THE C ONVERSIOV
OF
THE ROMAN EMPIRE.








THE CONVERRSION
OF
THE ROMAN EMPIRE.
THE
BOYLE LECTURES
FOR THE YEAR 1864,
DELIVERED AT THE CHAPEL ROYAL, WHITEHALL.
BY
CHARLES MERIVALE, B.D.,
RECTOR OF LAWFORD: CHAPLAIN TO THE SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS.
AUTHOR OF "A HISTORY OF THE ROIANS IUNDER THE EMPIRE."
NEW YORK:
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY,
443 & 445 BROADWAY.
1866.








C ONTENT S.
LECTURE  I.  (Page 17.)
CHRISTIAN BELIEF CONTRASTED WITH HEATHEN UNBELIEF.
ACTS XVII. 32.
And when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked: and
others said, We will hear thee again of this matter.
LECTURE  II.  (Page 37.)
HEATHEN BELIEF DIRECTED TOWARDS A TEMPORAL PROVIDENCE
ACTS XVII. 22.
Then Paul stood in the midst of Mars' hill, and said, Ye men of Athens, I
perceive that in all things ye are too superstitious.
LECTURE  III.  (Page 56.)
EXPANSION OF HEATHEN BELIEF BY THE TEACHING OF THE
PHILOSOPHERS.
ACTS xvII. 26.
God hath made of one blood all nations of men, for to dwell on all the face
of the earth.
LECTURE  IV.  (Page 81.)
EXPANSION OF HEATHEN BELIEF BY THE IDEAS OF ROMAN
JURISPRUDENCE.
GALATIANS III. 24.
The law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ.




Vi                        CONTENTS.
LECTURE  V.  (Page 102.)
THE HEATHEN AWAKENED TO A SENSE OF HIS SPIRITUAL DANGER.
1 JOHN IV. 21.
And this commandment have we from Him, That he who loveth God love his
brother also.
LECTURE  VI.  (Page 123.)
EFFORTS OF THE HEATHEN TO AVERT SPIRITUAL RUIN.
ST. MARK IX. 24.
And straightwcay the father of the child cried out, and said with tears, Lord,
I believe; help Thou mine unbelief.
LECTURE  VII.  (Page 147.)
THE DOCTRINES OF CHRISTIANITY RESPOND TO THE QUESTIONS
OF THE HEATHENS.
ST. MATTHEW XXVIII. 19.
The name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.
LECTURE  VIII.  (Page 167.)
THE GODLY EXAMPLE OF THE CHRISTIANS COMPLETES THE CONVERSION OF THE EMPIRE.
ACTS XVII. 6.
Thlese that have turned the world upside down are come hither also.




PREFACE.
THE conversion of the Roman Empire to
Christianity is a very comprehensive subject of
inquiry. It is a subject not for a dissertation but
for a history, for it involves a progressive change
extending over three or more centuries, and is
marked by a series not only of moral and intellectual, but of political revolutions. It embraces
a multitude of events, and presents to us a long
gallery of individual characters. It points backward to the origin and progress of thought and
feeling on religious questions; and forward almost
to the farthest expansion that they have hitherto
attained. It is in itself the history of religion
brought into one focus,for there is little probably
in the later course of human speculation on the
most interesting of all questions, of which the germ
and often the full development may not be traced in




8                  PREFACE.
the controversies of primitive Christianity with
Paganism. In undertaking to give a sketch of
this subject within the limits of eight lectures delivered from a pulpit to a mixed and fluctuating
congregation, I have not supposed that I could do
more than indicate a few of its most salient points,
and suggest topics of reflection and possibly of
inquiry that might lead some of my hearers or
readers to a further and more fruitful consideration of it.  With this view, in printing these
Lectures according to the terms of the foundation
on which they were delivered, I have appended
to them  some explanatory and illustrative notes
which seemed to be required for the better understanding of my remarks; but still the volume
which I lay before the reader does not pretend to
be a formal disquisition on the subject-still less,
I need hardly say, to be a history of the great
transformation of opinion of which it treats.
It may be well to observe, however, that the
conversion of the Empire seems, under God's providence, to have been affected principally in four
ways:
1. By the force of the external evidence to the




PREFACE.                   9
truth of Christianity, that is, by the apparent
fulfilment of recorded prophecy, and by the historical testimony to the miracles by which it
claims on its first promulgation to have been accompanied.
The age indeed was uncritical, and little competent to weigh such external testimony with the
accuracy which is now demanded.  There was
great proneness to accept the claim  of miracles;
but at the same time, and in consequence of this
very proneness, very little weight was attached to
it as an argument of Divine power. Great stress
was laid on the fulfilment of prophecy, but in this
respect also the age was liable to be grossly imposed upon; and it must be allowed that the
preaching of Christianity owes some portion, however trifling, of its success to the false pretensions
of the so-called Sibylline Oracles, which form no
part of its genuine credentials.
On these accounts, and because a discussion on
this branch of the subject would have been ill
suited to discourses from the pulpit, I have refrained from dwelling upon the effect of the ex



10                   PREFACE.
ternal evidence of Christianity in the conversion
of the Empire.
2. By internal evidence, from  the sense of
spiritual destitution, the consciousness of sin,
the acknowledged need of a sanctifier and a redeemer.
This in the primitive, as in later ages, was undoubtedly the most effectual testimony to the
Truth in Christ Jesus.  It appeals to all men
without distinction of class and nation.  But it
addresses itself more especially to men of intelligence and moral sensibility. It is the highest and
the worthiest testimony, the most distinctive of
the true religion, the most foreign to the character of the false religions of the heathen, yet bearing a mysterious affinity to some of the highest
and worthiest aspirations of the heathen philosophy.  It addresses itself with equal power to
mankind in all ages, and establishes most vividly,
by its applicability to ourselves, the moral connection which subsists between the men of the
first century and the men of the nineteenth.
This is the branch of Christian evidences on




PREFACE.                 11
which I have most emphatically insisted; for by
this, I believe, the most refined and intelligent of
the heathen were actually converted, and there is
none to the action of which we can point so reasonably and justly as this.
And with this may be combined the results
which flowed from the recognised want of a system of positive belief. The Greeks and Romans
had generally discarded the dogmas of their old
mythology. They had rejected tradition, and pretended to shake off authority in matters of faith.
Swayed for a time each by his own conscience or
sensibility only, they had yielded eventually, more
or less implicitly, to the guidance of the Sophists,
the perplexed and dubious inheritors of the science of the great masters of antiquity; and by a
slow but inevitable decline, they had fallen once
more under the dominion of newer and stranger
formulas.  The traditions of the East, of Syria,
Persia, and Egypt, the worship of Belus and
Mithras, of Isis and Serapis, had popularly replaced the traditions and the worship of Jupiter
and Juno, of Hercules and Quirinus.  Christianity, it should be clearly understood, did not succeed at once to the vacant inheritance of Olympus.




12                 PREFACE.
Another religion had interposed: an exotic family
of superstitions had demanded and received, for
at least two centuries, the devotion of the pious,
and been in its turn rejected as a mockery and a
delusion.  Christianity, in fact, was not simply
the resource of a dissatisfied philosophy; it was
not accepted as the only refuge from the blank
negation of a creed. It was the tried and approved of several claimants to the sovereignty of
the religious instinct among men-tried by reason and argument, and approved from its own
manifest adaptation to human requirements. The
world, I conceive, had long resolved, in spite of
the philosophers, that a positive creed was necessary to its moral being; it had endeavoured in
vain to satisfy itself with systems of its own invention; it yielded at last, under a divine impulse,
to that which God Himself had revealed and recolmmended to it.
3. There is, however, a third kind of testimony, the character of which I would not be supposed to disparage; a testimony which worked powerfully upon large numbers among the heathen,
among persons perhaps of less critical acumen,
but eminently susceptible of impressions from the




PREFACE.                 13
contemplation of goodness and holiness-the testimony to the truth of Christianity from the lives
and deaths of the primitive believers, from the
practical effect of Christian teaching upon those
who embraced it in faith. The godly examples
of the Christians throughout the trials of life, and
especially in the crowning trial of martyrdom,
were, as we may be assured from history, productive of thousands, nay of millions, of conversions.
On this subject I have been naturally led to
touch, and would willingly have expatiated, but
my limits and the scope of my Lectures did not
allow of my dwelling upon it.
4. But further, among the multitude there was
probably, after all, no argument so effectual, no
testimony to the divine authority of the Gospel
so convincing, as that from the temporal success
with which Christianity was eventually crowned.
The decline of the Empire, the discredit and overthrow of Paganism, the fall of Rome itself, did
actually turn the mass of mankind, as with a
sweeping revolution, to the rising sun of revealed
Truth in Christ Jesus. Men of earnest thought
and men of ardent feeling had already been converted by the evidence before adduced; but the




14                 PREFACE.
great inert mass of the thoughtless, the grossminded, and the carnal, upon whom no legitimate arguments could make any impression, were
startled, arrested, and convinced by the last overruling argument of success.
The success, however, was not assured till the
time of Constantine, and up to the fourth century,
at least, the multitude still continued to cling to
the false gods whose overthrow was not yet manifestly apparent. The conversion of the more intelligent among the heathen, which encouraged
the coup d'etat of the first Christian Emperor,
had been, I conceive, actually effected before the
proved inefficacy of the heathen religions had
caused them to be abandoned bythe herd of timeservers. The Empire, as a political machine, was
now transferred to the rule of Christ: its laws and
institutions were placed upon a Christian foundation: the conversion of the Empire was substantially completed, whatever doubt or repugnance
might long linger among some classes of its subjects. Accordingly, while I have pointed out the
effect of the growing distrust of their own systems
among the heathens, I have not thought it necessary to dwell upon a cause of conversion which,




PREFACE.                 15
however ultimately effectual, had not yet begun
to operate very powerfully within the limits of
time to which these sketches are confined.  Had
my treatment of my thesis extended far into the
fourth century, it would have been important to
estimate the effect of the Imperial example, which
in the Roman Empire, no doubt, as elsewhere,
must have determined in innumerable instances
the conversion or conformity of the people. To
the Romans, as long as they retained a spark of
ancient sentiment, the Emperor, in his capacity
of Chief Pontiff —a title with which Constantine
and Valentinian dared not dispense-seemed still
the appointed minister of the national religion,
still the intercessor for divine favour, the channel
of covenanted mercies to the State, whatever form
of ministration he might employ, to whatever
Name he might address himself in behalf of the
Empire. He was still on a large scale, and, in the
public behoof, what the Romans had been wont
to consider the head of each private family to be
in his domestic sphere.  Gato the Censor directed
the paterfamilias to offer prayers and sacrifices to
Jupiter, Mars, and Janus, that they might be
propitious to " himself, to his house, to his whole
family;" and throughout the bounds of the Ro



16                    PREFACE.
man's farm, there was no bailiff, hind, or bond.
man who would have ventured probably to offer
a prayer or a sacrifice on his own account, still
less to question the authority of his master to offer for himself and for them all whatever prayers,
and whatever sacrifices, and'address himself to
whatever deity he might choose.t Nevertheless,
the struggle of the Pagan conscience against the
authority of the Emperor in religious matters is
a marked feature in the history of the fourth century; and the effect of the Imperial example in
the final conversion of the Empire was subject undoubtedly to important modifications. M. Beugnot's' History of the Destruction of Paganism in
the West,' published about thirty years ago, is
still, I believe, the best and completest work we
possess upon the later phases of the great transformation of religion; but the subject admits of
profounder examination and a more extended survey.
Cato's injunction to the Villicus, De Re rust. c. 143, may be taken as
an epitome of the ecclesiastical theory of the Romans: Scito dominum pro
tota familia rem divinam facere.




LECTURE I.
CHRISTIAN BELIEF CONTRASTED WITH HEATHEN UNBELIEF.
ACTS XVii. 32.
And zohen they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked:
and others said, We will hear thee again of this matter.
To men of education, to men of academic training
and accomplishments, to all who pretend to ground their
religious faith on reasoning and argument, no study can
be more interesting than that of the process by which
Christianity has actually won its way in the minds of
the intelligent and accomplished, the reasoners and
philosophers, of ancient and modern times. The records
of Scripture disclose to us a glimpse, and no more than
a glimpse, of the form  which the discussion assumed
between the preachers of the gospel and the possessors
of human wisdom, in the centre and reputed stronghold
of ancient science. The account of St. Paul's address
to the philosophers of Athens, which occupies but a
portion of a single chapter of the sacred history, suggests,
as it seems to me, more directly the fundamental question between God's revelation and human speculation
2




18                    LECTURE I.
than any of the ample apologies, or explanatory defences
of Christianity, set forth by the fathers of our faith in
the centuries next ensuing.  The apologists, no doubt,
knew what they were aiming at; they had their own
special object, which they placed clearly before them;
they met the objections or refuted the fallacies which
they knew by their own experience to be the most critical and the most harassing of their own times.  But
neither their arguments in defence of Christ's revelation,
nor their arguments against the pretensions of the heathen
superstition, are generally such as to engage the interest
of our day; their value is historical rather than critical;
we neither go to them to confirm our own faith, nor of
course do we require their help to perceive what is false,
absurd, impossible in the creeds of heathen antiquity. Tertullian and Justin, who lived in the ages of persecution,
dwell with most force and fervour on the sanctity of the
Christians' lives in attestation of the truth of the gospel
message.  Augustine and Lactantius, witnesses of the
triumph of the new religion, expose to scorn the vain
pretences of the priests of Jupiter and Apollo: but the
preaching of St. Paul, in the short fragment before us,
goes in one word to the root of the matter, and sets before us the question of questions, which all generations
must ask and do ask of themselves-in private, in their
own hearts, if not in public debate and controversynamely, whether God has given us the assurance of His
Being, of His Providence, and of His Righteousness, by
the sure and certain promise of a Future Existence?




THE PHILOSOPHERS AT ATHENS.          19
For such is the way in which the apostle states the question of the resurrection.' Forasmuch then as we are the offspring of God, we
ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold, or
silver, or stone, graven by art and man's device.'' And the times of this ignorance God winked at;
but now commandeth all men everywhere to repent:''Because He hath appointed a day, in which He
will judge the world in righteousness by that man
whom He hath ordained; whereof tie hath given assurance unto all men, in that He hath raised Him from
the dead.' 
The moral government of God, the judgment of
God, and the need of repentance to meet that judgment, are all assured to us by the fact of Christ's resurrection, which is the type and pledge of our resurrection also.
How, then, did the philosophers of Athens meet the
arguments of St. Paul, of which no doubt a mere outline has been preserved to us, but which were evidently
based upon the fact, affirmed and demonstrated, of our
Lord's own resurrection?' When they heard of the
resurrection of the dead,' says the same brief record,'some mocked, and others said, We will hear thee again
of this matter.'
I need not say how truly this concise statement
represents the way in which the truths of religion are
very commonly received by the adepts in human wisdom
1 Acts xvii. 29-31.




20                   LECTURE I.
in all ages: some who are possessed by a prejudice,
whose minds are made up, who have been long persuaded that there is no new truth to be discovered, make a
mock, courteously perhaps and blandly, of the doctrine
propounded to them; others, touched at heart, distrusting themselves, perplexed and dubious, put off the day
of conviction, and silence their uneasy doubts by promising to enquire further at some future time. But the
words of the narrative are more remarkable, as foreshadowing the way in which the revelation of Christianity,
the keystone of which is the doctrine of a future state,
would be received generally in the heathen world, and
more particularly by the philosophers and thinkers among
the heathen; how many, to the last, would make a mock
of it; how, in the midst of their own spiritual struggles
and distresses, in all the agony of their search for spiritual consolation, they would still make pretence of derision or defiance at the preaching of the Christian Resurrection. Nevertheless others there were, many there
were, at last a majority there was, who would hecta again
of the matter.  The preachers of the gospel and of immortality, of God's justice and the final retribution,
would never fail of listeners till the day should come when
this great doctrine should attain its triumph, when upon
this stone, upon the confession of this fundamental truth,
the Church of Christ would be established in the Roman
Empire, and the Truth as it is in Christ Jesus become
the moral law of civilized men throughout the'inhabited world' of the Greek or Roman.




OBJECT AND:METHOD OF THE LECTURES.        21
We may take the statement of the text, then, as type
of the struggle between Paganism and Christianity, and
of that transformation of religions opinion, by which
the hopes and fears and spiritual aspirations of the Roman world, at the time of our Lord's appearance in the
flesh, became absorbed in the faith of Christ-modified,
purified, exalted, expanded. In the Lectures which are
to follow I propose to sketch, as far as opportunity allows, the progress of this transformation, the most signal of all religious revolutions.  The object of the
foundation of the Boyle Lecture is to assert the truth of
Christianity against unbelievers, and it may have been
usual to give these discourses a controversial turn, to
answer special objections against the facts of our religion, or urge direct arguments in its defence.  If I take
a somewhat different course in setting forth a historical
survey of the change of religious opinion among the
ancients, I believe I shall act not less in the spirit of my
instructions.  At the present day, at least, if I judge
rightly the temper of my contemporaries, I am  more
likely to recommend the truth of Christianity by tracing
the progress of conviction in the minds of men, than by
combating again the old objections, or seeking weapons
with which to encounter the most recent, the offspring
generally of the old, and bearing a strong resemblance to
their parents.
Many, I think, are agreed that, after all the most
striking evidence for the Divine origin of our faith lies
in the patent fact of its existence, of its growth and dif



22                    LECTURE I.
fusion, its proved superiority to all other forms of spiritual thought, its proved adaptation to all the spiritual
wants of man.  Nothing can be more interesting, nothing can more conduce to a just notion of its claims on
our belief, than a critical examination of the state of
thought and opinion with which it had to deal at the
outset, and the nature of the intellectual struggle which
it carried on. It is with this conviction that I propose
to devote these Lectures to the consideration of that
spiritual resurrection, that resurrection of faith and
genuine piety, which marks the intellectual history of
the early centuries of our era; to dash at least a few rapid sketches of the most salient features of the controversy
between the wisdom of this world and the Truth as it is
in Christ Jesus.
One indulgence your lecturer must crave.  The line
of enquiry thus marked out cannot be profitably followed in these discourses without the free use of the
materials of secular history, without repeated reference
to the names of men and of places of antiquity, without
occasional allusions to worldly customs and modes of
thought, without citation sometimes of secular booksin short, not except under the usual conditions of a
critical investigation.  I must be allowed to make these
addresses, what they  are in  fact properly termed,
Lectures, rather than Sermons.  I must be pardoned if
the exposition of the sacred text, or the  topics' of
religious exhortation  or instruction which form  the
usual staple of our discourses from the pulpit, give place




MEETING OF THE ROMAN SENATE, B. C. 63.    23
for the most part, in my hands, to an examination of
human opinions on matters of religious interest.  For
these subjects, too, I believe,'are good and profitable
unto men.' 
The transition from  ancient to modern ideas of
religion to which I call your attention extends over a
period of three or four centuries: a long period, no
doubt, in the history of civilized man; a long period,
marked with many changes of progress or decline in
arts and inventions, in intellectual interests, in literature
and science.  In' many respects the fourth century of
Christianity was a different world from the first century
before it, though the long interval, the wide chasm, was
spanned by the vast structure of the Roman Empire,
the bridge of ages, one pier of which rested on the consulship of Caesar, the other on the despotism of Constantine. But how wide was the moral space which divided the worshippers of Jupiter on the Capitol from
the worshippers of Jesus Christ at the new Rome on
the Bosphorus may be appreciated from the contrast of
two historical scenes which I will now place before
you.
The Roman senators were assembled on the fifth of
December, in the year 63 before Christ, in the Temple
of Concord, the pavement of which, at the foot of the
Capitoline hill, uncovered in modern times, serves us
even now to realize vividly the scene and the circumstances presented.  The divinity to whom the temple wab
I Titus iii. 8.




