Page:Russian Church and Russian Dissent.djvu/25

Throughout the West the tendency was in a contrary direction—towards the practical application of the religious idea. The effete, worn-out civilization of the past was there renovated by contact and admixture with young and vigorous races, and gained new strength and vitality in the struggle for existence. The Church, freed from control, became independent and self-asserting; the responsibility of government, the preservation of social order, devolved upon it, and it rose proudly to the task; it subdued and conquered by the Word the fierce Northern tribes whom the State was powerless to resist; by its spiritual dominion over them it exalted its station and increased its influence; popes grasped the sceptre of absent emperors, and assumed their authority; they had no rival prelates to dispute their claims, and the Western Church was united under their sway. What imperial Rome lost, papal Rome gained; it was willing and able to protect itself and the people who gathered around it; its independence of the civil power fostered and encouraged the theocratic element which had disappeared from the Eastern Church; the assertion of its divine origin and prerogatives raised it to be a judge and arbiter between princes, and established its superiority over temporal rulers; its army of priests and monks, filled with devotional zeal, instead of resting content with spiritual abstractions and contemplative self-communion, went forth boldly as a Church militant, trusting in their sacred mission to overcome by preaching and example the enemies of the faith. Mere learning, polemical discussions, scholastic and theological controversies, were secondary considerations amid the dislocations of a falling empire and the reconstruction of new states, and in the struggle for existence. The monastic establishments of the Church were organized to fight error, to propagate the truth, and