their fulness dwelt; for she treasured up within herself the oracles of God, and shadowed forth the destinies of man.

But Jerusalem was unworthy of so much love. When God became incarnate, He came to enlighten and ennoble Jerusalem still more by establishing within her walls the substance of all those glories of which she herself had been the shadow. But her heart was lifted up in her pride, because her works were evil; and she preferred her own light to the light of life, and her own shadow to His substance; and she crucified the Lord of Glory. Then Jerusalem was in her turn destroyed, and her light put out for ever; and not a stone of her temple or her palaces was left upon a stone. Jerusalem was destroyed; and the narrow circle of God's revelation, the centre of which had hitherto been within her walls, grew wider and wider until it began to take in the whole world in its embrace. The prophet Jeremias had foretold that God would turn His back upon Jerusalem in the hour of her destruction; and so it came to pass even to the letter, if we may believe the old tradition which tells us that the Son of God was crucified with His back turned to the doomed city, and His face looking to the West.

It was in the West that the new city of God was to arise. The truth of God, indeed, was no longer to be confined to a single city or people of the earth; and the time had passed for ever that men could adore the Father in Jerusalem alone. The revelation of the new covenant was destined to embrace all nations, and tribes, and peoples, and tongues, and to teach them to adore the Father in spirit and in truth. But the kingdom of Christ, although not of this world, was still in the world; and by reason of its world-wide extent had need of a fixed centre and seat of government, in order that its marvellous unity, which was to be the very proof of its divine origin, might be maintained for ever amid the shifting vicissitudes and changing conditions of the world's existence. And therefore, in the unity of God's providence, which is the source of all unity, it was still a city of the earth, in which He was to carry on, and complete, and perfect the destinies of a regenerated world, by "reconciling all things to Himself, whether in Heaven or on earth, visible or invisible, until we all meet into the unity of faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, into a perfect man, unto the measure of the age of the fulness of Christ." It has ever been God's way in His work of the world's redemption to make use of the very things which Satan had used for its overthrow. It was a woman which gave to man the fruit of destruction, and desolation, and death; it is a woman who gives to him the fruit of

salvation, restoration, and life. It was by a tree that Satan overcame; it is by a tree that He is conquered. S. Cyril of Jerusalem tells us, that because the devil made idols of images in the human form, God took Himself the form of man, and Christ became the substantial image of God; for "by those very weapons have we been saved by which the devil was used to vanquish us." Even the things, sometimes the very places which have been either the instruments or the scenes of the sins of men, are made in God's overruling Providence not only the instruments of their punishment, but the very means of their sanctification, the steps by which they rise to that place in His kingdom of grace, to which He Himself has predestined them from eternity. What more fitting city, then, could be found for the capital of Christ's kingdom than that mighty city "which had kingdom over the kings of the earth"? What more glorious victory for the cross than to conquer to itself the seat of Satan, and to crown Christ king on the throne of the "Prince of this world," "that where sin had abounded, grace might much more abound"? What city was like to that city which was clothed with fine linen, and purple, and scarlet, and was gilt with gold, and precious stones and pearls, "with its merchandise of thyine wood, and all manner of vessels of ivory, and all manner of vessels of precious stones, and of brass, and of iron, and of marble, and of cinnamon, and of odours, and ointment, and frankincense, and wine, and oil, and fine flour, and wheat, and beasts, and sheep, and horses, and chariots, and slaves, and souls of men"? What a triumph for the blood of the Lamb to wash away the sins of that great city "full of the names of blasphemy," which had "a cup in her hand full of the filthiness of her fornication," and on her forehead a name written: "A Mystery! Babylon the Great, the Mother of the Abominations of the Earth!"

What a masterpiece of redeeming and transforming love, not only to wash away the sins of the "great harlot who sitteth upon many waters," but to make her clean and white, and to clothe her in white garments, and to purify the golden cup in her hands, and to fill it with the red drops of His Redeeming Blood, and to offer it to the Eternal Father for the healing of the nations which had been "made drunk with the wine of her whoredom," and to make her the city of the Bride of Christ! What " revenge of recompense" to suffer the blood of all that multitude of martyrs, which no man can number, and whose souls were crying from

*Catech. Lect. xii.

beneath the altar for vengeance upon her sins to fall upon the marble of her palaces and flow through her streets, and to sanctify her gold and precious stones and pearls, and the souls of men, and to make them holy to God and to His Christ, and to change the purple and scarlet of her empire into the violet of humility, and the "vesture dipped in blood" of the love which is stronger than death, and to take them for the glorious apparel of the Princes of Christ's ever-suffering but still triumphant Church!

God spake the word, and in His own time it was done. Rejoice over her, thou Heaven, and ye Holy Apostles and Prophets, for God hath judged your judgment on her. And there were great voices in heaven, saying:-The kingdom of this world is become Our Lord's and His Christ's, and He shall reign for ever and ever. Amen."