24                   LECTURE I.
dedicated marked in itself a peculiar phase of the course
of religious feeling among the Romans; for Concord-a
inere moral abstraction, a mere symbol of a compact effected at an earlier, period between the political orders
of the state-was not an old popular creation of Italian
sentiment, but eminently the invention of the magistrate, introduced by law into the national ritual. The
Senate was itself the minister of the civil government,
and on this occasion it met on the spot which thus eminently symbolized the civil religion of the Roman State.
Nor less was the Senate the minister of the State religion. It comprehended in its ranks the pontiffs, the augurs, and most of the great ecclesiastical officers of
Rome. The place in which it held its meetings-wherever the consul might appoint, whether a temple or a
hall for civil affairs-must be consecrated by the observation of the auspices. Never, then, were the civil and
the religious character of the Senate more conspicuously
represented than when it met in the Temple of Concord
to deliberate on the punishment due to the greatest of
crimes, political and religious, the sacrilegious treason of
Catiline and his followers.
Among the senators convened on that memorable
day were men of the highest political renown-men who
had maintained or men who had daringly assailed the
traditions of government on which the fortunes and the
fame of the commonwealth had for centuries rested;warriors and legislators, patriots and demagogues, leaders and partisans, orators and mere dumb but faithful




CESAR'S DENIAL OF IMMORTALITY.           25
voters; all influenced by the strongest political feelings,
most of them absorbed in the great struggles of the day,
— ~enthusiasts, fanatics,-ready to stake their fortunes
and their lives in assertion of their respective watchwords;-all full of reminiscences of the great men and
the great deeds of old;-not a few among them emulous
of ancient fame, many setting glory and honour and
duty high above every sordid or selfish consideration.
Moreover, there were few or none of them who had not
been trained in the philosophies of the day, and accustomed to look with intelligent interest upon the problems of human nature, and consider the claims of the
higher spiritual life, and recognize the workings of man's
soul within him.
It was on such an occasion, then, on such a spot, in
such an assembly, that Caesar pronounced the words
which have been doubtless faithfully reported to us by
no mean contemporary authority-the words which have
ever since been marked and held in remembrance as the
manifesto of Roman unbelief on the subject of future
existence.'In pain and misery,' he said,'death is the release
from all suffering, not suffering itself; death dissolves
all the ills of mortality; beyond it is no place either for
pain or pleasure.  Wherefore,' such was his argument,'keep these criminals alive, to suffer a fitting penalty;
after death there is no more punishment for sin, neither
is there any reward for virtue.' Caesar himself, the chief
pontiff, the highest functionary of the State-religion, the




2G                    LECTURE I.
chosen interpreter of Divine things to the national conscience, declared peremptorily that there is no such
thing as retribution beyond the grave, no future state
of consciousness, no immortality of the soul. To him
replied the grave and virtuous Cato, the devoted servant
of his country, her laws and institutions; the most regular observer of the traditions of his class and order;
the most ieliyious man, I may say, at Rome, inasmuch
as, of all the Romans of his day, there was none who
set before himself so high a rule of life or so strictly
kept it; a man whose aim it was to' fulfil all righteousness' in the sense in which righteousness would present
itself to him-a man, I will add, with a nearer sense
of a personal inspiration, of the indwelling of a divine
spirit, than any heathen, except perhaps one or two
only, with whom  we are acquainted:-to him  Cato
replied, following and refuting, closely and gravely, all
his political arguments, but passing by this remarkable
expression with just one sentence of what looks like polished banter, just enough to indicate a humourist's sense
(for Cato too was a humnourist) of the curious incongruity
of such a sentiment in such a mouth;-but so lightly, so
perfunctorily, as plainly to show how little there was in
it to alarm the religious feeling of the audience, or to
disgust the religious convictions of the speaker himself.
But another great man took part also in the debate;
another orator remarked on the daring assertion of
Caesar-daring, as with our habits of thought we can
hardly refrain from  calling it, though in the minds of




DENIAL THEN GENERAL AMONG THE HEATHENS.  27
the Roman senators there was clearly no daring in it
at all.  Cicero, the most consummate adept in the doctrines of the philosophical schools, the man who of all
his order could most exactly weigh the amount of approbation which the denial of immortality would then and
there carry with it-Cicero also, I say, refers to Cesar's
assertion, not as caring to give his own assent or dissent
upon the question, but leaving it perfectly open to the
learned or the pious, to the statesman and legislator, the
pontiff and augur, to embrace or repudiate it as he
pleases. We read of no further discussion upon the point,
upon this blank negation of all spiritual faith and hope;
the historian takes no personal notice of it; no writer
of antiquity alludes again to it; it passes as a matter of
general indifference. Such, in short, is the tone of sentiment among the highest intelligences of the day at
Romle, in the century next before the coming of Christ,
that the belief in a future state of retribution-the very
foundation, as we regard it, of all true and rational religion-is allowed to be made an open question, to be
treated as hardly worth question at all, in the gravest of
assemblies, on the gravest of all public occasions.'  Such
was their proud devotion to the false show of this world,
to the glories of a worldwide dominion, the enjoyments
of a voluptuous luxury, the flatteries of a complacent
literature; such their judicial blindness to the future,
with all its aspirations and its terrors, its rewards and its
punishments.
See Note A.




28                   LECTURE I.
But' blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus
Christ, which according to His abundant mercy hath begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of
Jesus Christ from the dead.' 
For let the clouds of time settle upon the scene before us, and when the mist clears up let us find ourselves
transported in imagination four centuries onwards, from
Italy to Asia Minor, from iRome to the provincial city
of Nicoea, from  the Temple of Concord beneath the
Capitol to a public hall of state over against the destined
site of a second Rome on the Bosphorus. HIow changed
is the scene which now meets, our eyes; how changedyet in some marked circumstances how like to the old
scene renewed   The place of meeting is no longer a
temple, but a town-hall or a palace; the government
there enthroned is no longer a commonwealth, but an
imperial autocracy; the men assembled before us in
their robes of dignity and their ensigns of office,-the
pallium for the toga, the crooked staff for the ivory
sceptre,-are no longer senators but bishops; not fathers
of patrician households, and rulers of provinces and
legions, but fathers of the Church, elders of a spiritual
congregation, abounding in exhortation and teaching, interpreting a rule of faith and practice, holding fast an
already ancient ecclesiastical tradition.  The ideas of
the time, indeed, are changed: the faith and usages of
the people have undergone a marvellous transformation.
The matter in debate in the assembly to which the gravest
1 Peter i. 3.




TIE COUNCIL OF NIClEA, A. D. 325.       29
affair of state is now committed is not a question of political emergency, of foreign levy or domestic treason,
but of the deepest spiritual significance; the Council of
Nice is met together to fix the creed of Christendom on
a point of religious dogma, to close up an intellectual
schism, and settle the faith of men on an everlasting
foundation.
The chief who summons this council of Christian
bishops is still the highest guardian of the national ritual,
the head of the Church upon earth, but he comes not to
prescribe his own views on points of religious faith, but
to collect the suffrages of its recognized expounders, the
depositaries of three centuries of interpretation and tradition, the chief pastors of the Christian congregations
scattered over the face of the empire and even beyond it.
For there too were assembled, not the denizens of
one imperial city, descending from their mansions on the
seven hills into the IRoman forum, but, in the words of
the great historian of the crisis, "the most eminent
among God's ministers of all those Churches which filled
all Europe, Libya, and Asia. And one sacred oratory,"
he continues, "enlarged as it were by God Himself, enclosed within its walls both Syrians and Cilicians, Phoenicians aid Arabians, Palestinians and Egyptians also,
Thebseans and Libyans, and those that come forth of
Mesopotamia. There was present also at this synod a
Persian bishop, neither was the Scythian absent from the
quire. Moreover, there appeared here Thracians and




30                   LECTURE I.
Macedonians, Achaians and Epirotes, and such as dwelt
far beyond these met nevertheless together."'
And he goes on, as you might anticipate, to compare
this varied assemblage to the multitude of many nations
that were gathered together on the day of Pentecost; a
meeting inferior indeed, as he hints, to this in interest,
for that was composed for the most part of laymen and
neophytes, but this of ministers and teachers only.
The interest and importance, indeed, of this famous
synod, it requires no theologian's rhetoric to magnify.
Viewed as an event of human history only, dull indeed
must be the imagination which does not see in the Council of Nicea an incident of the deepest significance, the
first launching of a vast spiritual engine on its career of
conquest and dominion. However variously we may estimate the morals and intellect of the age, we cannot
doubt that it was represented at this council by its best,
its ablest, and its most intelligent.  Whatever judgment
polemics may hold of the soundness of the ecclesiastical
traditions then current, there can be no question but that
at that council they were faithfully expounded and fully
developed.  Whatever value some modern thinkers may
set upon the abstruse dogmas which came under discussion in it, it is allowed that in these dogmas lay the
breath of all spiritual life at the period; and especially
the question of the Divine Son's relation to the Father,
then elaborately defined, was a question of life and death
for the scheme of theology then establisled, and ever
1 Eusebius Pamphilus, Life of Constantine, iii. 7.




CHARACTER OF THE BISHOPS ASSEMBLED.          31
since maintained in preeminence in the Church of Christ.
Nor can we dispute that, if such transcendent mysteries
can ever be profitably subjected to the test of critical discussion, there were men there met together of every temper, of manifold habits of thought, of various mental associations, of various intellectual powers; some trustworthy as witnesses to traditional usage, some respectable
for their personal experiences, some to be admired for
their keenness and subtilty, some to be revered for their
illustrious piety; and that in such hands the subject in
debate received as full and as worthy treatment as it has
ever been capable of among men.1
The bishops, 318 in number, who met on this solemn
occasion, had all been swept over by the last storm of imperial persecution, the agitation of which had hardly yet
subsided.  Known to each other hitherto by the record
of their trials and endurance only, they now met for a
moment upon  earth, trusting  to  be united  finally
in heaven-the witnesses to the faith in Rome and
Antioch, at Treves and at Carthage; witnesses to the
same faith, the same law, the same sacraments, the same
Lord and M]aster of them  all.  The most illustrious
were soon distinguished: some were betokened by their
strange dress and habits, some by their well-known
reputation for zeal or for learning, some by the wounds
and scars of their noble confession.  Paphnutius, a confessor from the Thebaid, who asserted the right of the
clergy to the society of their wives, had been blinded
I Socrates, History of the Church, i. 6.




32                   LECTURE I.
and maimed in the leg;  Paul of Neocesarea was
crippled by torture in the hand.  Ascetics from  the
Upper Egypt were clothed in the wild raiment of the
Baptist; they had wandered forth in sheepskins and
goatskins, they had dwelt in deserts and on mountains,
in dens and caves of the earth.  The childlike simplicity
of the primitive ages was instanced in Spiridion, the
village bishop of Cyprus-the prototype, it would seem,
of the model prelate of a recent fiction, —ho, when brigands robbed him  of his sheep, rebuked them meekly
for not having rather asked him for them. The learning
of the clerical order, which could compare with that of
the Pagan orators and sophists, was represented among
others by Eustathius and the two Eusebiuses; while
for age and venerable bearing none were more remarkable than the Spanish prelate Hosius, and Alexander
the patriarch of Alexandria. While again the neology
of the period, and the leanings of secular learning
towards notions which sprang from the lurking heathenism  of the heart, found their artful expounder in the
arch-heretic Arius, the real doctrine of the Church, such
as it claimed to have been from the beginning, and such
as it has been maintained for fifteen centuries onwards,
was defended, above all others, with the keenest logic,
with the most ardent rhetoric, and with indomitable
energy, by the mighty Athanasius, —he who not long
after stood alone, as it was said, against the world, and
triumphed.  The intellectual excitement of the day was
not unfelt even by the heathens themselves; and many




CONSTANTINE'S POSITION IN TIlE COUNCIL.     33
distinguished adherents of the old religion came,-solme
scoffing, some trembling, all wondering,-to hear how
the Church of Christ, that strange confederation which
had vanquished them at last after three centuries of conflict, would solve the most awful questions which the
human mind can encounter. These strangers to the faith
were not indeed admitted to the scene of the sacred conference, but thev hovered anxiously around it, and conversed from time to time with the members as they passed in
or out, and were admonished sometimes with compassion,
sometimes with yearning love, sometimes with grave and
authoritative rebuke; and if some still mocked, and some
hesitated and said,'We will hear thee again on this matter,' others there were who were conscience-stricken and
converted on the spot, and the Holy Spirit added unto
the Church daily such as should be saved.
The Synod was assembled, every man in his place,
when the Emperor Constantine entered, arrayed in gold
and purple, and strode with his guards around him  to
the top of the Hall, where, standing for a moment before a golden throne, he. looked hesitatingly around, as
if to ask permission to be seated.  When he took his
seat all the ecclesiastics sat down likewise, according to
the tradition of the Roman Senate, all the members of
which were virtually equal. Then the Emperor rose and
addressed the assembly in a set harangue, explaining the
main object of their summons, using' for the majesty of
the empire,' as his predecessors would have phrased it,
the sonorous tongue of Latium.' When by the assent,'
3




34                   LECTURE I.
he said,'and the aid of the Almighty, I had triumnphed
over my enemies, I hoped that I had nothing m ore to do
than to give thanks to God, and to rejoice with those whom
He had delivered by my hand. But as soon as I heard
of the division existing among you, I judged it to be a
pressing matter, which I must not neglect; and desiring
also to apply some remedy to this new evil, I have called
you together without delay, and great is my satisfaction
in being present at your meeting.'  With these, and
such words as these, full of goodwill to the Church, its
chiefs, and its concerns, but without venturing even to
propound the subjects to which he invited discussion, did
Constantine open that memorable council; giving the
sanction of the highest civil authority to debates which
ranged over topics of the deepest spiritual significance;
setting the first precedent in recorded history, however
moderate and reserved, of the action of a regal supremacy in matters ecclesiastical; giving the first fulfilment
to the prophecy, that kings should be the fathers of the
Church, and queens her nursing mothers.  Deep indeed
must have been the interest of the civilized world, Christian and Pagan, lay and clerical, learned and unlearned,
noble and plebeian, in the questions which then agitated
the Christian Church, when the deliberations of this new
senate, of this novel confederation of the civil and ecclesiastical powers, of the emperor and the bishops, of the
State and the Church, issued in the promulgation of
a solemn rule of faith, of that form of sound words which
has been recited daily in the Church for fifteen centuries,




PROMULGATION OF THE NICENE CREED.         35
and still is recited with awe and veneration among usthe illustrious creed of INicmea. A few years, as we have
seen, before the incarnation of Jesus Christ, the Roman
senators listened without shame or shuddering to the utter
denial of man's spiritual being from the mouth of their
sovereign Pontiff:  Three hundred years after His resurrection, an assembly of priests, the august successor of
that incredulous Synod, deliberately affirmed the most
mysterious dogmas of revealed religion.'We believe,'
it said,'in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of all
things visible and invisible; And in one Lord Jesus Christ,
the Son of God, of the same substance with the Father, by whom all things were made: Who for us men, and
for our salvation, came down from Heaven, and was incarnate and was made man, suffered and rose again the
third day, He ascended into Heaven, He shall come
again to judge both the quick and the dead:'-And further,' We believe in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and Giver
of life: and in the Remission of Sins, the Resurrection
of the Body, and the Life everlasting.''
Here there are two great facts set before you: an
immense revolution in human thought has been effected.
a vast transformation of human feeling.  Such change
was not wrought upon the spot, not by a single miraculous stroke of Providence, not by a momentary decree
of the Almighty, as when He said to chaos,'Let there
be light, and there was light;' as when He said to Saul
of Tarsus,'I am Jesus whom thou persecutest.' If the
See Note B.




36                   LECTURE I.
conversion of the individual soul is rarely sudden and
immediate, still more rare-still less, I may say, possible
-is the immediate conversion of a people. Noo; there
was an interval of four centuries, crowded with movements of changes outward and inward; all slow and
gradual, and following justly one from  another: —the
falling away of many prejudices; the scaling off of
many folds of inveterate error; the raising up of many
footholds of truth and faith. There was life in death,
energy in decay, rejuvenescence in decrepitude.  The
human mind continued to work by its old accustomed
methods, but those methods of thought were themselves
of God's original appointment; the Holy Spirit had
brooded over their creation, and guided them gently to
the end which to Him was present fiom the beginning.
Let us seek, with His blessed aid and enlightenment, to
trace in these Lectures the mode of this spiritual revolution, this conversion of the Ioman Empire, of the civilized world of antiquity, of the natural human intellect
in the pride of its highest acquirements, from a denial
of the first principle of positive belief to the assertion
of an entire system of revealed religion.




LECTUJRE II.
HEATHEN BELIEF DIRECTED TOWARDS A TEMPORAL PROVIDENCE.
ACTS xvIi. 22.
Then Paul stood in the mZidst of MlIars' hill, and said, Ye men of
Athens, Iperceive that in all things ye are too stuperstitiouts.
THERE is no need on the present occasion to discuss
critically the meaning of the word here rendered' superstitious,' nor of the fact from which the apostle particularly infers it of the Athenians, when he adds,' For as I
passed by, and beheld your devotions, I found an altar
with this inscription, To the unknown God.'  We will
take the phrase' too superstitious,' or literally' god or
spirit fearing,' to mean, excessively addicted to the worship of supernatural powers, overprone to believe in and
tremble before the influence of invisible existences, capricious or perverse in the apprehension of God's nature,
and of the nature of I-ls divine rule and providence.
Superstition, as here spoken of, seems to be an excess or
extravagant conception of religion: it is the fanatic issue of human thoughts on subjects too pure, too sublime, and too holy for human nature, unenlightened




38                  LECTURE II.
from above, to think of duly or worthily. Nevertheless,
even such superstition does bear in a certain measure
the character of religious belief; it is grounded upon the
same fundamental principle-the apprehension of a spiritual world.
Now I would have you observe the juxtaposition of
the religious feeling here ascribed to the Athenians with
the mocking denial, or at best, the timid and doubtful
anticipation of a future state which is imputed to them
in what presently follows:' And when they heard of the
resurrection of the dead, some mocked: and others said,
We will hear thee again of this matter'-a text on
which I enlarged in my last Lecture, to show the imperfect apprehension or popular denial of a future retribution in the heathen world. Compare these two passages, and it will plainly appear, that in St. Paul's view
the same people might have, and indeed actually had,
a keen and conscious apprehension of a Divine government, together with a direct renunciation of the doctrine
of a future retribution. I need not say how utterly this
is inconsistent with the idea we as Christians entertain
of religion. We Christians, trained from father to son
in the teaching of Scripture, cannot, I imagine, divorce
the two ideas.  We cannot contemplate for ourselves,
hardly can we conceive in others, the idea of religions
belief,-of belief in God as a moral ruler, and in His
providential government of the world,-apart from the
conviction of judgment hereafter. The famous paradox
of Warburton is founded upon this conviction, upon this




MODIFICATION OF HEATHEN BELIEF.          39
instinctive assurance, as he maintained it to be, that belief in Providence cannot ordinarily subsist, that it cannot certainly be maintained among men in society, without a belief in a future state of rewards and punishinents.  The omission of this cardinal doctrine, as he
argued, in the Mosaic economy, formed a conclusive
demonstration that the law of Moses was no invention
of the mere human mind; so manifestly, in his view,
does such omission contravene the first principles of human reasoning on the subject of religion.
I perceive well enough the apparent presumption in
favour of such a theory.  I felt myself authorized to declare in my last Lecture that the open denial of immortality in the Roman Senate implied a general repudiation
of a fundamental principle of religion.  I contrasted this
repudiation with the assertion of Christian dogma at the
first of the great Christian councils, to mark, at one
glance, the entire space of the chasm which separated
the one age from the other, the heathen fromn the Christian, the Roman Empire from the City of God. Here
we see, indeed, two great forces arrayed against each other-Belief and Unbelief.
Such, at least, is the broad and general view of the
case presented to us. But let us look a little closer, and
see whether the condition of the heathen mind was altogether negative in religious matters.  Did the heathen
deny all obligations, all objects of religious faith, in repudiating the cardinal principle of a future retribution 
Can a man have no apprehension of a God because he




40                   LECTURE II.
has no apprehension of immortality?  Our text points
to a different conclusion. The Athenians, little as they
certainly regarded a future life, were even too superstitious; full of a strong apprehension of unknown superior powers, they were blind and mean and gross in their
conception of them. And the same might be shown
equally of the Romans.
The heathen, as St. Paul says, were to be left without
excuse, and therefore the eternal power and Godhead,
at least, of the Deity were made manifest to their hearts
by the inner witness of the conscience. Though they
glorified not God in their acts, nor even in the justness
and purity of their notions, yet they knew God so far
as to apprehend the fact of His Being, His Power, and
His Providence.
I repeat that, speaking broadly, the heathen of Greece
and Rome, at least the intelligent classes among themall above the common herd, the women and childrenhad no real belief in a future state. I speak not of the
teaching or the private aspirations of a few philosophers,
of which more may be said hereafter. Nor need I spend
words in showing that the vulgar mythology, with
its Hades and Olympus, its Tartarean blackness and
Elysian sunshine, was an exploded and despised tradition.  Whatever hankering after a positive belief on
matters of such awful interest might linger in men's hopes
and fears, and find utterance here and there in their popular literature, there was no real and living faith in such
things: no intelligent man would have publicly acknowl



BELIEF IN BEING AND PROVIDENCE OF GOD.    41
edged any such anticipations, no priest or preacher was
appointed to teach them dogmatically; the rewards and
punishments of a future state, as far as such a state pretended to be revealed, had become no more than mere
poetic machinery.'
The heathens, then, had no popular belief in a future
retribution.  Nevertheless, they had their temples, and
their altars; their gods were represented by images, and
service was done to them  by priests and ministers.  A
comprehensive and intricate ritual prescribed the names
and characters of hundreds of divinities, specified their
various attributes and functions, interpreted their will,
interceded for their favour.' He that cometh to God,'
says the Christian Scripture, speaking of mankind generally,'must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him.' 2 This is the universal and fundamental condition of religious belief.
If the heathens of Rome did thus come to God, even to
a God of their own imaginations, with religious service,
however blind and carnal, they did then assuredly believe in the Being of God, a God of power and intelligence; and did apprehend in some way, however faintly
and imperfectly, the fact of His providential oversight
of man.  And accordingly the Gospel had to combat not
a mere blank negation of all belief, but a living and substantive principle of religion.
Let me then first place clearly before you the fact
that this religious service was really made a matter of
See Note C.              2 Heb. xi. 6.




