himself to expose his grievous wounds: but he may have it only at a price which in honour he cannot pay—the price of insincerity to his convictions—the price of apostasy. The dire Ban of excommunication, formal or informal, drives a man wild; turns his hand against every man, and every man’s hand against him; he is savage; he is a Bandit, actually and literally. Sometimes he becomes criminal. Ostracism practised is a school for scoundrels. Far more merciful—divinely merciful, not humanly—it would be to slay outright the body; than to doom a soul to live a solivagous life of torture—the torture of Hopelessness. That is why Excommunication is so horrible in this present age of works. That is why it was so trenchant a weapon in the ages of faith. It was, and is, perfectly impossible to be resisted by one who is, and was, sincerely faithful. Often enough, an excommunicate sovereign would try resistance; for sovereigns are stronger than ordinary plebeians in the matter of resources. Then, when an interval for consideration had elapsed, the second blow of the Flail would fall—Interdict: his demesne would be made to suffer loss of the means of grace, the sacraments, which were denied to him. His subjects generally rose, resentful and revolting. There was no reason why they should be afflicted, when submission of their sovereign to God’s Vicegerent would suffice for their enfranchisement. But sometimes Interdict also failed. The third blow came. Subjects were absolved from their oath of allegiance to the excommunicate; his throne was declared vacant; kings and princes of Christendom were invited to invade his realm, to take his crown and sceptre, to expel him a homeless friendless connudate outcast in a world that shunned him like a pestilence, like the horrid leprous scab of creeping things which his blasted human body inevitably would become. Then, suppliant, submissive, he crawled to his Canossa; as the late Duke of Lauenberg crawled to the Lord Leo P.P. XIII the other day; as Caesar Fridericus Ahenobarbus Semper Augustus abjectly crawled to, and waited at, the gates of the huge Englishman, Nicholas Breakespeare, the Lord Hadrian P.P. IV, who ruled the world eight hundred years ago, “Not for thee, but for Peter,” that indignant Emperor muttered, perforce doing groom’s service for Peter’s Successor, holding the stirrup of the pontifical palfrey. “For Us, _and_ for Peter,” the superb English Pope retorted, as He bent Caesar to His unconquerable will. Arrogant? Arrogant——of any miserable mortal man who did not believe himself to be, who had not been officially crowned and saluted, and to whom every emperor and king and prince of Christendom, every Christian sovereign and subject of Europe, had not sworn allegiance as, “Ruler of the World, Father of Princes and of Kings, Earthly Vicar of Jesus Christ our Saviour.”