[Sidenote: Loss of power in Church organizations.] In describing these various facts, I have endeavoured to point out impressively how the Church, so full of vigour at first, contained within itself the seeds of inevitable decay. From the period when it came into collision with the intellectual and moral elements, the origin of which we have traced, and which conspired together for its overthrow, it exhibited a gradual decline; first losing its influence upon nations, and ceasing to be in them a principle of public action; next, witnessing the alienation of the higher and educated classes, the process descending downward through the social scale, therein retracing the steps of its advance. When ecclesiasticism became so weak as to be unable to regulate international affairs, and was supplanted by diplomacy, in the castle the physician was more than a rival for the confessor, in the town the mayor was a greater man than the abbot. There remained a lingering influence over individuals, who had not yet risen above a belief that it could control their state after death. This decline of its ancient influence should be a cause of rejoicing to all intelligent men, for an ecclesiastical organization allying itself to political power can never now be a source of any good. In America we have seen the bond that held the Church and State together abruptly snapped. [Sidenote: Return of things to the ancient Christian times.] It is therefore well that, since the close of the Age of Faith, things have been coming back with an accelerated pace, to the state in which they were in the early Christian times, before the founder of Constantinople beguiled the devotional spirit to his personal and family benefit--to the state in which they were before ambitious men sought political advancement and wealth by organizing hypocrisy--when maxims of morality, charity, benevolence, were rules of life for individual man--when the monitions of conscience were obeyed without the suggestions of an outward, often an interested and artful prompter--when the individual lived not under the sleepless gaze, the crushing hand of a great overwhelming hierarchical organization, surrounding him on all sides, doing his thinking for him, directing him in his acts, making him a mere automaton, but in simplicity, humility, and truthfulness guiding himself according to the light given him, and discharging the duties of this troublesome and transitory life "as ever in his great Taskmaster's eye."