42                   LECTURE II.
conscience, enjoined and enforced by ecclesiastical authorities, accepted and acknowledged by the heart and under
standing of the worshippers.
We read how, not many years after the above-mentioned debate in the Roman Senate, the factions of the
Republic culminated in a great political apostasy.  An
impious son raised his hand against his parent's bosom.
The crossing of the Rubicon, the march of Cssar upon
Rome, was denounced as an act, not of rebellion only,
but of impiety and schism. It must be met with human
arms indeed, but before human arms were tried, or while
human arms were being tried, it might be met also with
a solemn religious ceremony-by an act of lustration, of
expiation, of national humiliation before the insulted
powers of the other world. Policy and religion joined
hand in hand.  The Consul takes counsel with the
Pontiff; the Philosopher enquires of the Augur; they
revolve the ancient books, and resort to the prescribed
usages, and marshal with one accord a long procession
of priests and statesmen, of magistrates and citizens, of
Vestals, Salians, and Flamens, to stalk around the sacred
inclosure of the city, and purge its dwellings with a holy
lustration.  The whole population, in an access of superstitious fervour, is moved to appease the national divinities by an act of national devotion. M[en and women,
young and old, the learned and the vulgar, unite in this
solemn function with a common will and conscience.
How far they believed in the idols to which they bowed
themselves; how far they duped one another; how far




REVIVAL OF RELIGIOUS USAGE.           43
they were duped themselves, who shall say? The scene
itself stands before us, a great and impressive fact, a fact
surely not without a meaning.  The mighty multitude
of the greatest of cities, in an age when none believed
in a resurrection, none regarded a future retribution, was
moved by a common impulse to make this striking demonstration of its religious instincts and spiritual convictions. We cannot shut our eyes to the fact. Whatever
abatement we may make from the entire genuineness of
the sentiment by which this multitude was animated,
we must allow that there did exist, even at this time,
among the heathen at Rome a principle of religious
belief. Christianity, I say, had a real living enemy to
encounter.'
But this, it may be urged, was a sudden outburst of
feeling, a paroxysm of alarm, a transient panic of unreflecting superstition. Not so: we may judge of its depth
and reality from the marked revival of religious usage,
and apparently of actual persuasion, which ensued in
the next generation.  The conviction of the existence
of Powers unseen, on whose due propitiation the safety
of the State (in which was enwrapped the safety of every
citizen) depended, was still deeply rooted in the heart
of the Roman even of this latter age. Choked it might
be, and stifled amid the cares of government; forgotten
it might be in the turmoil of war; it miglt be thrust
contemptuously aside in the flush of victory and triumph,
in the selfish enjoyment of success, amid the orgies of
See Note D.




44                  LECTURE II.
sensual luxury; nevertheless, the stress of circumstances
might at any time revive it, the call of an astute or ardent
ruler might evoke it. When the religious principle among
the Jews of the olden time had been perverted by evil
influences, they had fallen away to the snares most tempting to their peculiar weaknesses, to the idolatries and harlotries of Edom and of Moab. The Romans, when the
same principle was corrupted among them, surrendered
themselves to the charm of their most seductive neighbours, the Greeks, and the love of the gods of the Capitol waxed cold under the spell of sceptics, rationalists, and
philosophers.  But among both Jews and Romans the
religions sentiment was again and again revived. The
process was alike in both cases; the history seems to repeat itself. The example or command of pious kings
effected more than once a religious revival in Israel and
Judah. Asa and Hezekiah removed the high places and
brake down the images, and restored the worship of the
God of their fathers.  The people followed in their steps
and turned again to the service of Jehovah.'And Josiah,' we read,'stood by a pillar, and made a covenant
before the Lord, to walk after the Lord, and to keep His
commandments...... And all the people stood to the
covenant.'  Such were the acts of the good kings, influenced by pure religious feeling, prompting them to
please God by their own conversion, urging them to lead
their people to propitiate Him  by a willing service.
But Jehu, again, is an instance of a wicked king, a pol2 Kings xxiii. 3.




REVIVAL OF RELIGION UNDER AUGUSTUS.          45
itic and selfish man, impelled by mixed and impure motives of gain, of fear, or statecraft, to put on a show of
godliness, to effect an imperfect and one-sided reformation..' Thus Jehu destroyed Baal out of Israel, while at
the same time he did not himself depart from the sin of
Jeroboam, who made Israel to sin.' 
Now the obligation and responsibility thus felt by
the chiefs of Israel and Judah, was confessed not less
openly by some of the Romanl Emperors.  When Rome
became a monarchy, the spiritual headship of the people
was assumed by the Caesar as definitely as if he were
the anointed of Jehovah.  It might be mere craft and
policy that induced Augustus to call for a restoration of
national religion; he lnew well that religion is the safeguard of thrones, and sought doubtless to clench thereby
the obedience of his subjects. It might be superstition,
for Augustus was the victim of many an abject superstition.  Great conquerors, the realizers of great projectsgreat favourites, as we call them, of fortune, and we almost sanction the sentiment ourselves in calling them  so
-generally are superstitious.  And again, there might
be some real belief, some genuine religion in it; for Augustus was too great a man not to be strongly and devoutly impressed with the depth and breadth and height
of the mission to which he was appointed.  At the same
time, from the innovating spirit of the theorists and philosophers Augustus was singularly free, if not absolutely hostile to it.  While the educated men of Rome were
2 Kings, x. 28, 29.




46                   LECTURE II.
banded, as it were, in the contending camps of the Stoics
and Epicureans and Platonists; while almost every eminent statesman among them announced himself the disciple of some dogmatic teacher, as publicly as he declared
himself the follower of a party leader, it was remarked
that this man, the most eminent of all, stood scornfully
aloof from all the schools of thought and moral doctrine.
The religion of the genuine Roman had no sympathy
with them; the personal aspirations they might engender,
the yearning after the invisible, the ardent gaze upon an
ideal of virtue and holiness; these sentiments in which,
imperfect and partial as in the mere natural heart they
must be, we as Christians still place the first seeds and
germs of religious principle, had no connection with the
train of thought and basis of feeling on which the system of the Priests and Pontiffs, the Augurs and the
Flamens, was established.  Such were not the pillars on
which the conqueror. could build his Empire. He must
revert to the old foundations: he must stand upon the
ancient ways.
Hence, then, his propping of the falling temples, his
repair of decayed and smoke-soiled images; hence his
erection of thrice a hundred shrines in the city, his revival of old religious usages, his enforcement of the
sanctions of property and marriage, his correction of social irregularities, his Pantheon, his Secular Games,
his incessant sacrifices and lustrations.  Such were the
elements of a religious revival, which Augustus deemed
requisite for the gaining of Divine favour, for the safety




GENUINE CHARACTER OF THIS REVIVAL.       47
of the State, for the perpetuation, it may be, of his own
government and power. The man who in his youth,
when himself an aspirant and an adventurer, had mocked the gods of his country with indecent ribaldry-a
Jehu in ambition, in bloodshed, in every personal impurity-in mature age, when accepted, as it seemed, for the
favourite of heaven, the first child of Olympus, acknowledged that his own rule, like the sovereignty of Rome
herself, depended on the Powers above, and was founded
on the confession of their mighty name. Nor was this
a mere personal feeling. The general consent of the
writers of the time, admitting this principle of a
providential government, accords fully with it, and
reflects the temper of the age as faithfully as of the sovereign.
There was then a deep religious feeling among the
Romans, however blind and narrow we must esteem it,
in which their chief himself partook, even while he profited by it. This feeling is attested, among many other
tokens, by the outburst at the time of pretended prophecy, by the general augury of a spiritual manifestation;
showing that it was no mere outward pretence, no mere
ceremonial reformation, not a revival only of masonry and
upholstery. Paganism had indeed no tap-root of moral
renovation. A religious revival in the age of Augustus
may have been but the maudlin remorse which follows
on a surfeit of sin and selfish indulgence. Yet for a moment at least the nation's heart was stricken, its conscience agitated; and the chief who rejected the exotic




48                    LECTURE II.
doctrines of the ideologists; who restored the cult of the
national divinities; who sate once a year at thl  gate of
his palace, and propitiated Nemesis by the begging of
alms; who appealed to the bystanders at his death-bed
with a smile,'Have I played well my part in the show
and drama of life?' was, I conceive, a signal example of
the native power of the religious sentiment of the Romari people.
It was necessary to examine this example closely if we
would estimate the work which it was appointed for the
Gospel to effect on the heart of the heathen.  I will not
detain you with a survey of a similar revival, impelled a
hundred years later by another Caesar, another profligate,
another tyrant, yet another anxious votary of the gods
of Rome. It was the boast of Domitian that in his youth
lie had waged the wars of Jove, in defence of the Capitol; that in a later age lie had scaled the heavens for
himself and his family, by piously restoring it.  He too
enforced the religious code of antiquity with the ruthless
barbarity of a Jehu; he too rejected every spiritual innlovation, persecuted the Christians and expelled the philosophers.  The heart and conscience of his countrymen.
alarmed by many signs and sufferings, responded to the
impulse he gave it; and the student of history cannot
fail to appreciate the sense of religious responsibility
evinced by the Roman people under the rule of the Flavian dynasty.
What then, we may ask, was the religious idea which
was before Christianity; which was so widely spread,




HEATHEN IDEA OF RELIGION.              49
so deeply rooted, so keenly felt, so importunate in its assaults on the conscience even of wordlings and sensualists; which all the vice, and sin, and carnal abominations of the natural heart could not extinguish or allay;
which Christianity was sent into the world to combat, to
try as with fire, to purge its dross and draw forth its
residue of gold; which was so hostile in its outward
form to Christianity that the two could not endure together, but its rites must be abolished, its mysteries suppressed, its vanity demonstrated; while it still held fast
the true foundation of the fear of God, and confession of
His providence?
Look back for a moment at the early world, in the
aspect of nature and the works of man; at the woods in
which men planted their first stockades, the rocks on
which they founded their primeval fortifications, the
lakes in which they raised their first amphibious dwelling-places.  Look at the masses of Cyclopean masonry,
piled upon rugged cliffs; the solid bulk of earthworks,
stretching from hill to hill, and from sea to sea. Do not
these glimpses of society in infancy point, and nowhere
more plainly than in Italy itself, to a state of existence
in which men lived together in constant apprehension of
other men; in which combination for mutual protection
was the first and paramount object of all; in which nutual fear was the common bond of union, and every nation, tribe, and clan was banded together against all its
neighbours? This is not a description, perhaps of the patriarchal and pastoral communities of the plain of Shinar
4




50                    LECTURE I.
and the banks of the Euphrates; but looking westward
to Greece and Italy, we observe how the necessary conditions of civil society issued in the most jealous of all
national institutions, the most exclusive of all national
beliefs.  The idea of Greek and Roman religion was to
secure by a national worship the enjoyment of national
advantages, protection, favour and reward, escape from
national disasters and national punishments.  This was
the political religion of states and peoples. Their priests
were the mediators between God and the Nation, between Heaven and the City.  The Citizen was merged
in the State; for the State he was born, he lived, he
married, he tilled his land, he bequeathed his goods, he
perpetuated his family.  The Roman worshipped for his
country rather than for himself. To the gods of the
enemy he opposed the gods of Rome; and if he conquered the enemy he was anxious to propitiate his gods
though baffled, and draw them by craft, by flattery, even
by force, to his own side.  His idea of religion was of a
national, not a personal covenant with God. His rule
of right was framed on views of public expediency. If
his principles were narrow or corrupt, his strictness in
maintaining them was often worthy of a better code and a
higher sanction. But whatever his idea of duty, whatever
his law, he recognized no future retribution for his deeds.
Like the Athenian, he was even too superstitious in his
apprehension of a Divine Power; believing in God, he believed in Iim as a Rewarder indeed of them that diligently seek Him; but the care of the gods, he imagined, was




THE POPULAR BELIEF AT ROME.           51
for the nation rather than the individual worshipper,
their favour temporal, their rewards and punishments
of the earth earthy. Starting, I say, from the notion of
the gods as national patrons, he could scarce conceive in
his mind-surely he could not logically conceive of them
-as ushering the man, the citizen, into a personal immortality.
The tendency of such a fixed idea of religion was to
resolve the essence of piety into the fulfilment of ceremonial observances. Its main object was to preserve the
traditions of immemorial antiquity, to hand down intact from generation to generation the forms and usages
of the past.  The popular belief of Rome pointed to a
period long since past, when the people were exemplarily religious, when the Divine services were punctually
performed, when the gods were always propitious, when
the State was always prosperous, when her men were
brave, her women chaste, her legions triumphant. In
every crisis of terror or disaster the heart of the multitude turned with unutterable yearnings to the traditions
of that happy age; and sought to recover, were it but
possible, by fond recurrence to the ancient practice, the
favour and happiness they seemed to have foregone. The
piety of the Romans looked ever backward: its ideal lay
behind it, not before it. It aspired to present safety or
enjoyment by a faithful imitation of an imaginary Past;
but it had no standard of future excellence or future
blessedness to attain unto, no rising star to follow, no expansion, no development to anticipate. With no yearn



52                   LECTURE II.
ings for consummation and perfection hereafter, it took
no heed of advance or improvement here. Of whatever
greatness or goodness man was by nature capable, he was
supposed to have already attained to it; enough, and
more than enough, if he had not fallen from the height
of his early attainments, and forfeited his privileges for
ever. IlIow obscure the Past! how comfortless the Present! how blank the Future! A Divine power with no
adequate subject for its exercise! A Divine Providence
with no consistent scheme of creation and government!
And yet, so strong, so lively was this corrupt conception,
this narrow view of God and Providence, this nervous
apprehension of temporal rewards and punishments, fostered by long ages of political success-that not only was
it made the subject of a national revival under an Augustus and a Domitian, but it continued to struggle on
under many a mortal discouragement-retaining its hold
of the throbbing heart-animating the body of expiring
Paganism, for many a century after them. The last
phase of the worship of Olympus was the personification
of Rome herself as the patron deity of the Romans, and
of Victory the embodied symbol of their national power
and success. To the last moment the simple theory of
the Gospel-which the Apostle required a vision to conceive and realize-that God is no respecter of persons,
but that in every nation he that feareth Him and worketh righteousness is accepted of Him, was strange and
abhorrent from the prejudices of the heathen. The City
of God, in the Christian dispensation, is neither Rome




BELIEF IN A NATIONAL PROVIDENCE.           53
nor Athens, nor even Jerusalem, but the society of believers on earth in spiritual communion with the saints
in heaven.  It has no promise of temporal favour, no
assurance of defence against the world or the flesh; its
promises point to a future reward, its terrors respect an
impending retribution. It was to this belief, simple to
us, but strange to him, that the heathen was to be brought
-slowly, painfully, under stress of manifold influences,
which I hope on future occasions to unfold.  But he had
still, at the time of our Lord's coming, a substantive belief of his own; a belief most alien from the Gospel, most
visionary to the enlightened reason; a religion of temporal views and sanctions, a religion of Inational not individual import. To this he had been led by the first
necessities of his social condition; in this he had been
confirmed by the success which had long seemed to attend upon it; to this, if ever forgetful of it in his prosperity, if ever disgusted with it in his adversity, still from
time to time he passionately recurred, full of horror at
his own backsliding, full of hope for his tardy resipiscence.  Three hundred years after the first preaching
of the Gospel the chastened eloquence of the Christian
Lactantius was still employed in exposing this spiritual
perversion, this sacrifice of the soul to the lust of the eye,
and the pride of life.'And now,' he says,'to sum up the Christian theory
briefly.  The world was made that man might be born
into it.  Man was made that he might recognise God
the iMaker of the world, and of himself. We recognise




54                   LECTURE I.
Him that we may worship Him; we worship Him  that
we may earn immortality through the works which are
His peculiar service; we receive the reward of immortality that, being made like unto the angels, we may
serve our Lord and Father for ever, and be His everlasting kingdom.  This is the sum of all things; this the
secret of God, the mystery of creation, to which they are
strangers who, following present lusts, have abandoned
themselves to things frail and earthly, and have plunged
in deadly pleasures, as in the mire, souls born for heavenly occupation.'But what sense can there be in the worship of the
gods of the heathen? If they are many in number, if
they are worshipped by men for the sake of wealth, honour, victory, which profit for this life only; if we are
created for no purpose; if we are born by chance for our
own selves and for pleasure only; if after death we are
nothing, what so vain, so foolish, so frivolous as man's life
and being, and the whole world itself, which, infinite as
it is in magnitude, and wonderful in structure, is thus
abandoned to vanity? For why do tie winds blow and
collect the clouds? why gleam the lightnings? why roar
the thunders, and descend the rains for the increase of
earth's manifold offspring? why, in short, doth all nature labour, that nothing may be wanting of the things
by which man's being is sustained, if life be empty, if we
wither to nothing, if nought be in us of greater interest
to God? But if it be sin to say, nor possible to believe,
that that which we see to consist with the highest plan




COMBATED BY LACTAITIUS.                55
and purpose, was not itself for some great purpose constituted, what sense can there be in these errors of the
false religions, and in this persuasion of the philosophers
that the souls of men do perish    Surely none whatever.' 
- See Note E.




LECTURE III.
EXPANSION OF HEATHEN BELIEF BY THE TEACHING OF THE
PHILOSOPHERS.
ACTS XYII. 26.
God hath made of one blood all natios of men, for to dwell on all
the face of the earth.
FEW declarations of Holy Writ have sunk more deeply into the heart and conscience of Christendom than
this, by which we confess the unity of the human race in
its claims on man and God, on the sympathy of our fellow-beings, and on the justice and mercy of our Creator.
This is the point to which all Scripture seems to lead
up.  The doctrine which is plainly set forth in the first
chapter of Genesis, which is affirmed repeatedly in the
record of God's dealings with the Jewish people, when
He chose them  out from  among other and mightier
nations, for no merit or superior character of their own,
but for the special purposes of His providence, to be
merged again once more in the general mass of mankind,
Jew and Gentile, among whom the Church and spiritual
people of Christ should be established-this doctrine, I
say, of the essential unity of our race is again dogmat



THE PRINCIPLE OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF.'T
ically asserted in the text of St. Paul, and asserted or
implied elsewhere throughout the volume of the New
Testament-made in fact the very foundation of the
promised preaching of salvation to the Gentiles.  Such
is the thorough consistency of the Word of God from
one end to the other; such the Divine inspiration of
truth breathed into it from the beginning, and continued
to it even unto the end.  And this doctrine, I repeat, is
one which all Christendom  has uniformly accepted as
certain and divine.  There has been, I suppose, no doubt
of it at any time in the Church; so entirely does it seem
to harmonize with our own moral convictions, as well as
with the express declaration of Scripture.  Nevertheless,
this doctrine is far from being one of which men can be
said to have a natural and instinctive apprehension.  It
is a truth engrafted upon the human stock.  Let us see
how the matter stood at the time when the apostle thus
definitely announced it.
I explained in my last lecture the principle on which
the religion of Rome was founded, and on which it still
continued to rest, fixed by its weight, if not grappled
by the root, at the period of our Lord's actual teaching.
This principle was the belief in national divinities, the
patrons of the State, in the protection of one favoured
race against all others, the maintenance of a federal colmpact between Heaven and the City, in which the individual worshipper had but a relative and proportionate
interest.  This was the hostile principle with which the
Gospel was to make no terms, to hold no peace; to com



58                  LECTURE III.
bat it, first where it lingered in the bosom of the descendant of Abraham, but more especially, more permanently, to combat it where it was enthroned in the prejudices, enwoven in the selfishness of the Roman and the
Greek. Till this principle was overthrown, Christianity
could not triumph; as long as it held sway over the
human heart to which it was naturally congenial, Christianity could make no sound or palpable progress in the
world. At this moment it was a formidable foe to the
Gospel. It not only dwelt in the hearts and persuasions
of the people, but was supported by all the powers of
political interest; it glowed with the pomp of ceremonial observances; it was hallowed by the charm of long
possession, by its pretended appeal to actual experience,
and the demonstration it affected to derive from the
worldly success of the Roman Empire. It was still a
living and active principle, for it was capable of a marked revival, a new growth and development, as proved
more than once in the course of the Roman history.
But God's word had gone forth that His Church was
founded upon a rock, and the gates of hell should not
prevail against it. He had launched His Gospel into
the world; the apostles were bearing the good tidings
from land to land, and the motto they inscribed on their
banner when they offered to do battle with all the powers
of the false religions was such words as those of the text,' God hath make of one blood all nations of men for to
dwell on all the face of the earth; 1' By one Spirit are
1 Acts xvii. 26.




