Note and Comment

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Aug 4, 1903

LEO XIII is dead. He who took the title of “Vicar of Christ,” and whose word, spoken from the “chair of Peter,” was counted infallible; he whose mandates were listened to throughout the Catholic world as the voice of God, and before whom men bowed in the attitude of worship, is now unconscious clay. Nature has answered the claims which to vast multitudes made him a superhuman being. Nature knew nothing of such claims, and recognized no pre-eminence in him above his fellows. He was simply a mortal man, like his fellow mortals who exist upon the face of the earth. Nature has set the brand of error upon a religion which made mortal man into a god. We have not such an high priest by whom we approach unto God, but One who “continueth ever,” and so “hath an unchangeable priesthood;” “wherefore he is able also to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them.” Heb. 7:24, 25. The Head of the Christian church is One on whom death has no power.