Leo has been a providential man in the fullest sense of the word. He has been a Moses who has led the hosts of the Lord from a captivity that was more galling than the slavery of Egypt of old through the desert of suffering into the promised land. The forty years that have elapsed since the breach of Porta Pia have brought untold victories to the church. The Robber King battering at the gates of Rome is readily offset in the eyes of discerning readers by the eager visits of the Kaiser, the head of the Lutheran Church, and the English King, the head of the Episcopal Church, to pay reverence and homage to the head of the great Mother Church of Christendom, and everywhere throughout the world, people who are outside the fold have been devoutly praying that he might be spared to the world for many years to come. One cannot help contrasting the feelings of non-Catholic people to-day towards the Church of Rome with the sentiments of antagonism that were expressed but a generation ago. Not a little of this is due to the commanding, and at the same time attractive, figure of the great White Shepherd of Christendom. There have been popes who have emphasized certain characteristics, and they stand out in history as striking types of these special characteristics. Innocent III. was a great reformer; Sixtus V. a great statesman; Pius V. was crowned with the aureole of sanctity; Gregory VI. was a man of great learning; but Leo seems to have united in his own person in a very marked degree all these great qualities. His gifts were of so universal a nature that it is difficult to say which one belongs to him in the more pre-eminent degree. His genius has illuminated every department of religious activity, be it statecraft or be it letters; be it the devotional side of the church, or the philosophical, or the diplomatic, or the purely religious.