tangled forest, so this path runs through the ages, from the time of Christ, even to the present day.

We can trace its course, from its earliest inception in apostolic times, and then in its development age after age, down to our own day:  from Peter to Gregory, from Gregory to Leo, and from Leo to Pius X., now gloriously reigning.  We refer to the mystical (and one might almost say the miraculous) path trodden by the Popes, each Pontiff carrying in turn, and then handing on to his successor, the glorious torch of divine truth.  Though clouds may gather and thunders may roll, and tempests may rage, and though the surrounding darkness may grow deeper and deeper, that supernatural light has never failed, nor grown dim, nor refused to shed its beams and to illuminate the way.[3]

The continual persistency of the Papacy, to whom this steadily burning torch of truth has been entrusted, is unquestionably one of the most certain, as it is one of the most startling facts in the whole of history.  It stares us full in the face.  It arrests the attention of even the least observant.  It puzzles the historian.  It taxes the explanatory powers of the philosopher, and will remain to the end, a permanent difficulty to the scoffer and to the sceptic, and to all those who have not faith.  As a fact in history, it is unique:  forming an extraordinary exception to the law of universal change:  a portent, and a standing miracle.  Its persistence, century after century, in spite of fire and sword; of persecution from without, and of treachery from within; in prosperity, and in adversity; in honour and dishonour; while kingdoms rise and fall; and while one civilisation yields to a higher, and the very conditions of society shift and change, is deeply significative, and betokens an inherent strength and vitality that is more than natural and that must be referred to some source greater than itself, yea, to a power far mightier than anything in this world,—­viz., to the abiding presence and divine support of Christ the Man-God.