and no man is truly great who cannot bide his time.

At last Hildebrand received the reward of his great services,--"a
reward," says Stephen, "which he had long contemplated, but which, with
self-controlling policy, he had so long declined." In the year 1073
Hildebrand became Gregory VII., and his memorable pontificate began as a
reformer of the abuses of his age, and the intrepid defender of that
unlimited and absolute despotism which inthralled not merely the princes
of Europe, but the mind of Christendom itself. It was he who not only
proclaimed the liberties of the people against nobles, and made the
Church an asylum for misery and oppression, but who realized the idea
that the Church was the mother of spiritual principles, and that the
spiritual authority should be raised over all temporal power.

In the great crises of States and Empires deliverers seem to be raised
up by Divine Providence to restore peace and order, and maintain the
first condition of society, or extricate nations from overwhelming
calamities. Thus Charlemagne appeared at the right time to prevent the
overthrow of Europe by new waves of barbaric invasion. Thus William the
Silent preserved the nationality of Holland, and Gustavus Adolphus gave
religious liberty to Germany when persecution was apparently successful.
Thus Richelieu undermined feudalism in France, and established
absolutism as one of the needed forces of his turbulent age, even as
Napoleon gave law and order to France when distracted by the anarchism
of a revolution which did not comprehend the liberty which was invoked.
So Hildebrand was raised up to establish the only government which could
rescue Europe from the rapacities of feudal nobles, and establish law
and order in the hands of the most enlightened class; so that, like
Peter the Great, he looms up as a reformer as well as a despot. He
appears in a double light.