046. A TIME OF RETROGRESSION

A TIME OF RETROGRESSION

It is always darkest just before the dawn. The great uprisings of freedom were, in 1492, things of the unknown and distant future. The shifting of the primacy from the Latin to the English race, and the development of that race in a new and greater England, could not yet have been predicted by man. The apathetic and gloomy despotism of Henry VII. in England was contemporaneous with the reign in France of Louis XI., through whose tyranny and intrigue the power of the nobility was broken; standing armies were substituted for the service of feudal retainers, and every office of justice and legislation was made the instrument of the crown. Ferdinand of Arragon, with his smiles, his bigotry, and his remorseless coldness, had just married Isabella of Castile, a princess not so lovely as idealizing historians have painted her, and their united kingdoms constituted the Spain whose initial acts of State were the banishment of the Moors and the revival of the Inquisition. In Germany, Maximilian I. was following the example of Louis XI. in establishing a standing army which might, if possible, put an end to the universal reign of force and private war. In Russia, Ivan the Great had overthrown the Mongols after their two hundred and fifty years’ supremacy, and had founded the united monarchy of Kiev and Moscow. Everywhere, so far as civil liberty was concerned, 1492 was a time of retrogression. Monarchical prerogative was overbearing all popular rights. Erasmus, not long after, compared the typical king to the eagle, and spoke of "that stern front, that threatening curve of the beak, those rapacious and wicked eyes, those cruel jaws." And it was of such times that Emerson wrote:

God said, *’ I am tired of kings—

I suffer them no more;

Up to my ears the morning brings The outrage of the poor."

I have thus depicted, in brief, the condition of Church and State in the year of our Lord 1492. But that year stands not only for the culmination of the old, but for the rise of the new order of things. As I have already intimated, the turning-point, the beginning of modern history, is the discovery of America by Columbus. That was the critical event in which previous wholesome influences culminated, and from which the great movements that were to follow took force and direction. Let us consider it in its relation to three great movements in particular: the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the Revolution. The Renaissance was the new birth of the human intellect, as the Reformation was the new birth of the human conscience, and the Revolution was the new birth of the human will. In spite of all the darkness, the morning hour had come. The exploration of the globe by Columbus in 1492, and the exploration of the universe by Copernicus in 1507, wonderfully expanded and stimulated the mind of man. The world was discovered to man, and man was discovered to himself. Every step of the process and every result achieved is a wonder of divine Providence. It has been customary to laud the early navigators. Closer investigation teaches us rather to magnify Him who directed their way. They were fallible, selfish, often wicked, men. But Themselves from God they could not free;

They builded better than they knew.