Page:The World's Famous Orations Volume 6.djvu/161

PHILLIPS favorable circumstance has hardened into adamant.

The pope, whom childhood was taught to lisp as the enemy of religion, and age shuddered at as a prescriptive calamity, has by his example put the princes of Christendom to shame. This day of miracles, in which the human heart has been strung to its extremest point of energy; this day, to which posterity will look for instances of every crime and every virtue, holds not in its page of wonders a more sublime phenomenon than that calumniated pontiff. Placed at the very pinnacle of human elevation, surrounded by the pomp of the Vatican and the splendors of the court, pouring the mandates of Christ from the throne of the Cæsars, nations were his subjects, kings were his companions, religion was his handmaid; he went forth gorgeous with the accumulated dignity of ages, every knee bending and every eye blessing the prince of one world and the prophet of another. Have we not seen him in one moment, his crown crumbled, his scepter a reed, his throne a shadow, his home a dungeon?

But if we have, Catholics, it was only to show how inestimable is human virtue compared with human grandeur; it was only to show those whose faith was failing and whose fears were strengthening that the simplicity of the patriarchs, the piety of the saints, and the patience of the martyrs had not wholly vanished.

Perhaps it was also ordained to show the bigot at home, as well as the tyrant abroad, that tho 151