SPIRITUAL DOCTRINE OF PLATO.            59
we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or
Gentiles, whether we be bond or free;   and,' God is no
respecter of persons; but in every nation he that feareth
Him, and worketh righteousness, is accepted with Him; 2
and again,' There is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision
nor uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free:
but Christ is all, and in all.'
In fact, however formidable was the front which the
power of the false religions advanced against the first
preaching of the Truth, the principle on which it stood
was already sapped from within by the circumstances of
society around it, and the slow and gradual influence of
social opinion. Four centuries before Christ a doctrine
had been promulgated in which the Fathers of the Christian Church recognized a faint adumbration of some
lineaments of Christian Truth, in which the spiritual
character of God as the common source of all human
spirituality, the reality and nearness of IIis providential
government, the possibility at least of a future state of
retribution, and the duties of repentance and devotion
towards God, of love and general charity towards men,
had been set forth in pleasing though uncertain colours.4
Lofty indeed, and spiritual as the teaching of Plato was,
it was baffled in its operation, and degraded by the inveterate prejudice of the Grecian and the Pagan-their
prejudice against the natural equality and unity of man,
his equal claim on God, his common right to social and' 1 Cor. xii. 13.    2 Acts x. 34, 35
Col. iii. 11.       4 See Note F.




60                    LECTURE III.
political freedom, his right to live in personal relation to
his Maker through his own conscience, and not merely
in a political relation to him through the state of which
he was socially a citizen. The actual division, it would
seem, of Greece into rival communities operated so
forcibly on Plato's imagination, that he could not conceive of mankind as living in a single or a widely diffused community; and his ideal of a political Utopia was
not a broad cosmopolite association of men of various
races, creeds, and colours, and climates, but the narrowest and closest combination of a few select thousandseven the number he expressly limited —to keep themselves
apart in all their public relations from all the rest of
mankind.  So only could he imagine that the practical
end of true philosophy and religion could be attained.
So only could mankind, in his partial view, acquire or
retain a just conception of their relation to the Divine,
and fulfil the spiritual object of their being.  HIis theory
fell short of his principles, and whatever in his religious
creed was truly expansive and liberal, stood in glaring
contradiction to his political doctrines.  The combination of the two in one system could result only in a strange
and disappointing inconsistency.1
It would seem that this inconsistency did not escape the
penetrating vision of the next great master of heathen
philosophy, Aristotle.  Warned by it, this teacher took
a step backward. Instead of carrying on the great spiritual theory of Plato, and making it logical by widening
See Note G.




ARISTOTLE'S STEP BACKWARDS.            61
the basis of humanity on which it rested, he yielded still
more to the prejudices of his countrymen, and was content to regard man and his spiritual claims still more exclusively from  the narrow  Grecian stand-point.  He
avowed without remorse the preeminence of one race
over every other; he declared the distinction to be natural
and necessary between man and man, Greek and barbarian; as far as in him  lay he would have fixed once and
for ever the limits beyond which truth and knowledge,
political rights, spiritual privileges, should not pass.  He
would have confined the work of God in the soul of man
to one petty province, and thereby have practically abolished the work of God in the soul of man altogether.
This single step backwards, so rashly, so inopportunely
taken, would have destroyed the first germ of true religion
in the world of Pagan antiquity.'
Rashly indeed, and inopportunely; for while the philosopher was baffling himself by the acuteness of his own
logic, God was doing a work in the world which from
the mere force of circumstances would utterly refute and
discredit it.  While the philosopher in his closet was
mapping out the nations of the earth, by their political
divisions, and civil constitutions, the conqueror in the
field was bringing them, far and near, under one sceptre,
one law, and one name. Aristotle was dividing and discriminating the hundred and fifty polities of the civilized
world; Alexander was laying broad and deep the foundations of the Macedonian Empire. It was the work of' See Note IT




62                    LECTURE III.
God: not merely in the ordinary sense in which we reverently and justly ascribe to Providence every movement among men on the face of His earth, and the more
confidently so, the wider and more permanent it is; but
God Himself has claimed this work as His own by the
indication He gave of it in the records of Iis Word, by
the mouth of His prophet Daniel.
God, who hath made of one blood all nations of men
for to dwell on the face of the earth, and hath determined the time before appointed, and the bounds of their
habitation; God, who by a vision revealed to His Apostle Peter that He is no respecter of persons, was pleased
by a dream, and the interpretation of a dream, to foreshadow the establishment of the third great Empire,
which, after the Assyrian and the Persian, ruling much
more widely, founded far more deeply, operating more
gravely and permanently than they, should combine the
nations of the world together, and force upon the understanding and conscience of men the truth of this great
spiritual doctrine, the essential unity of the human race;
the doctrine which, true long before Christianity, has
been accepted, diffused, and perpetuated by Christianity
itself.
It was vain to teach this doctrine by the lips of a
heathen master, however wise and gifted. The pure and
spiritual Plato had tried and failed. Aristotle had shrunk
from the attempt. But what Plato could not do, and
his successor abandoned as an illusion, was effected by a




THE MACEDONIAN EMPIRE.               63
political revolution, long prepared but suddenly executed, by the establishment of the world-wide empire of
Alexander, foretold by God's prophet, and recognised
on its occurrence as the work of His far-designing Providence.
The prophecy of Daniel, accepted by the Jews as the
inspired word of God, points clearly to this event as a
great epoch in the history of God's spiritual dealings
with mankind. Its full import and significance appear
when we regard it in its direct consequences, not as the
triumph of one set of heathens over another, not as the
exultation of the West over the East, of Europe over
Asia, of one type of civilization over another, of one form
of political society over another, of one family of languages over another, great as the effect of each and all
of these revolutions has been on the progress of human
thought-but as the authoritative promulgation of the
doctrine of the natural equality of men before God, and
the fusion of many peoples, many laws, many ideas in one
universal mould.
Nebuchadnezzar dreamed, as we read in Daniel, of a
third kingdom of brass, which should rule over all the
earth;' and this was interpreted in the time of Josephus,
and by the Jews themselves, of a people coming from the
West, clad in brazen armour-not in the gilded silk or
cotton vestments of the East-which should destroy the
empire of the Ml[edes and Persians.  The conqueror
claimed for himself the title of king of all the world, and
1 Daniel ii. 39.




64                  ZLECTURE III.
appeared in his own conceit, and to the imagination of
the millions around him, as he stood on the confines of
the habitable globe or plunged his courser's hoofs in the
waves of the Indian Ocean, the master of all the land and
sea.
Of the action of this conquest no description is given
in the bare outline of the Scripture record; but we may
add that the influence of Grecian conquest was eminently soothing and civilizing; it diffused ideas of humanity
and moral culture, while the conquerors themselves imbibed, on their side, the highest of moral lessons, lessons
of liberality, of toleration, of sympathy with all God's
human creation.'Alexander,' says Plutarch,' did not
hearken to his preceptor Aristotle, who advised him to
bear himself as a prince among the Greeks, his own people, but as a master among the barbarians; to treat the
one as friends and kinsmen, the others as animals or chattels...    ut, conceiving that he was sent by God
to be an umpire between all, and to unite all together,
he reduced by arms those whom he could not conquer
by persuasion, and formed of a hundred diverse nations
one single universal body, mingling as it were in one cup
of friendship the customs, the marriages, and the laws
of all. He desired that all should regard the whole
world as their common country, the good as fellow-citizens and brethren, the bad as aliens and enemies; that
the Greeks should no longer be distinguished from the
foreigner by arms or costume, but that every good man




DOCTRINE OF THIE UNITY OF MANKIND.        65
should be esteemed an Hellene, every evil man a barbarian.' 
Here, in a few rapid touches, enforced by a vivid
illustration which we may pass over, is the picture of
the new humane polity, the new idea of human society
flashed  upon  the  imagination  of mankind  by  the
establishment of the Macedonian Empire.  Such at
least it appeared. to the mind of a writer five centuries
later; but there are traces preserved, even in the wrecks
of ancient civilization, of the moral effect which it actually produced on the feelings of society much more
nearly contemporaneous.  The conqueror indeed perished early, but not prematurely.  He had done his work
as the instrument of Providence; and Providence broke
at once and threw away the instrument which, selfish in
its aims and arbitrary in its actions, had perhaps, humanly speaking, no claim  on its forbearance.  But the
providential work survived.  The great empire was split
into many fragments, but each long preserved a sense of
the unity from which it was broken off. All were leavened more or less with a common idea of civilization,
and recognized man as one being in various stages of development, to be trained under one guidance and elevated to one spiritual level. In the two great kingdoms of
Egypt and Syria, which sprang out of the Macedonianin the two great cities of Alexandria and Antioch, to
which the true religion owes so deep a debt-the unity of
the human race was practically asserted and maintained.
Plut. de fort. Alex. See Note I.
5




66                  LECTURE III.
Alexandria invited all nations to meet together and exchange in her common mart the products of every land,
and enjoy the material fruits of God's creation. Antioch
was for ages the chosen home of science and philosophy,
and fused the religious ideas of many peoples, which she
discriminated and harmonized with a zest peculiar to
herself. In Alexandria the Jews were welcomed and
domiciled, and encouraged to diffuse the knowledge of
the law of Israel by the translation of the older Scriptures: in Antioch the fact was first recognized that a new
religion had appeared in the world, that a new revelation had been made to men; the difference between the
Jews and the followers of Jesus, Jews themselves by
birth and by religion, was perceived and appreciated:
at Antioch the believers in our holy faith were first called
by the name of Christians.
But intellectual ideas which were received and cultivated at Antioch and Alexandria could not fail to receive
admittance at the home of all intellect, Athens.  The
doctrine of human unity became a cherished doctrine in
the schools which had resounded not long before with the
utterance of the exclusive and selfish Hellenic sentiment,
that the Greek is not as the barbarian, the bondmen not
as the free. Three centuries of preparation passed away,
and St. Paul, the first preacher of the gospel to the
Greeks, could declare without a murmur of disapprobation, without a whisper of disgust, the fundamental doctrine of the true and universal faith, that'God hath
made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on the




PREPARATION FOR ST. PAUL'S PREACHING.    67
face of the earth.' But was this the Athens of Solon
and Pericles, and Plato and Aristotle? By no means:
such a declaration could have had no place in an address
to the Athenians of those earlier ages.  To them  it
would have sounded strange and barbarous; it would
have been received with mockery or clamour; it would
have been repudiated with amazement and indignation;
it would have made no spiritual impression at all.  Such
an idea was then unknown and unimagined.  Conceptions of religion were then strictly local and national;
conceptions of philosophy, though they might ostensibly
reject the restrictions of positive faith, were not the less
confined, by early mental training and still imperious
prejudices, to a circle in this respect little, if at all, wider.
The bond of positive belief was indeed broken; but
the philosopher dragged after him, at each remove, no
light portion of his chain. But, after three centuries
of national amalgamation, the result of a wide-spread
political revolution, after the diffusion of Grecian ideas
among every people from the Ionian to the Caspian or
the Red Sea, and the reception in return of manifold
ideas, and in religious matters of much higher ideas,
from  the Persian, the Indian, the Egyptian, and the
Jew, the people even of Athens, the very centre and
eye of Greece, were prepared to admit the cardinal
doctrine of Paul's preaching  to take at least some
common ground with him  on the very foundation of
true religion-to look, perhaps, with the more favour
upon him, that he, a Jew, one of a tribe notorious




68                   LECTURE II.
for their exclusiveness and national prejudices, came
before them  bowing, as they might suppose, to the
majesty of their own Catholic creed, with what was
now in its turn exalted into a philosophical doctrinewith what was serenely contemplated as a great and
fruitful truth, revealed to the wise and prudent, if even
yet regarded askance by the vulgar and illiberal among
men.'
A great and a fruitful truth! fruitful in spiritual conceptions of the Godhead, fruitful in lofty views of human duty and obligation, in glorious aspirations regarding the nature and destiny of man-a great and fruitful
truth, the sole hope and stay of man in the contest of
the heart and conscience against the narrow and debasing influence of superstitious dogmas, until the coming
of Christ and the preaching of the gospel, and the shining of the day-spring from on high upon the soul!
I can give but a few words to a sketch of the principles derived from Plato, and developed by the later philosophy of the stoics, which placed the higher minds
among the heathen in antagonism with the popular and
political religion, and might bring them, both at Athens
and at Rome, into sympathetic relation with the preaching of the Apostle.
The ethical speculations of Plato and his followers
led them to conceptions, hitherto unimagined, of man's
position here below, of duty and responsibility, of sin
and virtue, of penitence and assurance, before God, of
1 See Note J.




CATHOLIC SPIRIT OF STOIC PHILOSOPHY.       69
the obligation to suffer-nay, even to seek and court
the chastisement of sins for the sake of a spiritual blessing. The Christian mystic is not more entranced in the
contemplation of the Supreme Holiness-the Christian
ascetic does not more fervently denounce the sinfulness
of the flesh, and the need of subjecting the body to
the spirit-than Plato and the Stoics who derived from
him. Sins and Virtues, in the view of the higher Greek
philosophy, are to be measured by their agreement or
contrast with an ideal of Justice, Wisdom, Temperance,
or Fortitude-an ideal placed as high as mere human
reason could exalt it.  From these lofty abstractions they
seemed to realize a Supreme Existence, one and universal, eternal and immutable-the image of every virtue,
the source of all good, the sole unerring judge of every
approximation of human actions to the normal standard
of goodness and holiness.  Sin they punished by the
stings of conscience, and thus gave a spiritual colour to
the gross traditions of the vulgar; while the expiations,
the fasts, the lustrations of ritual religion expressed to
their minds the necessity of reparation for crime, and the
terrors which naturally haunt the souls of the guilty.  It
is the offence, and not the punishment, they said, that
men ought to dread; the corruption of the moral sense
by sin, not the loss of favours and blessings, that men
ought to abhor and flee from.  Like John the Apostle,
they would have men do well for love, for love of goodness and justice, not from fear. And virtue, in their
view, has its reward in a good conscience, which suffices




70                    LECTURE III.
in every extremity; virtue is the fulfilment of a rule, the
realization of a harmony, the accomplishment of a divine
purpose. Virtue is divine, and witnesses to the divine
nature within us.
Now, such ideas as these, refined and exalted as they
were under the system  of the Stoics, may transport us
beyond the sphere of Greece and pure Grecian speculation.  They breathe the spirit of Ebionites in the wilderness, of Persian Magi in the plains of ledia, of Brahmins
by the banks of the Indus and the Ganges; and it was,
no doubt, by all these and kindred elements that they
were modified or coloured.  The fusion of nations under
one political yoke tended, I say, to the fusion of ideas,
and resulted in a marked elevation of heathen sentiment.
Compare for a moment this teaching with that of a Socrates and a Xenophon, the most direct representatives of
pure Grecian thought.  How profound the difference!
That which makes the value of temperance, for instance,
in the eyes of these earlier masters, is that it assists men
to act with manliness and energy; while to the Stoics
its merit consists in its detaching us from  the flesh, the
body, and the earth.  Courage again, in the one view,
has for its end the attainment of empire or of liberty; in
the other, it is the complement of temperance, and fortifies us in the struggle against the world and the senses.
Love, in the one doctrine, is the expansion and purification of mere human sensibility; in the other, it raises
man to aspire after the superhuman, to yearn for communion with an ideal, to seek absorption in God.  It is




PERSONAL RELATION TO GOD.              71
the passion for the Eternal and the Infinite; it is the
presentiment of Immortality.'
This presentiment, this aspiration, this hope, and almost faith in immortality, is the'point at which the highest Grecian philosophy culminates.  Belief in a future
state is the touchstone of all spiritual conceptions of human nature.  Towards this they climb step by step,
even if they cannot fully attain to it, or keep it when attained for a moment; from this, as they fall away, they
faint and fade into the earthly and the sensual.  This is
the great point of distinction between moral and ceremonial religions, between a rule of action and a cult, between personal and political conceptions of our relation
to God and to Providence.
This aspiration, this belief, reveals to us our personal
relation to a Higher Being. It equalizes men in their nature and condition; it discovers to them an essential unity
in the whole race of mankind.  It impugns and overthrows the natural and vulgar demand for an exclusive
patron Deity, and a national compact with him. In the
more spiritual doctrine of Plato and the'Platonizers lay
undoubtedly the germ of that transformation of heathen
opinion which resulted, under the teaching of St. Paul
and the Christian Church, with the effectual working of
the Holy Spirit, in the conversion of the Roman Empire.'
Yet how faint, how feeble, how imperfect was this
doctrine! how surrounded by prejudices, how enfeebled
See Note K.                       2 See Note L.




72                    LECTURE III.
and confined by the counteracting influence of opposing
ideas! Let us examine a little more closely the idea of
immortality as taught by Plato, and accepted rather than
firmly held by the more spiritual of the Stoics.
First, the soul, they said, was immortal, because it is
one and simple, without parts or material elements, and
therefore indivisible and indissoluble.  It is not a mere
harmony, resulting from the contexture of the body, with
which it is here found in connection; for it commands
and dominates over the body as an independent substance.
It has nothing to fear, then, from the dissolution of the
body, which is not itself essential to its existence.  Nor
has it any principle of decay or corruption of its own;
for sin is its only infirmity, and sin, as an abstract principle, has no tendency to destroy it.
Again, the eternal truths or the ideas which are sirnpie, immutable and divine, are the natural objects of the
soul of man.  The soul is therefore analogous and conformable to things that do not change, and accordingly
has itself, like them, a principle of immrortality.
Such are, the one the physical, the other what I may
call perhaps the sentimental argument, on which Plato
strongly insists, and to which we may continue to attach
such weight as is really due to them, without depending
wholly or even principally upon them.  For there is a
third demonstration from the moral nature of man, and
this the strongest of all unrevealed arguments for the permanent existence of the soul, which rests on the need of a
future state of retribution to equalize human conditions,




STOIC THEORY OF RETRIBUTION.'3
to recompense virtue and punish sin, to relieve man fiom
the intolerable anguish of beholding the sufferings of the
good, and the prosperity here on earth of the wicked.
This is the common argLument of Christianity, which declares the vindication of God's justice and moral government as a main object of revelation. But turn to Plato
and the Stoics, and but little reference will you find to any
argument of this kind.  They may, indeed, set forth the
fact of a future retribution as the explanation of certain
ancient traditions; they employ the machinery of the
old mythology in this particular, however little regard
they pay to it in others, to recommend what they believe
to be a real moral truth, under the veil of a poetic illustration.  But this is merely playing with the subject.
It is dallying with the truth, not embracing and earnestly maintaining it.  And whence does it appear that the
philosophers had no earnest faith in a future retribution 
From  the pertinacity with which they still cling, even
Plato and the most spiritual among them, to the low and
popular notion that virtue must certainly be adequately
rewarded, vice adequately punished, under God's providence, even in this life. They insist on the paradox,
common, I say, to the sages and to the vulgar of old, to
the paradox necessary to all moral systems which deny a
future retribution, but required least of all by that of a
Plato, which in terms at least admits it, that the virtuous
man is necessarily happy, and the vicious necessarily
wretched; that virtue is its own reward, and sin its own
punishment; that the tyrant on the throne is always, by




74                  LECTURE II.
the law and nature of things, miserable-miserable, at
least, in comparison with the triumphant happiness of the
good man, even in the dungeon and on the scaffold. So
far were the heathen teachers of immortality from  the
feeling of St. Paul, that the Christian saint, the man who
has attained the highest pitch of grace and godliness,
would be, in times at least of worldly trial and persecution, were his hope bounded by this life and its recompenses, of all men most miserable.
But the fact is, that it is with faint surmises and
stammering lips only that even Plato and the most spiritual of his followers could enunciate the dogma of Immortality.  Even under the humanizing sway of the
Third Empire, amid the development of cosmopolitan
sentiments which that sway, as we have seen, engendered, the philosophers could with difficulty keep hold of
the sense of Human Equality- of the common claims
of all men on a common God and Father of all-which
is essential to a steadfast and consistent view of so spiritual a belief. It is upon the doctrine of human equality
in the forum of conscience, in the view of a retributive
justice, that the conception of a real immortality must
actually rest.  The philosophers, aristocrats as they generally were (from Plato downwards), could not shake off
the notion of an aristocracy among souls.  They might
see, indeed, in the noblest specimens of humanity, some
beings, outwardly not unlike to the rest of their kind,
yet inwardly, as they imagined, different and superior,
bearing a nearer kinship to Divinity itself, of whom they




STOIC CONCEPTION OF A FUTURE STATE.       75
could imagine that after death they might be received
into the bliss of the Divine Being, absorbed in His nature; of whom they could not, perhaps, conceive it possible that, so noble, so generous, so godlike, they should
utterly perish along with the baser clay around them.
But such instances, in their view, were rare; the mass
of men could not hope to attain to such distinction: the
difference between man and man seemed to them  coeval
with their birth, or anterior to it, to lie in the very essence of their natures, as much as if they descended originally from  various stocks.  And when they looked
around them, and observed the social institution of slavery
always like a ghost or shadow at their side,-the skeleton
in their house, the death's head on their table,-ever
crying out for an explanation and a justification, and of
which no explanation, no justification could be given,
but the presumed superiority of race to race, a higher
calling and an ampler destiny; —when they saw this fact,
and were driven to this apology for its existence, no wonder if their ideas of immortality were vague, imperfect,
and precarious.1
At the best, then, the Stoic conception of a future
state was of reward and glory due to some men-to a select class of men-to a few men perhaps in each generation, leaders in thought or action, heroes, demigods; but
it left the case of the multitude wholly out of consideration. It maimed the whole doctrine of future compensation. It threw the philosopher back, against his will
See Note M.




