Page:The Great Encyclical Letters of Pope Leo XIII.djvu/470



464 CHRIST OUR REDEEMER.

and just as mankind could not be freed from slavery but by the sacrifice of Christ, so neither can it be preserved but by His power. Neither is there salvation in any other. For there is no other name under heaven given to men, whereby we must be saved. ^ What the hfe of men is from which Jesus has been expelled, Jesus "the Power of God and the Wisdom of God," what is its morahty and its end, may be learned from the example of nations which have not the light of Christianity. Any one who recalls for a moment that mental blindness which St. Paul alludes to,^ the depra-vdty of their nature, the abominable character of their vices and superstitions, must feel penetrated with hor- ror, and, at the same time, with pity for them.

What We here speak of is a matter of common knowl- edge, but not usually dwelt upon or thought of. There would not be so many alienated by pride or buried in sloth if they recollected what benefits they had received from God, what Christ has rescued them from and to what He has brought them. Disinherited and exiled, the himaan race for ages was hurrying to destruction, enthralled by those dreadful evils which the sin of our first parents had begotten and by other woes beyond the power of man to remedy, when Christ our Lord came down from heaven and appeared as our Redeemer. In the first dawn of the world's history, God Himself had promised Him to us, as the victor and conqueror of "the serpent"; succeeding ages looked forward to His advent with eager longing; holy prophets had long and plainly foretold that on Him all our hopes depended; nay, the various fortunes of the chosen people, their history, their institu- tions, their laws, their sacrifices and ceremonies, had clearly and distinctly prefigured that the salvation of humanity would be wrought and completed in Him, who it was declared should be at once the High Priest and propitiatory Victim, the Restorer of human liberty, the Prince of peace, the Teacher of all nations, founding a

> Acts iv. 12. 2 Rom. i. 21.