To say not a word of the spiritual claims of the man who sent forth the invitation, so eagerly and widely accepted, there is in the fact just stated a glowing evidence that, even in these days of triumphant and insolent materialism, moral power has not entirely lost ascendency. Though millions of knees are bent in honor of the Dagon of materialism, in some one or other of its myriad forms of degrading idolatry, yet millions of hearts also recognize the gift of God as present evermore in his holy church. Never before has the Catholic Church beheld so great a multitude, from so distant places, assembled at her call at the central city of the faith. The enemies of catholicity have again and again referred to the great inventions of modern times as sure destroyers of the claims of the Catholic Church and of her hold upon her millions of members; but lo! these very inventions are brought into the service of the church. The printing-press, which was going to annihilate the Catholic Church, has proved one of her most effectual bulwarks; millions of printed pages inspire the devotion of her children, and make known her claims to reading men, until many who were even her enemies and revilers, from ignorance and prejudice, acknowledge their error, and make haste to go to "their father's house." Steam, in the view of many, was about so to change the structure of society that the old and decrepid Church of Rome, the great obstacle on the railroad of materialism, was about to be run over and cast to the roadside, a weak and useless wreck; but lo! the power of steam enables hundreds and thousands more to go up to the sacred city, as the tribes of Israel were wont to visit Jerusalem, than could otherwise attend the festivals of the faith in St. Peter's Church. Of the manifold uses of steam, a large proportion is in the service of catholic truth. And then the telegraph; that, surely, was to show an advanced state of civilization which could not tolerate the slow and ancient ways of catholicity; but lo! here, again, the event has contradicted the prophecy; for, by means of the telegraph, the assemblage of the vast host at Rome was known throughout the world on the very day of its occurrence; and almost literally, in all parts of Christendom, thousands of devout worshippers could turn their faces reverently toward the altar of God in Rome at the very instant when those in its immediate presence were bending before it, and could join in the same prayers and anthems, as though the world itself were one vast St. Peter's Church, and the strains of penitence and hymns of joy could reverberate across oceans and mountains, among distant nations and islands of the sea, as among the corridors and arches of one great temple sacred to the triune God. {192}