76                   LECTURE III.
-against the tenor of his general reasoning —in spite of
the plain inconsistency in which it involved him, upon
the rash and crude paradox of a recompense here below
— upon the fallacious assertion that the good man is necessarily happy in this life, the bad man necessarily miserable.  It drove hin to forced and extravagant definitions of the highest good, and the genuine character of
virtue, and set his hand at last against every sensible man,
and every sensible man's hand against him.
To  resume, then: the philosophy of the Stoics,
the highest and holiest moral theory at the time of our
Lord's comilng —thetheory which most worthily contended
against the merely political religion of the day, the theory
which opposed the purest ideas and the loftiest aims to
the grovelling principles of a narrow and selfish expediency on which the frame of the heathen ritual rested —
was the direct creation of the sense of unity and equality disseminated among the choicer spirits of heathen
society by the results of the Macedonian conquest.  But
for that conquest it could hardly have existed at all.
It was the philosophy of Plato, sublimed and harmonized by the political circumstances of the times.  It was
what Plato wouldl hate imagined, had he been a subject
of Alexander.
It taught nominally, at least, the equality of all God's
children-of Greek and barbarian, of bond and free.
It renounced the exclusive ideas of the commonwealth
on which Plato had made shipwreck of his consistency.
It declared that to the wise man all the world is his




LIBIITATION OF    TIEIIS TEORY.          7
country.  It was thoroughly comprehensive and cosmopolitan.  Instead of a political union, it preached the
moral union of all good men-a city of true philosophers, a comrmunity of religious sentiment, a communion
of saints, to be developed partly here below, but more
consummately in the future state of a glorified hereafter.'  It aspired, at least, to the doctrine of an immortal
city of the soul, a providence under which that immortality was to be gained, a reward for the good —possibly,
but even more dubiously, a punishlnent for the wicked.
So, in theory at least, it seemed to rise to the ideas of
Christianity; it might seem a precursor of the Gospel,
it might be hailed as an ally in the wars of the Holy
Spirit.  But the weakness of its support, the barrenne-s
of its alliance, became manifest on a nearer inspection.
For the immortality it augured was limited in time to a
certain cosmical revolution, which should close in a general conflagration, in which gods and men, bodies and
souls, earth and heaven, should perish.  It was limited
in. subject; for it was after all limited, according to the
concurrent voice of all Grecian theory, to a select class
-an aristocracy, as I have called it, of souls: those who
could scale the heights of excellence here might alone
expect a higher exaltation hereafter; those who stumbled
and fell at their base, would lie there forgotten or perish
altogether.  It was limited, further, in the nature of its
promised retribution; for generally, though with much
fluctuation and variety of opinion, it was held that the' See Note N.




78                   LECTURE III.
only punishment of the wicked was the common fate of
the less worthy-annihilation.  Once more it was limited in its conception of God; for its aspirations after
Providence alternated with an apprehension of Fate,
which it sometimes confounded with the Deity, sometimes set over Him and against Him.
Nevertheless, when St. Paul, standing on Mars's Hill
at Athens, proclaimed that' God hath made of one blood
all nations of men,'-when, addressing the Romans, he
declared that' we, being many, are one body in Christ,
and every one members one of another,''-he knew that
in the loftiest school of Gentile philosophy lie should
strike a chord of sympathy. He recognised the Spirit of
God brooding over the face of heathenism, and fructifying the spiritual element in the heart even of the natural
man.  He felt that in these human principles there was
some faint adumbration of the divine, and lie looked for
their firmer delineation to the figure of that gracious
Master, higher and holier than man, whom he contemplated in his own imagination, and whom he was about
to present to them.  And such is the vision, such the
augury, to which the great Augustine appeals, when in
words of rude impassioned energy, with which, as a vessel ploughs the deep with unequal plunges, he seems to
fall or rise, to shoot forth or stagger in his career, he exclaims:'' Now, had one of his disciples asked of Plato,
when he was teaching that Truth cannot be witnessed by
the bodily eyes, but by the pure intellect only-that
R1 omans xii. 6.       2 See Note 0.




NEED OF A DIVINE TEACHER OF IMMORTALITY.  79
every soul which thereto attaches itself becomes happy
and perfect-that there is no hindrance so great to beholding Truth as a life abandoned to sensual passionsthat therefore we should heal and purge the soul, to contemplate the immutable forms of things, and this beauty
ever the same, without bounds in space, without change
in time, in the existence of which men believe not, though
alone it exists and reigns;-that all things are born and
perish, flow away and are lost, while as far as they do
possess reality, and thereby only, they belong to God
eternal, who creates and sustains them; that, among
these, it is given to the soul and pure intelligence only
to enjoy and apprehend the contemplation of eternity,
and hereby to merit eternal life;-but that when the soul
is corrupted by the love for things created and perishable, it fades away in its vain imaginations, mocking forsooth at those who speak of a Being who is not beheld by
the eye or conceived under sensible images, but is seen
by the mind only:-had, I say, at the moment when
Plato was preaching ideas so lofty, one of his disciples
asked of hiin, saying, Master, if one so great and godlike
should ever appear, who should persuade men to believe
in these things at least, even though they could not understacld them, would you deem him worthy of divine
honours — Piato, I believe, would have replied, that such
things could not be effected by man, unless the very Virtue and Wisdom of God should withdraw him from the
common nature of things, and, not by human teaching,
but by its own divine illumination, so adorn him with




80                   LECTURE III.
grace, so establish him in power, so exalt him in majesty,
as that, despising all that men desire, enduring all they
shrink from, effecting all they admire, he should convert
mankind to this most wholesome faith, by the highest
love and authority.'
And there, Ecce homo!-Behold the man!-Jesus
Christ, the Son of God, conceived by the Holy Ghost;
to whom, three Persons and one God, be ascribed, &c.




LECT URE  IV.
EXPANSION OF HEATHEN BELIEF BY THE IDEAS OF ROMAN
JURISPRUDENCE.
GALATIANS III. 24.
The law was our schoo3master to brin) us unto Christ.
Our version of this text may suggest to the English
reader a notion not quite consistent with the sense which
the Apostle's language seems really meant to convey.
The law is here represented, not as the master, the teacher, the men in office and authority, the td6a67caaoc of the
school, but as the -atdayoybq, the faithful attendant, who
brought the scholar to the master, guiding and urging
his steps, bearing his satchel for him, by the direction of
the parent whose servant he was.  St. Paul, speaking
here directly and primarily to the Jewish residents in
Galatia, compares the province of the Jewish law, the
law of Moses, in relation to Christ, to that of the pedagogue.  For its proper office was thus to direct and control, under a special appointment, the wandering steps
of God's own children, and see that they came without
fail to the presence of the master, who was to take the
place of their heavenly Father as the teacher and educa6




8*2                  LECTURE IV.
tor of their souls.  St. Paul does not pretend that the
old law taught the children of Israel any spiritual lessons
itself, but merely that it broulght them  to the point at
which their spiritual teaching was to begin. And that
teaching was the discipline of Christ's holy faith.
Such, it seems, in the Apostle's view, was the ministry
of the law of Moses.  But does he here or elsewhere confine his view of the law, of which he speaks so much in
relation to its contrast or subserviency to the gospel, to
the law of Moses? When he speaks of the law, there is
generally an ulterior object in view, just as, when he addresses himself directly to the Jews, he has generally
other classes of hearers in mind also.
Let us regard, then, more particularly the composition
of the congregations to which he was wont to address
himself.  We must bear in mind how closely the Jews
of the dispersion, the men of Hebrew birth and lineage
who were settled in every land and city throughout the
East, and far into the West also, were connected with
native proselytes-men of Greek, or Syrian, or Italian,
or other parentage, who had been received as converts
into the Jewish synagogues-made in many cases Jews
themselves by baptism, by circumcision, by abstinence,
by fulfilling all the requirements of the law-admitted
not less seldom, perhaps more commonly, to a status of
partial communion with it, without being subjected to
its most onerous obligations.  Even among the'Galatians' to whom  the Apostle writes-though these are
evidently for the most part genuine children of Israel, we




ST. PAUL'S VIEW OF  THE LAW.'          83
cannot completely separate the Jews by birth and breeding from the proselytes of the gate or the proselytes of
righteousness. The Apostle is anxious to impress upon
them that the Jew and the Gentile among them are both
one in his sight-that the right of circumcision is not required to effect complete equality in their spiritual privileges in Christ-that there is henceforth no distinction
between Jew and Greek, but all who are baptized into
Christ have put on Christ.'And if,' he says,'ye be the
seed of Christ, then are ye Abraham's seed,' whatever
your actual parentage has been,'and heirs according to
the promise,'-that is, to the promise made to Abraham
that in his seed all the families of the earth should be
blessed. Even the' Galatians,' then, were a mixed congregation of Jewish and Gentile believers.
The epistles of St. Paul are all, I think, directed
more or less to such mixed congregations (the pastoral
Epistles, of course, excepted), and all, as coming fiom
him who declared himself to be especially the Apostle to
the Gentiles, breathe more or less the same Catholic
spirit. But the character of this preaching most clearly
appears from a reference to the Epistle to the Romans.
We may picture to ourselves the Jewish synagogue at
Rome as crowded with devotees of Jewish, of Greek, and
of Roman extraction; of Jews who had migrated from
the land of their origin, perhaps of their birth, to carry
on their business of various kinds in the capital of the
empire; of Greeks, who, like them, flocked in vast numbers to the same great centre of all employments, of all




84                   LECTURE IV.
opinions and teaching, to hear and speak of every new
thing; of Romans, who, after conquering and making
tributary both Jews and Greeks, began to open their eyes
to the wondrous gifts, intellectual and spiritual, of their
Hebrew and Hellenic subjects,-to acknowledge that,
with all their own power and greatness, they had muchyea, everything to learn, and that it was from  Greece
and from  Palestine that their destined teachers had
come.
Of the sympathy, indeed, of both the Greeks and Romans with the Jews at this period, history affords abundant evidence.  The influence exercised by the children
of Israel, in the court and in the market-place, over the
minds and the manners of the Gentiles around them, was
singularly strong at this period-a period of great intellectual and spiritual excitement; but, strongly as these
Jewish habits of thought now affeected the seekers after
spiritual and moral truth among the Gentiles, stronger
still was the impulse they received from the first breathing of the accents of a new revelation in Christ-a revelation within a revelation, a spiritual empire within a
spiritual empire.  The proselytes of the Jewish law,
Greek and Roman, scarcely yet recovered from the excitement, the intoxication, of finding themselves admitted
to communion with a religion of real signs and wonders,
of genuine inspiration and enlightenment from  above,
were suddenly invited to take a step further, to penetrate beyond the veil, to receive a higher initiation, to
share in a holier covenant, and enjoy a nearer and an




WIHAT ST. PAUL PREACHED TO THIE ROMANS.    8 
ampler manifestation of God. They were called to Christ,
and they came to Christ.  The synagogues of the Law,
so lately thronged with admiring converts from  Greece
and lRoine, were again abandoned for the more private
and retired churches, the little spiritual reunions, of the.
converts to the Gospel.  The Synagogue itself was carried over to the Church. Even from the names of these
earliest disciples whom the Apostle specially greeted, we
may fairly infer, though the argument, I am  aware, is
not conclusive, that the Church of.Rome, the Church of
St. Paul's Epistle, the Church of the first imperial persecution, embraced communicants from  each of the three
rival nationalities.
In all ages of the separation the Jews have kept up
close and active correspondence with their brethren, and
the settler or exile on the Tiber or the Euphrates was made
familiar with every movement, political or spiritual, in
the City of David.  And hence we may divine, though
we cannot trace, how these people derived their knowledge of the ferment of religious convictions whieh was
now taking place in Palestine.  It was communicated, no
doubt, through various channels, coloured by the prejudices of various narrators, received in various tempers.
The truth was at first but imperfectly understood, but
partially accepted.  The Apostle addresses converts and
believers in the revelation of Christ,-but as men infirm
in their faith, imperfect in their lesson, ignorant of much
saving knowledge, as yet hardly prepared to embrace
without reserve the tidings which they deemed too surely




86                  LECTURE IV.
to announce the overthrow of an ancient and august
religion. What a further pang would they feel in the
abruptness of the announcement!  Jews who had so
lately received into their fold not a few of the choicest
spirits among the Greeks and  omnans around themmen, I doubt not, of learning, women of fervour and
godly zeal; Jews who, expatriated from their own conquered country, could retaliate upon their conquerors
with the keen gratification of a spiritual triumph; Greeks
and Romans, who had swallowed the bitter pill of a religious abjuration-who had nerved themselves to renounce their national faith, national usages, national ideas,
by which the spiritual pride of both Greek and Roman
was equally fostered: Jews, I say, Greeks and Romans,
in this hour of high-wrought feeling, were required suddenly to abandon together the very creed which the one
had imposed, the others had accepted, to bow their knees
to the crucified Lord set up for their future Master, and
acknowledge that all that appears to be wisdom and honour and majesty and power in the sight of Jew or Gentile is but foolishness with God! Such were the people
-and such the feelings which animated them-to whom
St. Paul addresses the Epistle to the Romans.
What, then, was it that he had to say unto them?
What was the central idea, by explaining and enforcing
which he might hope to reconcile them to the faith he
preached?'The law,' he says,' of the spirit of life in
Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and
death.'...'What the law could not do, in that it was




WHAT ST. PAUL PREACHED TO THE ROMANS.    8T
weak through the flesh, God sending His own Son in the
likeness of sinful flesh,... condemned sin in the
flesh.''I delight in the law of God after the inward
man.'  In these and other passages that might be cited,
you find the same idea as that of our text, from  Galatians-that the law is our pedagogue, leading us unto
Christ the Mlaster.' The law' is the teaching of the human conscience, generally-whether enlightened by a
revelation given unto men through Moses and the prophets, or by any other less special illumination from aboveby the habits and ideas of human society in all its various
phases: it is every moral principle of action whereby we
feel ourselves allowed, forbidden, or excused, in our dealings with men and our behaviour towards God. If St.
Paul in the Epistle to the Romans, and throughout his
Epistles, points primarily to the contrast between the
law of Mioses and the law of Christ-making the one the
preparation or pedagogue for the other-not less may we
trace in them the bolder and broader idea of a distinction between the law of man in general and the law of
God, and the way in which the first leads up to and introduces the second. He reveals the appointment of a
new law to supplant and supersede the older-or, more
properly, to explain, expand, and imbue it with a new
spirit; to vivify the letter; to be a liberal gloss upon a
rigid text, adapted at first under God's appointment to
special ends and confined within narrow limits. Such
was the form under which the Holy Spirit directed the
I Romans viii. 2, 3; vii. 22.




88                   LECTURE IV.
saving truths of the gospel to be promulgated,, in the first
instance, at Rome, to a mixed congregation of Greek and
Roman proselytes, asking dubiously for the new light
which had arisen in the eastern horizon, the dawn of
which had as yet hardly streaked the clouds beyond the
Ionian and the Egean.
Let us regard the text, then, in this wider sense; that
the law of the Roman world, the law which ruled the
hearts and hands of the subjects of Cesar's empire,
Greek and Roman, was in itself a schoolmaster, or rather
a pedagogue, leading men to' Christ, to the knowledge
and acceptance of the gospel. I wish to show how the
progress and development of the Roman civil law assisted in the transformation of religious ideas among the
heathen, and in that conversion of the Roman empire
which is the subject before us.
In my last address, I referred to Daniel's prophetic
interpretation of the vision of the third or Macedonian
empire. I showed the important part that empire had
played in preparing mankind for the reception of the
great gospel truth of the unity of man, and the equality
of all classes and races in the sight of God their Creator;
I remarked how worthy such a polity must appear to become the subject of an inspired communication from the
Author of Divine Revelation.
Of the announcement, similarly conveyed, in the
same place in Scripture, of the fourth kingdom, the Roman empire, a similar view may be taken-of the beast,
dreadful and terrible, and strong exceedingly, with great




THE FOURTH KING-DOM.                 89
iron teeth, which devoured and brake in pieces, and
stamped the residue with the feet of it; which, according
to the interpretation of the prophet, should be a fourth
kingdom upon the earth, diverse from all kingdoms, and
should devour the whole earth, and tread it down and
break it in pieces.'
The part performed by the Roman empire in the
course of religious history is great, and may be traced in
many directions.  I speak now  of the preparation it
made for the reception of Christian ideas in one particular only.  The Macedonian empire tended to create, to
foster, and fix in men's minds the conviction of spiritual
unity, by the mild influence of the Grecian civilization,
by softening and humanizing men's manners after a single type; by bidding them look to a common standard
of art and science, of moral and social culture; by diffusing a social harmony throughout the various races of
mankind, now first brought under a common political organization.  The character of the Roman conquest was'diverse' from this.  It is well described in the sacred
record as devouring, breaking in pieces, and treading
under foot.  The tribes of serfs and barbarians might
hail the Greek as a deliverer and a civilizer; the same
nations cowered before the Roman as a tyrant and a destroyer.   The union with which the Roman legions
threatened them was not the union of social quality and
mutual improvement, but the bond of a slave to his master, of a captive to his enthraller.  The world seemed
Daniel vii. 7, 23.




