A writer in the _Stimmen_ thought that if those who were separated from the Church had only been present they might have been won back. It would be an easy way to settle the merits of a religion, if it could be done by the simple experiment of what body had the grandest building for a display, or the greatest number of richly dressed men to perform. We do not presume to say whether Peter ever did visit Rome or not; but, supposing that he did, the question between him and the sovereign Pontiff of the day, as to the value of their respective religions, would soon have been settled in favour of Nero, if it had gone by buildings, statues, robes, and retinues. Probably the poor itinerant preacher was so conscious that, as Milton would say, his religion "to the gorgeous solemnities of paganism, and the sense of the world's children, seemed but a homely and yeomanly religion," that he would not have challenged comparison with the purpled Pontiff on that ground. Any writer who could imagine that the tendency of a "function" performed in the manner of the one we have described is to convince Protestants that the Church of Rome has in her forms much likeness left to the Church of Christ, must be unaware of the first elements of a comparison. When we search the Scriptures daily to see whether these things are so, the estrangement of the Papacy from the Christianity of Christ, and its affinity to the Romanism of the Pagan Pontiffs, become more and more impressive. The feeling in St. Peter's did not permit guards to be dispensed with. It transpired that extreme precaution had been taken to prevent the Basilica from being blown up. At the time, the general impression appeared to be that some of the National party had played upon the fears of the priests, hoaxing them with hints of such a design. But after what occurred in Paris during the reign of the Commune, one can hardly think it impossible that some of the violent and ignorant may have entertained wild plans. In 1867, a startling example of what might be done had been shown in the blowing up of a barrack of the zouaves. When populations which have long been governed by spectacle, set out for a political sensation, they sometimes go dreadful lengths to find a stirring one. The city was to have been grandly illuminated, but the drenching rain would have mocked all effort to keep in the tender life of the lamps. Let us hope, said the clerical writers, that the blue sky of Rome will smile on the close of the Council, and that then the eternal city will glow brighter even than Ephesus in 431 (_Stimmen_, N.F., p. 166).