Titian has painted the scene: Charles kneeling
before the Throne, with the consciousness, as became him, of human
infirmities, written upon his countenance, yet neither afraid nor abject,
relying in absolute faith that the Judge of all mankind would do right.
Of Caesar, too, it may be said that he came into the world at a special
time and for a special object. The old religions were dead, from the
Pillars of Hercules to the Euphrates and the Nile, and the principles on
which human society had been constructed were dead also. There remained of
spiritual conviction only the common and human sense of justice and
morality; and out of this sense some ordered system of government had to
be constructed, under which quiet men could live and labor and eat the
fruit of their industry. Under a rule of this material kind there can be
no enthusiasm, no chivalry, no saintly aspirations, no patriotism of the
heroic type. It was not to last forever. A new life was about to dawn for
mankind. Poetry, and faith, and devotion were to spring again out of the
seeds which were sleeping in the heart of humanity. But the life which is
to endure grows slowly; and as the soil must be prepared before the wheat
can be sown, so before the Kingdom of Heaven could throw up its shoots
there was needed a kingdom of this world where the nations were neither
torn in pieces by violence nor were rushing after false ideals and
spurious ambitions.
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