90                  LECTURE IV.
for a moment to succumb without hope for the future
under the yoke of brute force and violence, tearing and
destroying rather than  consolidating.  Nevertheless,
Providence had its blessed work of union to carry to its
accomplishment, and it could use even this cruel and
destroying kingdom for that beneficent purpose, even
against its own apparent nature. The conquering Roman long carried with him his peculiar law and usage,
and imposed them upon the subject peoples; but his conquests rapidly outran his power to fuse and consolidate;
and at last against his will, in contradiction to his political principles, in despite of his religious convictions,
against every appearance and natural expectation both
of the conqueror and the conquered, he found his own
law and usage turned against himself, and that which
was the narrowest and most selfish and most exclusive
of all human codes of jurisprudence expanded by an
unseen power and an irresistible tendency, till it became the most potent of all human instruments in establishing the conviction of unity and equality among
men.
We have seen how strongly national and exclusive in
its sanctions, its warnings, and its promises, was the character of the Roman religion; how the religious convictions of the great conquering race were founded upon the
assurance of the special favour of their national divinities, confirmed to them by a long succession of national
triumphs. We have seen how deeply this sentiment was
seated, and how quickly it responded to the appeal of an




THE CIVIL LAW OF THE ROMANS.           91
astute or fanatical ruler. Nowhere did this narrow creed
and selfish sentiment find a plainer or more powerful expression than in the original constitution of the civil law.
The civil law of the Romans, like the canon law of
Christian communities, was the creation of the priesthood, and bore a deep impression of its sacerdotal origin.
It was founded on a religious tradition. It treated all the
great subjects of jurisprudence-the relations of family,
property, marriage, testaments, and contracts-as matters of religious import. It placed men under the guardianship of the national divinities; it regarded them all
as means to one chief, all-engrossing end-the conservation of the State, the advancement of the presumed designs of the special Providence which kept eternal watch
and ward over Rome and the Roman people.
I cannot enter now into details, but you may remark
how from this crude original germ, from this unpromising stock, this wildest of wild olive trees, the primitive
law of the Roman commonwealth, of which even the
Twelve Tables were a liberal expansion, has sprung by
successive grafts, by additions and modifications, and
glosses and commentaries-by the casting off of the old
slough or rind in one place, by the assimilation of new
ideas in another, by growth and obsolescence, by corruption and renovation-sometimes, possibly, through
caprice-more commonly, more regularly, more systematically, from shrewd observation and philosophical reflection,-has sprung, I say, the world-wide elastic system
of jurisprudence by which the great Roman empire, with




92                     LECTURE IV
all its boundless variety of races, creeds, and manners,
was for ages harmoniously and equitably governed; which
was accepted and ratified as an eternal possession by the
same empire when it found itself Christian, and has been
proved to satisfy the principles of law and justice announced by a religion which alone proclaimed and maintains as its foundation the unity and equality of men;
the impartial providence of the Deity; the abolition of
all national distinctions in the Divine economy; a city
of God and a kingdom  of lleaven; finally, a jurisprudence which has been incorporated into the particular
legal systems of, I suppose, every modern nation of Christendo m.
IHow marvellous a development is here! We cannot
now inlquire into details; but it will be well, for the full
understanding of our argument, to point out summarily
one or two particulars in the general process. You must
mark, then, in public law, the extension, step by step,
through many a social disturbance, many a civil commotion, of the full rights of citizenship from the narrow circle of a few score of favoured families to the entire sphere
of the free subjects of the empire-a secular revolution
of eight hundred years;-in private law, the equal communication among various classes of the rights of property and dominion over the national soil; the abolition
of territorial privileges; the readjustment, by gradual and
peaceful manipulation, of the cadastral map of the empire; the relaxation, by slow and experimental process,
of the patriarchal authority of the head of the family; of




MODIFICATION OF THE CIVIL LAW.           93
the father over the son, whom at first he might punish,
sell, or slay; of the husband over the wife, whom at first
he received from her parents as the spoil of his own spear,
and ruled as the chattel he had plundered; of the master over the slave, absolute at first, final and irresponsible
to law, custom, or conscience; the gradual replacement
of the strictly national or tribal ideas on these and kindred subjects by views of right, justice, and virtue, common to mankind in general; the slow but constant growth
of principles of natural and universal law, and their application, searchingly and thoroughly, to every subject of
jurisprudence, and to all the dealings of man with man.
Now for this gradual revolution and transformation
of views and principles, and social institutions, various
causes have been assigned.
First-an opinion has found favour in many quarters,
and has been put forward with some notes of triumph by
our Christian apologists, that the rude selfishness of the
Roman law was humanized by the influence of Christianity only, at first unconsciously, when Christian sentiments
were silently making an impression upon a world which
refused to recognise them-afterwards openly and notoriously, when Christianity became enthroned on the seat
of Caesar in the person of Constantine, Theodosius, and
Justinian.  But while we allow its due effect both to the
avowed and the tacit influence of the Gospel in this matter, while we trace with interest and delight the softening and refining pressure of God's law upon human and
even heathen society, we must acknowledge that the first




94                   LECTURE IV.
impression of His providential hand was given at a much
earlier period; that the law of Rome was already a pedagogue, leading the nations unto Christ even before
Christ Himself had appeared in the world, and held up
to its admiration the principles of His Catholic jurisprudence.
Some, again, ascribe this revolution to the influence
of philosophy, to the teaching of the Platonists and
Stoics, to the ideas of humanity and sympathy disseminated by the mild persuasion of the schools, when the
rude Roman warrior sate meekly at the feet of the Grecian sages. We acknowledge the fact, and we admit its
influence in its season: but the relaxation we speak of
was anterior to this.
Once more, it has been attributed to the natural enlightenment of the conscience among the Romans themselves, to increased cultivation and the growth of moral
sentiments, to the example of the wisest and most liberalminded of their own chiefs, to the sense of security giving
more room to the play of generous and humane feelings.
But neither here do I find a full and satisfactory explanation of the phenomenon before us.
The account I would give of the matter connects it
even more directly with what we may venture to regard
as God's providential guidance of human affairs. It was
the immediate and inevitable effect of the establishment
of that kingdom of iron, of which God in His prophetic
Scriptures spoke. It was the very condition of victory
and conquest, which bore within themselves the germ of




THE LAW OF NATIONS.                95
this moral transformation. The little fortress in the hills,
in an obscure corner of Europe, was predestined to grow
into the widest and mightiest of empires, and level
by its force and pressure a clear and ample space for the
edifice of the Christian Church.  The Providence which
directed the assimilation and fusion of conquered clans
and tribes and nations successively with their conquerors,
decreed the inevitable result-the combination and fusion
in one general code of their several ideas of law and polity. Even from the first, as far as we can trace it, there
existed this irrepressible conflict between the formal
principles of municipal and national law-the civil law
of the IRomans,-and the principles of law, manifold and
diverse, in force among their subjects and their clients.
It was the same conflict which we have witnessed and
moderated ourselves in the government of our own empire in India.  Roman law was adapted only for the regulation of IRomans dealing with Romans.  It was often
impossible to apply it to the dealings of the Roman with
the stranger; it was never practicable to impose it as a
rule for strangers dealing with strangers.  Hence practically three laws in force at the same time on the same
spot,-the pure Roman, the mixed, and the foreign: hence
confusion, hence delay and misunderstanding: hence, in
due course, the vague and desultory attempts of the
strong man and the prudent man to select, to combine,
to create a law common to all: hence the introduction
of examples and precedents, the groping darkly for wide
and general views; at last, the arrival of the reformer




96                   LECTURE IV.
and the codifier, the prmetor, the proconsul, or the emperor. Ience, in short, the gradual conception of the idea
of normal equity, of a natural and universal law, of a law
of nations contrasted with a national law.  Italian and
Grecian, Jew and Syrian, Heathen and Christian, philosopher and preacher, all contribute to this ultimate
conclusion, and help forward the establishment of the
great religious principle of the moral equality of all men
in the sight of a common God and Father, a common
Ruler and a Judge of all.'
You may imagine how fiercely the pride of the Roman
would struggle against this conviction; how it would jar
against his personal sense of preeminence, and the solitary grandeur in which he towered above his fellows,against his religious sense of a Divine mission, which
still abided in him, and constituted his last moral principle.  For he, too, believed that his laws and usages were
given him from  above, that the favour of the heavenly
powers was secured to him by their perpetual observance;
and every blow directed against them. every slur cast upon
them, startled and distressed him as an act of sacrilege.
But practical necessity not to be put by, first reconciled
him to the transformation of his law. Use and habit
satisfied and convinced him. The daily progress of the
new ideas, the gradual familiarization with new principles of thought and conduct, with other views of life, of
duty, of the ends and objects of civil society, worked upon
his awakened conscience with the charm of a new inspiSee Note P.




LAW A PEDAGOGUE B]RINGING UNTO CHRIST.   97
ration. They revealed to him the idea of new gods, or
of a new dispensation from the gods; of a greater rule
and order of affairs. They foreshadowed the announcement of a new and universal creed. At the time of St.
Paul's arrival, imien of earnest thought and wide reflection at Rome were already half prepared to accept the
preaching of a new revelation, and lo! a new revelation
was flashed upon them. Law had been as a pedagogue,
bringing them  to the Master, Christ. Philosophy had
been such a pedagogue also. Standing sullenly on the
old ways, they had felt the ground tremble under them
-they saw the world drifting away from them. In spite
of occasional reactions, of violent and forced revivals, of
grim fanatic ecstasies, of many a grasping and clutching
at the shadows of a waning theology, at the altars and
the temples, the vows and the sacrifices of antiquity, they
were getting day by day more inured to the conviction
that old things were indeed passing away; behold! all
things were becoming new.
That St. Paul was indeed well aware of this state of
feeling at Rome, may easily be: supposed. Although
the words of the text were addressed to the Galatians,
the thought which underlies them would naturally
present itself to his mind when writing to the Romans.
If at Ephesus or Ancyra, the Jew, the: Greek, and the
Roman dwelt and worshipped side by side, and apprehended in common the impending abrogation of the
older law by the authority of the Gospel, still more.did the Church at Rome collect men of all these nations
7




98                   LECTURE IV.
together, and acknowledge, under the Apostle's teaching, that'the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus
had made them  free from  the law of sin and death.'
But it would seem that the Apostle of the Gentiles, the
Roman citizen, the man of heathen as well as of Jewish
learning, had a special aptitude for thus shaping the argument of his Epistle to the Romans. He was, I am
persuaded, personally well versed in the principles of the
Roman law itself.. In the first place, it was natural that
he, a citizen of Rome, though of provincial extraction,
by the admission of his forefathers to the franchise, should
take care to inform himself of the laws which constituted
the charter of the class he belonged to. Roman citizenship was a birthright of which he was proud, as he seems
himself to acknowledge, and which he cherished as the
safeguard of his person and his property.- It gave him
certain privileges; it assured him of protection and of
freedom. He tells us as much himself. He appeals more
than once to his rights as a citizen, and shows that he is
well aware of the advantages they confer upon him. But
more than this, there is in some parts of his teaching a
direct application of Roman legal principles in illustration of his doctrine, which none but a Roman could be
expected so to apply, none unless versed in Roman law
would be able to employ.
Thus St. Paul dwells with emphasis on the position
of the divine Son towards the Father, in terms which
savour of a full appreciation of the power given to the
parent over the child by the civil laws of Rome. His




ST. PAUL VERSED IN ROMAN LAW.          99
view of the subjection of the wife to the husband as her'head,' which he uses as an apt illustration of the position of the Church to Christ her Lord, is conceived in the
spirit of a Roman rather than of a Hebrew. Even in
his account of the mutual duties of the married pair,
compared with that furnished us by St. Peter, we may
trace, I think, a shade of difference: the one breathes
the austere reserve of a Scipio or a Cato; the other the
tenderer gravity of Abraham, of David, or of Boaz. The
illustration, again, of a marked doctrine of our religion
by the forms of Testation, is such as might actually suggest itself to a Roman jurist, but would not so readily
occur to a mere Syrian or Jew; for the notion of Testation, the technical and formal making of a will, with the
covenant therein implied with the nation, and with all
the rights and powers thereto annexed, was, in fact, almost a creation of Roman jurisprudence.  And once
more I would remark the interesting analogy St. Paul
suggests in describing our relation as believers to our
heavenly Father, as that of sons by adoption. The process of legal adoption, by which the chosen heir became
entitled, through the performance of certain stated ceremonies, the execution of certain formalities, not only to
the reversion of the property, but to the civil status, to
the burdens as well as the rights of the adopter,7-became, as it were, his other self, one with him, identified
with him;-this, too, is a Roman principle, peculiar at
this time to the Romans, unknown, I believe, to the
Greeks, unknown to all appearance to the Jews, as it




100                  LECTURE IV.
certainly is not found in the legislation of Moses, nor
mentioned anywhere as a usage among the children of
the elder covenant.  We have ourselves but a faint conception of the force with which such an illustration
would speak to one familiar with the Roman practice;
how it would serve to impress upon him  the assurance
that the adopted son of God becomes in a peculiar and
intimate sense one with the heavenly Father, one in essence and in spirit, though not in flesh and blood.'
This subject would bear some further amplification;
but our limits to-day will not allow me to dwell longer
upon it, and the next lecture must be devoted to another
branch of the general argument.  I will only ask you
now to remark, in conclusion, how instruction conveyed
thus in language suited to the comprehension of Roman
citizens, of a class, at least, familiar with the privileges
of citizenship,-whether Jews, Greeks, or Romans,whether at Rome or in the provinces,-wavs plainly addressed to the cultivated and intelligent among men.
St. Paul, a man himself of no mean social rank, and of
high intellectual culture, spoke, I cannot doubt, directly
to the intellect as well as to the heart of men of refinement like his own. His converts were among the wise
and prudent, as well as among the impulsive and devout. I reject then the notion, too hastily assumed, too
readily accepted, from  a mistaken apprehension of the
real dignity of the Gospel, that the first preaching of the
faith was addressed to the lowest and meanest and least
See Note Q.




CHARACTER OF CHRISTIAN SOCIETY AT ROME.  101
intelligent, the outcasts and proletaries of society. Many
reasons, I am convinced, might be alleged for concluding
that it was much the reverse. As regards the Christian
Church at Rome, at least-the direct statements of the
Apostle himself-the evidence of existing monuments of
antiquity-inferences of no little strength from the records of secular history-and inferences not lightly to be
rejected from the language and sentiments of contemporary heathens-all tend to assure us that it embraced
some devoted members, and attracted many anxious inquirers amidst the palaces of the nobles, and even in
Csesar's household. If such be the case-if high-born
men and women-if well-trained reasoners and thinkers
-if patricians, and patrons, and counsellors-in-law, with
their freedmen, their pupils, and their clients, did read
and appreciate the Apostle's letters-did visit him in his
bonds, and listen to his teachings-did accept Gospeltruth from his lips, and ask for baptism at his hands; we
may fairly assume, I say among other motive influences,
that the law, the civil law of Rome, protesting as it did
against the narrow jurisprudence of primitive antiquity,
and the political religion on which that jurisprudence
was founded-the civil law, refined and modified as it
was into the expression of universal reason on the great
principles of equity and legal use-the civil law, in short,
the image in the Roman's view of the mind of God Himself-had been truly a pedagogue bringing men by gentle force and pressure to Christ the Master of Truth, and
the Judge of Righteousness.'
See Note R.




LECTURE V.
THE HEATHEN AWAKENED TO A SENSE OF HIS SPIRITUAL
DANGER.
1 JOHN iv. 21.
And this commandment have we from Him, That he who loveth
God love his brother also.
WE are examining the process whereby the selfish
national prejudices on which the heathen religions were
founded, were gradually sapped, and the soil prepared
for the seed of Christianity-the process whereby the engrossing idea of the city upon earth was exchanged for
the anticipation of a City of God in heaven. We have
observed how the progress of philosophy, of inquiry, that
is, into the moral condition of man, led the Greeks and
Romans, in the ripeness of their national life, to broader
views of the unity of man, the natural equality of races,
the common bonds of sympathy by which they are mutually connected. We have further traced the process by
which, under the pressure of political necessities, the Romans were compelled to relax the exclusive spirit of their
jurisprudence, and practically to make their city-what
they learned at last with pride to denominate it-the
common city and mother of nations.




LOVE ARISING FROM THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF SIN. 103
Two great steps, then, have been taken towards the
recognition of Christian principle: the one is the theoretical acknowledgment of human equality in the sight of
God-the other is the practical admission of men to
equal rights and common franchises in relation one to
another.
So far have men been brought on their appointed
march towards the stand-point of Christian revelation,
which requires as the first condition of its acceptanceas the condition of all spiritual intuition, and of the
knowledge and love of God-the fullest sympathy between man and man, perfect harmony and concord, or,
in the language of the Apostle,'Love.''Love thy
neighbour as thyself,' was the golden precept of Jesus
Christ.'Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfil
the law of Christ,'  was the commentary of St. Paul, of
the practical teacher who contemplated religion in its
actual exercise, and the works by which faith is known
among men.'Above all things have fervent charity
among yourselves, for charity'-that is, love-' shall
cover the multitude of sins,' 2 was the commentary of St.
Peter, the brave and impetuous soldier of the Lord.'In
this the children of God are manifest, and the children
of the devil: whosoever doeth not righteousness is not
of God, neither he that loveth not his brother,' — is the
commentary of St. John, the self-inquiring, self-devoting
friend of Jesus, looking beyond the outward token of works
to the inward feeling of the heart. And again and
I Gal. vi. 2.     2 1 Peter iv. 8.     1 John iii. 10.




104                  LECTURE V.
again, with redoubled fervour:' Beloved, let us love one
another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth
is born of God, and knoweth God.''God is love; and
he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in
him.''
Now, bearing in mind these texts, and considering.
the principle of self-control and self-denial for God and
conscience' sake which they involve-the principle of
human sympathy springing from the love of the heavenly and divine,-we may see at once how far as yet the
heathens were from the position of Christ's true disciples.
Certain common rights of man as man have been hitherto acknowledged theoretically by the philosophers, and
admitted as matter of political expediency by legislators
and statesmen. Another and more important step remains to be taken.  The heart must be awakened, the
conscience roused to a sense of duty, and the feelings to
a sense of thankfulness for mercies received. Love must
be given for love, sympathy to man in return for the
sympathy of God. Man must come to feel that he lives
under a law of charity, under a commandment from
above written on the fleshly tables of his heart-that he
who loveth God must love his brother also.
But we can hardly feel the obligation to bear one
another's burdens, which is the law of love, until we
have acquired the sense of a personal burden of our own,
of a personal debt and duty to One who alone is able to
bear our burdens and share our infirmities. We cannot
1 John iv. 7, 16.




THE CHRISTIAN VIEW OF THE WORLD GLOOMY.  105
exercise fervent, hearty, and zealous charity towards
others, till we have felt the reality of sin, and the need
of Divine charity to excuse and to cover it in ourselves.
Therefore it is that the sense of duty to God comes first,
and brings after it a sense of duty to our neighbour.
And such again is the declaration made to us throughout
the epistle of St. John, who begins with the recognition
of God the Father and the Divine Son Jesus Christ the
righteous, and the sense of sin, and of duty towards
Him; and thence leads us on to recognise the duty of
brotherly love:'He that saith he is in the light, and
hateth his brother, is in darkness even until now.''This commandment have we from Him, That he who
loveth God love his brother also.'
The consciousness, then, of our own sin is the first
step to the fulfilment of the law of love. This is the
Christian's view. Let us now examine what progress
the heathen had made in this direction, and how far it
had led him to the fulfilment of this commandment.
The general impression we receive from the records
of the New  Testament is assuredly that they were
written under a prevailing sense of human misery.
Tile world seems to assume to the writers the aspect of
a wreck and a baffled purpose. Deep shades flit over
the face of human society, from the uneasy possessor of
wealth and power to the humblest occupant of the
cottage.  Sickness and infirmity of every kind are
brought painfully prominent; the brighter scenes of life
-with one or two notable exceptions-are kept studious



106                   LECTIRE V.
ly in the background.  Over bodily pain and mental
suffering of all kinds broods a vague and terrible apprehension of the wrath of God, and the inheritance of an
indefinable curse. The general impression, I say, of life
there depicted is one of pain, sorrow, disappointment,
defeat-of the vanity of human cares, the nothingness
of human objects, the awfulness of the inexplicable Present, the fearfulness of the unimaginable Future.  We are
ever reminded of the yearnings of the Psalmist, and are
compelled to feel with him that it were better, far better
-even for the best and happiest among us-to flee away
and be at rest. Smitten with the gloom of these mournful records of our existence, we throw ourselves fervently
into the feeling which dictated the solemn language of
our Burial Service, when we heartily thank our heavenly
Father that lie has delivered our departed brother from
the miseries of this sinful world. Of this pain and sorrow the faithful disciples are represented as themselves
experiencing the greatest share; as far as this world is
concerned they are declared to be of all men the most
miserable. There are, indeed, outward circumstances of
alarm or privation, of mocking and persecution even unto death, which may seem at first sufficient to account
for this; but this is not all; this is not the real foundation of the gloomy prospect of the world as depicted in
the Gospel, but sin, and the knowledge and consciousness
of sin. If sin has brought death into the world, and
the curse of sin has made the world miserable, it is the
consciousness of this sin that has made men sensible of




THE CHRISTIAN VIEW OF THE WORLD GLOOMY. 107
their misery, and most anxious for the means of escape
from it, and from its curse. No man is so sensible of
this as the Christian; no man feels so much the horror
and the misery; but to him this knowledge brings with
it the hope and anticipation of escape. The pain more
keenly felt by him-the pain which colours and darkens
every page of his sacred records-which issues in sad
cries of agony from his inspired preachers at every crisis
of their sorrowing pilgrimage-that pain is first sanctified, then softened, at last transformed into joy and
peace in believing, by the assurance of a Redeemer who
has overcome sin and death, and taken away the punishment and the curse. For such a transformation, for such
a recompense of suffering the heathen could not look.
There was nothing in the face of things around him  to
indicate it; there was nothing in the records or legends
of the past, nothing in the hopes and pretended prophecies of the future to lead him to such an aspiration. The
fixed persuasion of the heathen was that the world was
bad-that it had once been better, but could only become
worse. Hints might be obscurely given, or fondly imagined, of a coming Ruler, a divine Conqueror, a mysterious Revealer of God's will and nature; but of a Sanctifier and Redeemer, of a Conqueror of sin, an Assuager
of pain, of an Averter of the evil which is born within
us or gathers round us, and clings to us always from the
cradle to the grave, and poisons life, and blasts pleasure,
and mortifies pride, and corrupts love, and makes every
thing desired and hoped for turn out other than what we




108                   LECTURE V.
had desired and hoped-of an Averter of this eternal
immedicable evil the heathen had no conception, no anticipation at all.'
I have spoken of the sadness which pervades the at.
mosphere, so to say, of the New Testament; deeper sadness, deeper because unrelieved by the revelation of a greater gladness, pervades not less completely the atmosphere
of secular history under the sway of declining heathenism; deeper because of the contrast of the inner spirit of
heathen society, and the gaudy colours in which society invested itself, with the blaring noise of the trumpets and
the cymbals with which it sought to drown its accusing
conscience. St. Paul is sad; St. John is pensive; but the
Christian St. Paul is not so sad as the philosopher Seneca; the Christian St. John is not so pensive as the philosopher Aurelius.  For this sadness there was no relief in
the creed of the old mythology, there was no relief in
the creed of the political religion.  Nor was there any reliefin the aspect of the times, notwithstanding the show of
splendour which adorned it, and the grandeur of the position to which mankind might seem to have attained.
The popular voice, indeed, the voice of poets and
orators and declaimers, the voice even of philosophers
themselves, is one long and varied chant of triumphof triumph over man's submission to a great conquering
empire, of triumph over nature's subjection to a great
civilizing society, of triumph over barbarism, over the
elements, over mind, and over matter. Caesar and Jove
I See Note S.




