Still it was not over nations and communities that Rome showed her chief power, but in her control of domestic and individual interests. History presents no record like hers. Her pontiffs in the quiet halls of the Vatican could equally take in a hemisphere at a glance or examine the private character of any individual. Was there a rebellion in Spain? Her agents informed her of {25} it. Was there an obscure philosopher in Germany writing down the results of his investigations? She also knew it. While she restrained the power and tyranny of kings by her influence, she also relieved the hungry beggar or wandering minstrel at the monastery gate. In all Europe there was not a man too obscure, too insignificant or too desolate for her. Surrounded by her solemnities every one received his name at her altar, her bells chimed at his marriage and her knell tolled at his funeral. By her confessionals she extorted from him the secrets of his life, and by her penances she punished him for his faults. In the hour of sickness and trouble her servants sought him out, teaching him to place his trust in God, and strengthening him for the trials of life by the example of the good and faithful of former days. And when at length his lifeless body had become an offense, even to his friends, she received it into her consecrated ground, there to rest till the resurrection morning. She raised woman from nearly the condition of a slave and made her the equal and fit companion of man; and in turn, received a recompense by a firm friend in every home. In an age of bloodshed and plunder she lifted up her hand in defense of the weak, and made her sanctuaries a refuge for the despairing and oppressed. But here arose the difficulty. The so-called Christian church by apostasy had lost the key of revelation. Her decisions depended not upon the voice of inspiration but upon the musty parchments of the past. Claiming to be the church of {26} God, she regarded her decisions as infallible and irrevocable, her teachings as beyond question. Her ideas were crystalized; her philosophy, if indeed it was worthy of that name, was stationary, as must be the case with all systems reposing on a final revelation of God. In the domain of the Catholic church during the space of a thousand years, namely from the time of the apostles to the eleventh century, not a book had been written, not a painting executed, nor statue sculptured of sufficient merit to rescue the name of the author from oblivion. Throughout the length and breadth of Europe there fell a dark cloud of intellectual stagnation, an invisible atmosphere of oppression ready to break down morally and physically whatever opposed its weight; except where a few feeble rays of light were kept flickering by the efforts of Jewish and Mahometan scholars. She at once disclosed her human and denied her divine origin by attempting to force fixed laws on society in the presence of higher truths and advancing civilization.