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48 moral over the material order of the world, it has a deep significance. Pius the Ninth was at that moment in the crisis to which the Italian revolution of so many years had been advancing. All protection of the Catholic powers of the world, of whom France had been till then the mandatory, had been withdrawn. He knew that the revolution would come to Rome again with more formidable power than in 1848. "Verrà fin qui," as he said in his farewell to the general of the French army. In the face of all menace, and with the certainty of the coming revolution, Pius the Ninth had the year before convened the Catholic episcopate to meet in Rome in 1867. No event, excepting the Council of the Vatican, has in our age manifested so visibly to the intellect and so palpably even to the sense of men the unity, universality, unanimity, and authority of the only Church which alone can endure St Augustine's two tests, cathedra Petri and diffusa per orbem—union with the See of Peter, and expansion throughout the world. The Centenary was a confession of faith, without an accent of controversy. Even those who were not of the unity of the Church recognised it as such. Whosoever believed in Christianity, and desired the spread of our Lord's kingdom upon earth, could not fail to see in that great gathering the wide foundations laid by the apostolic mission. Even