THE HEATHEN VIEW STILL MORE GLOOMY.    109
hold coequal and divided sovereignty. The world has
become the Roman Empire, and the Roman Empire has
become a palace of Art, a palace reared and decorated
for the habitation of the human soul. Few and slender
indeed were the conquests of the Roman over material
things, compared with the conquests on which our later
age now plumes itself, which swell it with pride, excessive perhaps and vain-glorious.  But his triumphs in the
realm of Art may fairly be set against our victories in
Science; he had quite as much reason to boast of his intellectual achievements as we of ours; and great indeed
was the satisfaction with which he looked around on the
creations of his power, his skill, and his imagination,
and pronounced them very good. But in the midst of
all this outward glory he was stricken at heart; alarmed
and terrified at he knew not what; distressed and disconsolate, he knew not why;' noises as of waters falling
down sounded about him,'-' sad visions appeared unto
him of heavy countenances.''They that promised to
drive away terrors and troubles from a sick soul, were
sick themselves of fear, worthy to be laughed at.'  For
wickedness, condemned of her own witness, is very timorous, and being pressed with conscience always forecasteth grievous things.''And whosoever there fell
down was straitly kept, shut up in a prison without iron
bars.' And this because, according to the stern reproof
of the Apostle,'when they knew God, they glorified
Him  not as God, neither were thankful; but became
1 Wisdom xvii.




110                  LECTURE V.
vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was
darkened.  Professing themselves wise, they became
fools... changing the truth of God into alie, and worshipping the creature more than the Creator.''  For
such is the reward and the end of Pantheism, whether
in the first century or in the nineteenth.
In some of the most thoughtful spirits of those days,
this gloomy sense of dissatisfaction vented itself in
murmurs and rebellions against the public conduct of
affairs, against the Government, against the COesars.
The contrast, half stifled, half avowed, between the
philosophers and the empire, is a marked feature in the
history of the times. But this was but a symptom of
the malady, not the malady itself.  The malady lay
deep in the spiritual nature of iman, deep in the foundations of sentiment and conscience, in feelings which are
opened and explained to us by religion, which are tended, comforted, and transmuted by faith in a revealed
Saviour only.
It was from this sense, however, of depression and
discontent with the frame of the outward world, that
arose the remarkable change which now appears in the
expression of heathen philosophy, that is, of all that
could now be called in any spiritual sense, heathen religion. We open now on an era of preaching instead
of discussion, of moral discourses, of spiritual improvement drawn from events and circumstances, of the analysis of virtues and vices, of exhortations to the one, warn1 Rom. i. 21, 22.




EPICTETUS.                 111
ings against the other. The philosopher is no longer a
logician with an essay, nor a sophist with a declamation;
he is a master, a preacher, a confessor or director of
souls: he is not a speculator, inquiring after truth, but a
priest, a minister, a hierophant of the divine Source of
truth, guiding and controlling, as with authority, the
conscience of his disciples. lie is a witness of God,
bearing testimony to a divine law, and charged as it
were with the cure of souls intrusted to his teaching.
We meet no more among the masters of human wisdom
with subtle enquiries into the operations of the intellect;
but addresses straight to the heart and spirit; advice
tender or severe, remonstrances indignant or affectionate; exhortations to fervent prayer and self-enquiry;
enticements to love and charity; earnest declarations, as
from a higher source of knowledge, of the unity of man
with man, and the common ties of sympathy which bind
all the families of the earth together. Such are the topics handled in the pulpits of Seneca and Epictetus, of
Dion and Juvenal, of Plutarch and Aurelius.''My friend,' says Epictetus,' you would become a
philosopher: then train yourself first at home and in
silence; examine long your temper and weigh your powers. Study long for yourself before you preach to others. Plants ripen only by degrees, and you too are a
divine plant.  If you blossom before the time, the winter will nip you; you will fancy yourself some fine
one, but you are dead already, dead even to the roots.
See Note T.




112                 LECTURE V....  Suffer yourself to ripen slowly, as nature
prompts. Give the root time to take the soil, and the
buds time to blossom; then nature herself will bear her
own fruits.'
And again:-' Strive to heal yourself, to change your
nature; put not off the work till to-morrow. If you
say, To-morrow I will take heed to myself, it is just as
though you said, To-day I will be mean, shameless, cowardly, passionate, malicious. See what evil you allow
yourself by this fatal indulgence. But if it be good for
you to be converted, and to watch with heart and soul.
over every action and desire, how much more is it good
to do so this very moment! If it is expedient to-morrow, how much rather is it to day! For beginning today, you will have more strength for it to-morrow, and
you will not be tempted to leave the work to the day
after.'
Or hearken to Seneca:-' To acquire wisdom  do we
not plainly want an advocate and adviser, who shall enjoin us contrary to the behests of common opinion?   No
voice reaches our ears without some evil effect. 
The good wishes of our friends, the curses of our enemies, are equally harmful to us... We cannot go
straight forward; our parents draw us aside; our servants draw us aside; no man errs to his own hurt only,
but scatters his own folly round him, and imbibes of the
folly of others. Making others worse, he becomes worse
himself. He has learned worse things, and straightway
he teaches worse things; and thus is created the vast




SENECA AND AURELIUS.             113
mass of our wickedness, by the accumulation of all the
little wickednesses of us all. Oh! may there be some
guardian ever about us, to dispel false conceits, and recall our attention from popular delusions! For thou errest-thou errest,'-here mark the false wisdom of the
heathen,-' thou that thinkest that our vices are born in
us; no, they have come upon us, they have been thrust
into us. We were born sound from  sin, free to righteousness. Then let us restrain, by constant exhortations,
the vain imaginations which ever surge around us.'
Or to the mild Aurelius, severe to himself as no other
heathen, indulgent as no other heathen to others:' Beware, 0 my soul, of imperial habits, nor contract the
stain of the purple. Keep yourself simple, good, sincere, grave, a lover of justice, a worshipper of God, kind
but resolute in all your duties. Strive always to maintain the temper which philosophy seeks to engender.
Fear God-protect men: life is short, and of this mortal
life the only fruit is sanctity of temper, sympathy in deed.
Approve yourself in all things a disciple'-of whom? not,
alas! of Christ,-not of a perfect and divine exemplar,
but-' of the best of men you have known, of Antonine
the Pious.'
Such is the general tone of moral teaching under the
Empire, varying with each individual teacher.  With
Epictetus it is familiar and subtle; more pompous, more
vague, with Dion Chrysostom; more vehement and penetrating, more various in application, with Seneca; more
elevated again, and more tender, with Aurelius.  But in
8




114                  LECTURE V.
all there is the same general tone of pressing exhortation, or of lively remonstrance; very different assuredly
from that of the old Grecian sages, of Plato and Aristotle; more practical, more moral, more spiritual: addressed to the heart rather than to the head-to the conscience, not to the intellect of the disciple. But of exhortation to virtue there was less, inasmuch as a true exemplar of virtue was wanting: there was more of remonstrance against vice, for of instances of vice there was no
lack on any side.  This was the great defect of the
heathen teaching, a defect for which there was no remedy among them.  They felt themselves how fruitless it
was to set before their pupils a mere theory or abstraction
of goodness, where there was no effectual standard of
goodness to be shown. And so a man of great note in
his day among them  implicitly confessed, when  he
charged his disciples to treat themselves as confirmed
invalids in godliness, ndr so much as seek to attain the
normal state of spiritual health and soundness.'
But what is it that has thus taught men to take this
practical view of the scope and functions of philosophy?
It is their growing sense of the miseries of the world;
of the trials and perturbations to which men are subjected by the insufficiency of human aims, the weakness of
human resolves; by the opposition of human nature to
the eternal rules of right; by a sense, however faint and
dubious, of sin inherent in our mortal being, a sense of
sin and no augury of redemption.' Great is the conflict,'
I See Note U.




EXHORTATION AND REMONSTRANCE.         115
cries Seneca,' between the Flesh and the Spirit.''0
this accursed Flesh!' is the exclamation of Persius.
Accordingly Seneca rejects with vivacity the dialectic
subtleties of the schools. Life, he feels, is too grave a
thing to be so trifled with.' Would you know,' he says,' what it is that philosophy promises? I answer, practical advice.  One man is at the point of death, another
is pinched with want; one cannot bear his adverse fortune, another is wearied of prosperity; one is afflicted
by men, another by the gods. Why do you thus trifle
with them? This is no time for jesting, no place for
grimaces.  You are adjured by the miserable! You
promised that you would bring succour to the shipwrecked, to the captives, to the sick, to the starving, to
the condemned and perishing! Whither away then?
What are you doing? The man you thus sport with is
in agony.  Help him!  The lost, the dying, stretch
their hands towards you; they implore you, they cast
upon you all their hopes and aspirations. They entreat
you to draw them forth from  such abject misery; to
show them their errors, and enlighten their perplexities,
by the bright effulgence of the Truth. Tell them then
what nature declares to be necessary and what superfluous; how easy her laws; how pleasant life, and how free
to those who accept them; how bitter and perplexed to
those who follow their own fancies rather.'1
0 wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me
from the body of this death?  2 Such is the cry at this
1 See Note V.                 2 Romans vii. 24.




116                 LECTURE V.
same moment of the Apostle, in his address to the Romans, to the believers or inquirers collected from among
the devoutest spirits of Rome, Gentile no less than Jew;
and doubtless he well knew what response this cry would
awaken in their hearts. For to many a lord of a patrician palace this cry of agony would sound as the echo
from his own walls, the echo to the sighs and adjurations
he had himself uttered in solitude, or confided to the
ears of his own private adviser, his domestic philosopher.
For it was from no vain pride that the Roman magnate
furnished himself with a friend and director at his table,
or by his couch, with whom to converse in the intervals
of business on the concerns of his soul, and from whose
tuition to imbibe his soundest lessons on the conduct of
life and preparation for death. The highway of history
is thronged with a gorgeous procession of figures, military or royal, marching on with the solemn tread of destiny to the accomplishment of great secular revolutions;
but her byways afford us many a glimpse of private life
and personal character and domestic usage, and show us
men like ourselves at every shifting of the scene, under
various institutions, moving about on their affairs just as
we do ourselves. And so, in the byways of Roman history at this period, we see how the men who had rejected
as baseless and unsanctioned the law of Pagan morality,
became a law to themselves in this crisis of spiritual
need, and sought to work out that law, not without fear
and trembling. We see the statesman who has been
doomed to execution, and required to submit his neck




SPIRITUAL AGONY AMONG THE ROMANS.    11
to the swordsman, or plunge the poniard in his own bosomn, summon his friends, arrange the benches, invoke
the aid of his spiritual adviser, and invite the party to a
final discussion on the aim and purpose of human life,
the real nature of dissolution. We see him rise from
the debate with an affecting farewell, as one who is
about to find in person a reply to the unsolved riddle of
existence. Or, again, we see the sick and weary veteran, who has been long the victim of bodily infirmity,
and suffered many things of divers physicians, consult
the director of his conscience; shall he end at once all
his pains by the momentary pang of a voluntary death?
-his friends interceding with the sage for a decision
which shall deter the patient from the irrevocable stroke,
and persuade him still to bear the ills he has rather than
fly to others that he knows not of.
Such was the honour paid, such the authority ascribed to these physicians of souls; to the philosophers,
who feeling keenly in themselves, and observing all
around them the miseries of this showy but empty pageant, searching subtly into the cause from whence they
sprang-apprehending, however faintly and vaguely, the
nature and effects of sin-spent their lives in teaching
men to sympathize with their fellows, as all lying under
the same inscrutable defect and baffling of existence.
The whole world they felt to be akin to them, and to the
world they went forth, as upon a holy mission, to teach
and preach a message self-imposed, a message of love
and pity, of rebuke to the proud, of comfort to the suf



118                  LECTURE V.
fering. In earlier times the sages of ancient Greece-a
Pythagoras, a Plato-made the pilgrimage of science to
Ionia, to Italy, to Egypt, to learn from the lips of priests
and eremites the truth embalmed in a precious tradition,
or ascertained by old experience. There was no such
freshness of faith now, no such hope of moral discovery,
no such confidence in the existence of positive truth at
all. But the heart and conscience were awakened, and
with narrower ends and fainter aspirations the disciple
of the schools now glided forth, not as a searcher for
transcendental verities, but as the preacher of practical
philanthropy, to make men better and happier, not to
make himself wiser. While the Apostles of the Saviour
and the elders of the Church whom they had ordained
to the same holy mission-they who could embrace Paul's
holy aspiration,' I thank God through Jesus Christ our
Lord'-preached from land to land the commandment
of the blessed Jesus that he who loveth God love his
brother also-the same principle, the same instinct of
love, the same sympathy in a common danger, sprang
spontaneously, and without a sanction but that of nature,
in the bosom  of many a soul-stricken watcher of the
wants and miseries of men. Christian preaching found
its shadow in heathen preaching; the sermons of bishops
and confessors had their faint accompaniment in the discourses of philosophers; an Apollonius and a Dion, and
many others, expelled from city to city, exposed to persecution, threatened with death for their doctrine's sake,
might exclaim with the Apostle, that they too had been




NEW MISSION OF THE PHILOSOPHERS.        119
in journeyings often,'in perils of waters, in perils of
robbers, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness.. in weariness and painfulness... in cold
and nakedness.' One of them could beard the tyrant on
his throne, in bold reproof of cruelty and oppression;
another could assuage the terrors of a sedition, and the
fury of the legions, and plead the cause of the debased
and trampled slave, and rebuke the vanity of the mob
of Alexandria; a third would shame the Athenians,
when they proposed to desecrate their city with a show
of gladiators, exclaiming,' You must first overthrow your
venerated statue of Mercy.' 
How far was this preaching of love spontaneous?how far was it caught from the tone of Christian preaching, which I cannot doubt was beginning in the second
century to make impression upon the heart of stone of
the heathen   Who shall say   Thus much at least we
may accept as unquestionable, that wherever Christian
preaching really penetrated, the greater ardour with
which it was delivered, the stronger assurance by which
it was accompanied-above all, the higher sanction to
which it appealed-gave it a force, a life, a power far
beyond anything that could fall from mere heathen lips.
But this, I think, we must admit-and this in carrying
on the argument of these lectures it is important to urge
-that independent of Christian preaching and Christian
revelation, and of all special working of God's Holy
Spirit on men's minds, the heathen world was at this
1 See Note W.




120                  LECTURE V.
time gravitating, through natural causes such as we have
already traced, towards the acknowledgment of the cardinal doctrines of humanity which the Son of God
dwelt among us in the flesh to illustrate, to expend, and
to ratify. For it is not among the philosophers only,
among men bound by their profession, as truth-seekers,
to know something of the teaching of the Christians,
that this movement of philanthropy is found. The alleviation of slavery by law and custom; the recognition
of the common rights of man by man; the softening of
the brutal usages of the amphitheatre; the elevation
of the social rank of women; the increase, not perhaps
of restraints upon vice, but of horror open and avowed
at its practice and permission; a greater show at least
of respect for morality and virtue; a growing preparation for accepting the purer law and higher standard of
God's holy ordinances; a preparation, in short, for receiving at the hands of God's ministers, not a system of
theological doctrine-of that I am not now speaking, I
shall have to speak of that in its place hereafter-but a
republication of the law of nature, the law of love and
mutual consolation; this movement, I say, in all its various phases, may be traced, not to the special intuition
of the wise and prudent only, but to the sense and instinct
of the multitude, gradually constrained, under God's
providence, by disgust, by fear, by spiritual apprehension,
by scorn for the world, by consciousness of sin, by the
augury of a greater curse impending.1
1 See Note X.




DESTRUCTIVE SHIPWRECK IMPENDING.      121
The empire of the heathen, the empire over mind
and matter, the highest culture of the natural man, had
gone forth into God's world as a brave vessel upon the
ocean, painted and bedecked and spangled at the prow
and at the helm, and had accomplished half its voyage
in pride and security. But the winds were now arising,
the heavens were lowering; the muttering of thunders
was heard above the hissing and seething of the waters;
her masts were groaning, her planks were starting.
Among the crew was fear and sorrow, and confusion of
faces; they felt their common danger, and each gave a
hand to the common work; each cheered his fellow with
whisperings of comfort which he but faintly felt himself.
The terror of the moment bound the crew, and the master, and the passengers all more closely together. There
is still hope, brave crew, there is still comfort! In mutual help and sympathy your hope of safety lies. Then
courage all!-to the oars, to the wheel, to the pumps!
The vessel yet rides the storm; all may yet be well!
Then love, and aid, and encourage one another.
And here we must leave them  for the present.
Another and a wilder scene will shortly be presented to
us-a scene of desolation and dismay and frenzy; of
prayer hoarsening into imprecation; of the cutting away
the boats, of breaking in twain the oars, of rushing
madly to the spirit-room. They will lash themselves
into fury; they will quarrel, fight, and threaten to slay;
they will prepare to go together to the bottom, with fire
in their brain and defiance on their lips. But when the




12S                LECTURE V.
Apostle was tost on the waves of Adria, and'neither
sun nor stars had for many days appeared, and no small
tempest lay on them, and all hope that they should be
saved was then taken from them,' the Angel of God
stood by him in the night, saying,' God hath given thee
all them that sail with thee.'' And so, even now in
that tormented bark of heathenism, the Spirit of the
Almighty will be present. Lo! the crew is in His holy
keeping! let them but turn to Him, and be converted,
and abide in His faith; there shall be no loss of any
man's life among them,'but only of the ship.'
Acts xxvii. 24.