No greater miracle has ever been wrought in proof of Christ's faith than the conversion of pagan Rome. It was God's own doing, and it is wonderful in our eyes. It was the fulfilment of the dream of the Great Chaldean king in the earlier Babylon. It was the iron, and clay, and brass, and silver, and gold of the world's empire broken in pieces by the stone cut out of the mountain of God without hands, and becoming "like the chaff of a summer threshing-floor as it is carried away by the wind." But the stone, the rock of Peter, cut out of the rock of ages, becomes itself a great mountain, and fills the whole earth. Little did that proud old Roman world dream of the power of the folly of the Cross, as it saw the old Religion of the God of Israel with its golden candlestick and the ark of the elder Covenant pass away for ever through the Arch of Titus. Still less did it foresee that within a few hundred years, surrounded by its own victorious eagles, the Cross itself would pass in triumph beneath the Arch of Constantine. Little had men thought in the early days of Nero, as they watched some long procession sweeping past the Forum, and winding along the Via Sacra to the Capitol, that, yet a very little while, and not a stone's throw from there, one "who was himself a Roman citizen" and "free born," but a "prisoner of Christ," would take the imagery of the triumph of a Roman general and apply it to the triumph of Him who "led captivity captive," and "sat down at the right hand of God in the heavenly places above all principality, and power, and virtue, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come,-despoiling the principalities and powers, and leading them confidently in show, and triumphing over them openly in himself." Little did they

imagine that the shield, and the breastplate, and the helmet, and the sword, and the girt-up loins of the Roman soldier would be made to typify the whole "armour of God"; the "shield of faith," the "breastplate of justice," the "helmet of salvation," the "sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God," the "loins girt up with truth" of the warrior of Christ. Little thought had they then of Paul of Tarsus. And while Nero held his court in his golden house upon the Palatine, and enthroned the sin of the cities of the plain with sacred rite and priestly benediction in the very heart of Rome, little did men think that the day would ever come when the faith of the fisherman of Galilee and the tent-maker of Tarsus would be seated on the Cæsars' throne, and that the gods of Paganism would lie broken at its feet. Yet even then the blessed feet of Peter were at the gates of Rome, and the vessel which bore the Apostle of the Gentiles rode over the blue waters of the Bay of Puteoli.

Rome became the city of God, the throne of the Vicar of His Son. The letters of her old name were reversed. Roma became Amor, and strength was made perfect in love. The kingdom of God, which had been taken from Jerusalem, was given to a nation yielding the fruits thereof."

And as the conversion of Rome was God's work, so has Rome ever remained full of God's presence. There have been times indeed when that presence has been driven out, and the Vicar of Christ forced into exile by the spirit of lawlessness, and then Rome has almost looked like Babylon. If we remember rightly, Dr. Newman has remarked in one of his works, written even while he was yet a Protestant, that it is the presence of the Catholic Church in Rome which alone prevents it from becoming Babylon. The thought is full of truth, and opens up to us the depth of that abyss of ruin which yawns beneath the Holy City whenever the presence of God and of His Vicar is taken from it, but which, in the awfulness of its full reality, is reserved for the hour of the world's great apostasy, when the man of sin shall be revealed "showing himself in the temple of God, as if he were God." It is a thought which may well make us gather closer round S. Peter's throne, whenever it is threatened, for it is in keeping with the old belief-old even when Rome was young-that Rome and the world stand or fall together.

There have been other times (alas! that it should have been so) when the presence of God, although not driven away from Rome, has been so overclouded and overshadowed by the evil lives of those who have lived within its walls, and sometimes even sat in its high places, that men have not always been

able to see its glory or rejoice in the fulness of its light. Not that the light of God's presence in His Church can ever fail, or that her Master's words can ever be said of her: "If the light which is in you be darkness, how great is that darkness." But the brightness of her glory is darkened or hidden when, by God's permission, the clouds which mark the presence of the evil one, are hanging over Rome, or when the abomination of desolation is standing in the Holy Place.

Yet with these almost necessary exceptions (for it must needs be that scandals come) Rome has been ever full of the presence and power of God. It is this holy presence-a presence which may be felt-which throws round her that indefinable charm, which every Catholic feels on his first visit to the Holy City. This too is the secret of that inexhaustible freshness and ever new interest which hangs over the name of Rome. Like the Holy Scriptures themselves, and everything in which God speaks to man, Rome is at the same time old, and yet always new; unchanging, and yet full of variety. It may be looked at in countless different ways; it is suggestive of unnumbered hidden meanings, yet its interpretation involves no contradiction, and everything becomes clear in the light and unity of God's abiding presence. Like the pillar of cloud and the pillar of fire in which the Lord of old went before His people, that He might be the guide of their journey both by day and night; so too is His presence ever hanging over the Holy City of the new covenant in the daytime of the Church's triumph, or in the dark night of her persecution. Thus it sometimes happens that a visit to Rome exercises an almost sacramental influence over a man's life. Father Faber used to say that no man ever left Rome exactly as he entered it, but either better or worse in the sight of God and His holy angels. And the reason is because Rome is so full of God. The Church of the living God lives over again in herself, and in her children the life of her Divine. Lord from year to year, and from festival to festival. She has no other life than His, Who is Himself life, and Whose life is the light of men. And nowhere is the Church's life so perfectly carried out as in Rome. God breathes through her ceremonies, His attributes are shadowed forth in her institutions, and we may almost say, as the great apostle once said of himself, that it is not so much Rome who lives, as Christ Who lives in her.

Even independently of this sacred presence there is the charm which Rome possesses in the memory of her bygone majesty in the natural order, when she held the dominion of the world; all the more touching because it speaks to us from VOL. XIV. NO. XXVII. [New Series.]

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