religion, and not in its forms and institutions, in its inventions to uphold the arms of despotism and the tools of despotism.  It is, and it was, and it will be through all the ages the great power of the world, against which it is vain to rebel.  And that government is really the best which unfetters its spiritual influence, and encourages it; and not that government which seeks to perpetuate its corrupt and worldly institutions.  The Roman emperors made Christianity an institution, and obscured its truths.  And perhaps that is one reason why Providence permitted their despotism to pass away,—­preferring the rude anarchy of the Germanic nations to the dead mechanism of a lifeless Church and imperial rottenness.  Imperialism must ever end in rottenness.  And that is one reason why the heart of Christendom—­I mean the people of Europe, in its enlightened and virtuous sections has ever opposed imperialism.  The progress has been slow, but marked, towards representative governments,—­not the reign of the people directly, but of those whom they select to represent them.  The victory has been nearly gained in England.  In France the progress has been uniform since the Revolution.  Napoleon revived, or sought to revive, the imperialism of Rome.  He failed.  There is nothing which the French now so cordially detest, since their eyes have been opened to the character and ends of that usurper, as his imperialism.  It cannot be revived any more easily than the oracles of Dodona.  Even in Germany there are dreadful discontents in view of the imperialism which Bismarck, by the force of successful wars, has seemingly revived.  The awful standing armies are a menace to all liberty and progress and national development.  In Italy itself there is the commencement of constitutional authority, although it is united under a king.  The great standing warfare of modern times is constitutional authority against the absolute power of kings and emperors.  And the progress has been on the side of liberty everywhere, with occasional drawbacks, such as when Louis Napoleon revived the accursed despotism of his uncle, and by the same means,—­a standing army and promises of military glory.

Hence, in the order of Providence, the dream of Charlemagne as to unbounded military aggrandizement could not be realized.  He could not revive the imperialism of Rome or Persia.  No man will ever arise in Europe who can re-establish it, except for a brief period.  It will be rebuked by the superintending Power, because it is fatal to the highest development of nations, because all its glories are delusory, because it sows the seeds of ruin.  It produces that very egotism, materialism, and sensuality, that inglorious rest and pleasure, which, as everybody concedes, prepared the way for violence.