With these remarks on the regimen, the polity, and the government of the Church of which Leo laid the foundation, and which he adapted to barbarous ages, when the Church was still a struggling power and Christianity itself little better than nominal,--long before it had much modified the laws or changed the morals of society; long before it had created a new civilization,--with these remarks, acceptable, it may be, neither to Catholics nor to Protestants, I turn once more to the man himself. Can you deny his title to the name of Great? Would you take him out of the galaxy of illustrious men whom we still call Fathers and Saints? Even Gibbon praises his exalted character. What would the Church of the Middle Ages have been without such aims and aspirations? Oh, what a benevolent mission the Papacy performed in its best ages, mitigating the sorrows of the poor, raising the humble from degradation, opposing slavery and war, educating the ignorant, scattering the Word of God, heading off the dreadful tyranny of feudalism, elevating the learned to offices of trust, shielding the pious from the rapacity of barons, recognizing man as man, proclaiming Christian equalities, holding out the hopes of a future life to the penitent believer, and proclaiming the sovereignty of intelligence over the reign of brute forces and the rapacity of ungodly men! All this did Leo, and his immediate successors. And when he superadded to the functions of a great religious magistrate the virtues of the humblest Christian,--parting with his magnificent patrimony to feed the poor, and proclaiming (with an eloquence unusual in his time) the cardinal doctrines of the Christian faith, and setting himself as an example of the virtues which he preached,--we concede his claim to be numbered among the great benefactors of mankind. How much worse Roman Catholicism would have been but for his august example and authority! How much better to educate the ignorant people, who have souls to save, by the patristic than by heathen literature, with all its poison of false philosophies and corrupting stimulants! Who, more than he and his immediate successors, taught loyalty to God as the universal Sovereign, and the virtues generated by a peaceful life,--patriotism, self-denial, and faith? He was a dictator only as Bernard was, ruling by the power of learning and sanctity. As an original administrative genius he was scarcely surpassed by Gregory VII. Above all, he sought to establish faith in the world. Reason had failed. The old civilization was a dismal mockery of the aspirations of man. The schools of Athens could make Sophists, rhetoricians, dialecticians, and sceptics. But the faith of the Fathers could bring philosophers to the foot of the Cross. What were material conquests to these conquests of the soul, to this spiritual reign of the invisible principles of the kingdom of Christ?