This will be found a great stride towards grasping anew that temporal supremacy of Christendom which the pontiff wielded in the middle ages. The pretext for this bold proposal is the inflammatory condition of Europe at this hour, and for some time past. Its nations are continually on the brink of war, their armies have grown to be enormous, and should conflict arise, the destruction of human life would be prodigious, and beyond all former precedent. Can nothing be thought of, it is asked, to make so awful a calamity impossible?

Yes, it is answered, means may be found. Let there be established a great European council, consisting of monarchs and their ministers, and let that council have power to bring all international quarrels to this tribunal, and give judgment upon them. This will save an appeal to the sword, with all the horrors that attend this method of settling differences. And further, at the head of that council let there be some great moral authority, whose character and office will give influence to his advice and add weight to the decisions of the council. In the pope, say the proposers of this scheme, we have precisely such a functionary as is needed; let us install him as president of the council.

This proposal is a very specious one. It has come from the Roman side; it has been ventilated in the London newspapers by way, doubtless, of feeling the pulse of Europe. The object put in the foreground is confessedly a philanthropic one - the saving of Europe from ruinous wars, and the abolition of African slavery. We are likely to hear more of this proposal in time to come.

Meanwhile we remark that this was one of the ways by which the pope climbed to power in the middle ages. When the Gothic kings with their peoples entered the pale of the Roman Church, they recognised the pope as a common father. They carried their disputes to his feet, and step by step be advanced to dominancy. He was first their counsellor, he was next their arbiter, and in the thirteenth century and onwards he was their master and lord.

Further, this council, if it is to work, must have some means of compelling obedience to its decisions. It must have an executive; and that executive must have a corps-d'armee at its service; for how otherwise is it to maintain peace? That army will be in the hands of the president of the council, that is, in the hands of the pope. Will not this be the temporal supremacy of Europe over again?

How far the rights and liberties of nations, and especially Protestant nations, will be safe with the pope as generalissimo of the armies of europe, is a matter worthy of grave consideration.

History incontestably shows that from the time that the popes became temporal lords of Europe, onward to the seventeenth century, almost all the wars of the western world originated in the ambition and intrigues of the Papacy; and it is curious to mark that it is the Papacy that is now to be called in as the world's peacemaker!