LECTURE VI.
EFFORTS OF THE HEATHEN TO AVERT SPIRITUAL RUIN.
ST. MARK Ix. 24.
And straightway the father of the child cried out, and said with
tears, Lord, I believe; help Thou mine unbelief.
CHRISTIANITY appeals to the heart as well as to the
head, to the feelings no less than to the judgment. It
teaches us that faith depends upon the will as much as
upon the understanding, and therefore that it is to be attained by the exercise of the affections, by love and
prayer, as well as by the exertion of thought and mind.
This Christian paradox is illustrated by the familiar text
above cited,' Lord, I believe; help Thou mine unbelief;'
a text familiar to all Christians at every step in their religious experience; for the feeling which it indicates of
the insufficiency of the intellect to comprehend the mysteries of God, or to retain at all times and under all
trials its hold of a constant and fervent faith in the Invisible, belongs not to the mere novice only, not to the recent convert, not to the first hearer of Truth. It belongs to all who are really earnest in examining their
own hearts, and jealous of a lapse, however transient,




124                   LECTURE VI.
from the fulness of spiritual assurance. The text relates
the occurrence of a particular incident, but is registered
for all time; and the thoughts it suggests may be useful
for all time, and for manifold situations.
The father of the afflicted child yearns for the promised relief. The condition is Belief.  He will believe.
He makes an effort of the will. His imagination, on
the wings of love and prayer, transcends the limits of
the visible and the possible.  He flings himself into
another world of higher existences, and powers, and possibilities.  He sees the man Jesus before him  dilated to
Divine proportions, and shutting out from his field of
view the gross realities of the world, with its material
laws and its narrow limits. The spirit is willing, but the
flesh is weak; the vision, the dream of faith, vibrates
before his eyes; the realities of the world return again
and again, they thrust themselves importunately upon
him, and threaten to recover all their former vividness.
He feels his faith yielding, his spirit fainting, his nerves
relaxing; and he cries out for help, for strength to hold
on yet a little longer, for light to see yet a little longer;
he cries out with tremblings that shake his strength, with
tears that blind his sight,'Lord, I believe; help Thou
mine unbelief.'
Such were the struggles of the human conscience
when Jesus Christ appeared in the world, and held forth
the hopes of His healing power to the afflicted and miserable both in soul and body.  Such are the struggles,
constantly repeated through all ages, when the know



STRUGGLE TO ATTAIN BELIEF.         125
ledge of Him, and of His revelation of mercy, is set
forth to the sinners and the spiritually-stricken among
men; the same struggle of the will and the understanding, of faith and fear, is ever going on among us, and is
the condition of our advance in spiritual light and experience.
But there was a time when the mercy of Jesus
Christ was not yet made manifest to man; a time when,
though he had actually come in the flesh and dwelt
among men, the world was not yet prepared to acknowledge it; when his appearance had not yet been preached
to all nations, and the offer of salvation through Him
not yet generally published. Nevertheless, in the first
ages of Christianity, in the decline of heathenism, there
was among those who knew not Christ, nor perhaps had
yet heard of Him, the same struggle going on, the same
opposition between the will and the power to believe.
There was even then, at least among some meek and
tender spirits, a will to believe in something, they knew
not what; a cry for relief from some quarter, they knew
not whence; a suspicion-a hope-an assurance that
there was a revelation somehow to be made, a revelation
of grace and mercy to the spiritually afflicted, and at
the same time an earnest wish to be helped against their
own unbelief; an effort, with groans and tears, against
the deep despondency in which the absence of any visible object of faith had plunged them.
The father in the narrative deeply loved his son, but
his son was afflicted with a devil. The generation of




126                  LECTURE VI.
declining heathenism deeply loved the world around
them-the brilliant cities, the joyous country, the temples
and the forum, the baths and the festivals, the objects of
art and luxury with which their homes were stored to
overflowing, the tranquil ease, the leisure for study or
meditation, the security of their long-established civilization, the treasured results of philosophy and science;
but the world they so loved was afflicted with a devil.
All its pleasures appeared hollow and unsound; sweet
to the taste, they left a sting of bitterness; its vices were
flagrant, and seemed to call aloud for chastisement;
pain and fear had taken possession of it. There was
something radically amiss with it, some defect in its constitution, which plainly threatened it with dissolution.
The physicians had been consulted, but without avail.
The devil had torn them, and driven them  away.  The
patient had himself struggled feverishly against it, but
it had ofttimes cast him into the fire, and into the
waters, to destroy him; he had fallen upon the ground,
and wallowed foaming.  Such is a picture of the misery
of the heathen world at the moment of its highest outward culture; at the moment when it had lost its faith
in the heathen religions, and not yet acquired faith in
Christ; at the moment whenits eyes were opened to its
spiritual destitution, and the chastened feelings of humanity led it to recognise the corruption of the flesh,
and the desperate condition of the soul that lives without God in the world. Anxious to find some one who
could do any thing to relieve this sickness of the world




ECLIPSE OF FAITH AMONG THE HEATHENS.   127
around them, the heathen knew not yet on whom they
might call, and who would have compassion on them;
who there was who could address them with those blessed
words,'If thou canst believe, all things are possible to
him that believeth.' 
Yet, in this anxiety and despair, the heathen sought
out a healer for themselves. The sentiment of mercy
and pity, of mutual sympathy, of an ever-widening humanity, which, as we have before seen, was gradually
prevailing among them, the sentiment of the equality of
men in God's sight and of the equal claims of men on
one another accordingly-this sentiment seemed to give
them the first glimpse of an idea of divine grace and
mercy, of a law of love, of some spiritual existence fulfilling that idea, and itself appointing that law and declaring it. They felt about, as men still dazzled or purblind, for the Being invisible and inaccessible to whom
they might appeal, to whom they might exclaim-in
their conscious weakness and uncertainty, and amidst the
struggles which they felt within them of the flesh against
the spirit, of the understanding against the reason, of the
head against the heart, and through the tears which
blinded them for the failures and vanities of the world,
and its pomps around them-' Lord, I believe; help
Thou mine unbelief.'
To whom  should they apply?  How should they
image to themselves the Being whom they longed for,
the realization of their spiritual consciousness?  The
1 St. Mark ix. 23.




128                  LECTURE VI.
Gods of the heathen had lost all significance, even with
their accustomed votaries. Mars, and Quirinus, and last
Rome, and Victory last of all-the many names of one
idea, the idea of a local and temporal Providence-had
all faded from the imagination, and remained only palpable to the senses in their images of wood and stone.
There was no more use for them but to hurl them bodily
from the walls of the city upon the heads of the assailing barbarians. The old mythology had long fallen to
the ground, and the temporal religion, the fiction of the
magistrate, which had more recently replaced it, while
it still stood erect in apparent strength and majesty, had
been tried by the earnest and spiritual-minded, and had
been found wholly wanting; discredited by its results,
disproved by the event, by its manifest defect of spiritual energy to chasten and control, by the apprehension of
its temporal weakness to shield from disaster and discomfiture.
The civil religion of the Romans, then, has virtually
come to nought, or survives only in vague unreal generalities, in poetry or in rhetoric. The personification of
the genius of the empire, the deification of the emperor
himself, is a mere make-believe of religion, a mere artifice or shift to save the appearance of a political continuity.
The place of this political religion has been occupied
by the personal hopes and fears of the individual worshippers.  Mankind —the spiritual portion of themare too really anxious, for their own conscience' sake,




RISE OF PERSONAL RELIGION.         129
to be swayed by such phantoms of expediency. There
is spiritual peril around them.  They feel that they
have souls to be saved. The deepening earnestness, the
anxious spiritual excitement of the heathen world, as it
nears the period of its absorption in Christianity, is a
fact of solemn import. It may teach us to apprehend
how great was the impending revolution, how wide, how
deep, the spiritual movement which transferred the faith
of mankind from the old to the new foundations. But
why all this earnestness?-why these spiritual apprehensions?-whence this ever deepening solemnity of feeling?
The world gliding gently down the current of circumstance-rippling, running, rushing onward-yet knew
not of the Niagara plunge it was about so suddenly to
take. No! but the teaching of the philosophers had
gradually permeated society, and sunk into the minds
of thoughtful and earnest men; the events and facts of
life around them had forced on them a nobler view of
human nature, a sense of nearer connection with the
divine, of the independence and immateriality of the
soul, subject to higher laws, derived from deeper sources,
directed to grander and more enduring purposes. The
baffling of worldly pride, the dashing of worldly hopes,
the gradual closing in of the political curtain, commotions within and the barbarians without, the ghastly
blackness of the aspect of the future, all deter men from
too much brooding on the world before them, and direct them with feverish haste to more spiritual aspirations. Amid the impending wreck of civil society creeps
9




130                 LECTURE VI.
in a distrust of man and man's assistance; an instinctive cry of'Save Thyself,' heard in the recesses of the
conscience, drives men lo look to their personal interests
in regard to spiritual things. There springs up among
them a feeling of mutual repulsion, in place of that mutual attraction which in ages of hope and faith brings
them  from  all quarters together, builds their cities,
founds their commonwealths, and establishes their national religions. Common creeds are disintegrated and
split into a thousand fragments. And ever and anon,
in every lull of the all-absorbing tempest, penetrates at
hand or at a distance, the whisper of the Christian
preaching-a still small voice, heard by many a heartstricken heathen, above the song of the festival, and the
blare of trumpets, exerting even over the worldly and
the godless a silent, unacknowledged, disowned influence, and leading all men, more orless, some faster, some
slower, some consciously, others against their will or
without their knowledge, to a vague impression of a
spiritual existence, inviting their faith and commanding
their obedience. Viewed on every side there is no period of history, as it seems to me, when men were more
in earnest about spiritual hopes and fears than in the
third century of our era.
Baulked of his carnal hopes, distrustful of all human
aid, the natural man now  sought vehemently for a
personal connection with God. Renouncing the idea
of national communion with the Invisible, of personal
protection or salvation. through the federal compact




THE HEATHEN SEEKS GOD IN PRAYER.    131
with his countrymen, he strove to unite his own soul to
the spirit of the universe. IIe threw himself on the Infinite and Invisible in prayer. IHe cast from him the trammels of pride and prejudice, which in more cheerful and
frivolous days had withheld his fathers from the selfhumiliation of the prayer of faith and devotion. He
tore asunder the cobwebs woven by the human understanding, which had been wont to intrude importunately
between him and the mystery of Infinite Power, Mercy
and Grace; and whisper that Infinite Power cannot undo what it once has done, Infinite Mercy may not save
what has been once condemned, Infinite Grace will
not condescend to the affections of poor huran infirmity. True that Socrates and Plato had not refused to
bend the knee and move the lips in prayer; that devout
and spiritual men of old time had acknowledged a truth
in reason beyond the conclusion of the purely logical
understanding; but such masters as these had seemed to
stand apart from the common nature of men; their
speculations were deemed to transcend the practical
wants of the human soul; their doctrines had been admired, and passed from mouth to mouth as men admire
an ideal work of art, but were never taken to the bosom,
and made the household possession of the multitude.
Prayer had never been accepted as a great spiritual engine by the Western mind. This new and worthy conception of prayer, its nature, power and privileges, was
Oriental, Syrian and Jewish. It was through the synagogue, I doubt not, that this idea of prayer, of the




132                  LECTURE VI.
prayer of the righteous man availing much, was propagated in the Roman world. The synagogue of the dispersion was the substitute for the Temple at Jerusalem;
and the incense of prayer, the sacrifice of the lips, replaced among the Jewish worshippers abroad the incense
of myrrh and spices, and the blood of bulls and rams,
which could be offered only in the holy place at home.
The influence of this Jewish practice, thus stimulated
upon the heathen mind, can hardly perhaps be overrated. The Jews penetrated every rank of Roman society. Their manners, their rites, their religious records
and religious experiences, their moral and spiritual ideas;
worked their way into the high places as well as the low
places of Rome, and prepared a high road for Christianity by refining and spiritualizing the religious instincts of the heathen. We may not be able to trace a
direct effect of Christian teaching upon the mind of a
Seneca; but with the Jews and their religious notions
there can be no doubt that he was well acquainted; and
when he remarks with admiration, not unmingled with
awe, that the Jews, subdued by the Romans, had in turn
given laws to the conquerors, what laws could he mean,
but the law of mind and conscience, the law of philosophy and religion, the law of worship and the law of
prayer? And thus the teaching of this sage, and of the
schools that symbolized with him, owed doubtless no
small portion of their spiritual character to God's Revelation of his attributes to the Jews.'
3 See Note Y.




INFLUENCE OF THE JEWISH USE OF PRAYER.  133
In the emperor Marcus Aurelius, in the slave Epictetus, placed at the opposite extremes of social rank, we
observe almost at the same moment the same devout attitude of though. Both equally regard the received mythology as absurd and baseless, though they feel bound
to abstain from direct attacks upon it; it suffices at least
to represent to them as in a parable, the idea of a Divine
superintendence-a moral Providence, to which their
religious emotions may be safely directed. To this Being, this Essense, they address themselves, a being more
obscure, more mysterious than the Invisible Jehovah of
the Jews, but accessible enough to the conscience-palpable, as it were, to the touch of faith-when they
throw themselves before Him in spirit, and seem to embrace His knees in the attitude of prayer.  Their prayers are not the crude and fantastic effusions of the worshippers of a deity in the form and likeness of man, who
regard their God as endued with parts and passions such
as their own-the mere reflex of their own grovelling
nature, and composed of selfish appetites and unholy
imaginations, whose aid and favour they invoke in every
enterprise of lust or malice. They do not exclaim,' 
God, avenge me of my enemy!' They do not whisper,'   God, indulge my cupidity!' they do not say,' Grant
me health, wealth, or prosperity, or power;  but rather,' Keep me from all evil desires, even towards those who
have done me evil; guard me from too fond a wish for
the benefits of fortune; make me resigned under calumny, content in poverty, cheerful in sickness.' They are




134                  LECTURE VI.
well aware of all the subtleties by which doubt and perplexity are cast on our natural yearnings for prayer; but
they rest secure in the conviction that there is One who
hears the prayer of faith-who approves it-who takes
it up into Himself, and through some inscrutable agency does truly reply to it. They are not cowed, like the
hypercritical logician, by the great paradox of faith;
but are ready to exclaim, with the simple eagerness of
the Christian proselyte,'Lord, I believe; help Thou
mine unbelief.' 
I have cited the emperor and the slave as the two
most conspicuous instances at this period of the incipient
faith which seeks to exhale itself in prayer to a God
unknown to it; the most conspicuous in our eyes, from
their respective positions; the most conspicuous also
from the frequency, the fervour, the force and freedom
of their heavenward aspirations; the nearest in their day
to Christianity among the heathen. But the heathen
world, even in its scanty remains bequeathed to us,
abounds at this time with indications of the same pious
yearning.  The spirit of prayer has gone abroad, and
leavens the mass of the thoughtful and devout among
the heathen.  The effusions of the philosophers answer
in this respect to the preaching of the Christian fathers;
answer so far, that we see they belong to the same age:
that the one in some degree reacts upon and tempers the
other, and each is reflected by the other. The face is
not the same, not one; but like, as that of brethren
3 See Note Z.




THE SPIRIT OF PRAYER HAS GONE ABROAD.   135
should be; as of brethren of one family, the family of
God. The Father recognizes His children on the right
hand and on the left; the child of the bond-woman and
the child of the free woman: the minds of men, however
separated by accidents and conventionalities, are evidently working under a common influence unto a common end. The goal, to the ken of angels, is already almost in sight, though men will still obstinately shut their
eyes to it, and in their passion struggle to efface the lines
of convergence and analogy, to deny the identity of origin and purpose, to foster repulsion and discord in the
elements which should combine for the production of
unity and love.
Much yet remains to be done and suffered before this
unity can be effected, before the absorption of heathen
devotion in the higher and holier devotion of the Christian. There are still more turns in the way, more fallings into error, more aversion from the light of God and
prostration before phantoms of the human imagination.
There is still a dark hour, the darkest of the night of
heathenism, to be passed, before the dawn of the sun of
the Gospel, and the rise of true religion in the soul. The
spirit of prayer, the yearning for communion with God,
have been awakened; but this spirit, this yearning, will
surely generate error in the heart of the natural man,
unenlightened, unconverted, unsanctified by the Holy
Spirit, who is God Himself. A new sense of religious
need has been awakened, and straightway it creates a
new superstition, a development of the religious sense




136                  LECTURE VI.
the more curious and instructive as it runs parallel with
the historical career of Christianity, and seems to be consciously and even studiously opposed to it.
Of this new religion, the religion of the purest and
most spiritual-minded of the later heathens, of this combination of a creed and a philosophy which is known by
the name of the New Platonism, I have little room here
to speak. I would only remark upon it as a special, and
in the West an unique example of a dogmatic faith evolved from the pure reason. A religion professedly based
on the historical records of a revelation we can fully understand; a religion resting upon mere unhistorical tradition is too common to excite our surprise; again, a philosophy which seeks for spiritual truths in the light of
the natural reason may be a legitimate effort of the
human mind; but such a philosophy makes no pretensions to be a religion.  But the New Platonism was
different from all these, for it combined with such a philosophy the gratuitous assertion of a dogmatic creed, the
issue of mere caprice or guess-work. It was in fact the
engrafting of the Oriental 1Mithraism upon the moral
philosophy of the Platonists and Stoics. It asserted the
existence of a divine hierarchy, culminating in a supreme
essence, a triple godhead involving Unity, Soul, and
Intelligence, but descending again from development to
development, from  emanation to emanation, through a
long series of divinities, of genii, good or evil, opposed
or in alliance-still descending till they touched upon
the confines of humanity, and reached even to man upon




THE NEW PLATONISM.              137
earth; thus not raising man to God, but bringing God
down to man.
But with this Oriental divination of a personal godhead were combined the spiritual aspirations of the Grecian philosophy. The school of Alexandria accepted and
sublimed the loftiest dogmas of the Stoics; they held
that man might also be raised upwards to God, even to
the eminence of the absolute Being, by study and virtue: what reason could not acquire in knowledge and
spiritual power, might be revealed by enthusiasm or
ecstasy: the individual man might lose himself in the
contemplation of the infinite God, from whom he originally came, and to whom he might thus ultimately restore
himself:
It is not the soul, they said, that comes to know God:
God descends into the soul; a touch, a sympathy, a
union; man for a moment becomes God. Thus ecstasy
is the ultimate term of all knowledge, the crowning of
perfect virtue. It is to be attained by patience in welldoing; by mortification of the senses; by extinction of
the passions; by repudiating the flesh and the earth.
Thus the sage or saint comes to be independent of the
common laws of matter-he gets a foretaste of disembodied spirit-he can rise above the earth into mid-airhe can work miracles-he becomes a magician.'
This wild scheme of human religion, this last utterance of expiring heathenism points, it seems to me, to
two things. First, it points to the need men evidently
1 See Note A A.




138                 LECTURE VI.
began now to feel of a jersonal relation to God. It was
the completion, as far as human reason could go, of the
efforts of the conscience to ally and unite itself with
God upon whom it had thrown itself in all the energy
of prayer. It had implored of God to reveal Himself to
His believers.' Lord,' it had said,'we believe in Thee,
but yet we do not know Thee: help Thou our unbelief:
reveal Thyself-make Thyself known to us-let us not
burst in ignorance.' And then it had gone on to imagine and invent a God for itself. It had guessed a God
after its own conceit. It had framed a religion out of
the depths of its own awakened conscience; a religion,
not licentious, I admit, but rather painful and mortifying
to the flesh at least, however it might pamper the pride
of the heart; a religion requiring a long and searching
initiation, demanding trials of fortitude and patience, giving glimpses of moral regeneration, promise of a remission
of sins, hopes of a future life.
And this leads us to the second point we have to notice, the evident imitation of Christianity, the conscious
plagiarism upon gospel truth, which marks the last development of religion among the heathen. It is sufficiently plain that the teaching of the Christians has been
making way in the world. Even in the increasing sympathy of man with man, and in the development of the
spirit of prayer, and in the demand for communion with
God, we might fairly infer that such an influence had
been operating obliquely; in the diffusion of the Mithraic
and Gnostic superstitions, with the germs or shadows of




PLAGIARISM UTPON GOSPEL TRUTH.         139
Christian truth which they unquestionably embrace, we
may recognize without hesitation its more direct and more
powerful effect.
But if even the most spiritual among the heathen,
permitted thus to enjoy a breath, however faint, from
the sources of truth and knowledge, were given over to
believe a lie, to grope in a world of darkness, to groan
under the yoke of their own wild exaggerations, far
grosser was the lie, far blacker the darkness, far wilder
the extravagance under which the more vulgar and carnal of them laboured in their efforts to hold communion
with God. The exercise of prayer has led men to a
nearer conception of the Deity, to a closer sense of the
reality of His being, His presence, His providence. It
impels them to yearn for Him, to draw and drag Him
down, as it were, to themselves.  What then does the
heathen do? He cannot wait for Him or feel for Him
at a distance, he cannot address Him  afar off, he will
not brook delay or impediment, he must find a royal
road to approach Him, he will make IIim  his own at
once, and possess Him. He invents, or rather he revives, he multiplies, he exaggerates long familiar methods of divination and augury. He dreams dreams, he
observes omens, he imagines sights and sounds of fateful
import, he fancies that he works wonders, and requires
wonders to be worked for him, he surrounds himself with
all the artifices and instruments of magic, and exults or
trembles-exults while he trembles, and trembles even
while he exults-in the assurance that his faith has made




140                 LECTURE VI.
all things possible, and brought God down to him, or
raised him perchance up to God. The age of heathen
prayer and devotion was the antecedent to the age of
Thaumaturgy and Theurgy. The one followed, it would
seem, as the immediate corollary from the other. The
natural man had discovered the necessity of a god, of a
providence, of a moral authority and sanction, of judgment and retribution; and he rushed precipitately forward to seize upon God, to bind Him, as it were, and
secure the means of access to Him, and of compelling
Him to appear at the summons of his votaries. As a
ruder age had bound its idols to the city walls with chains
of iron to prevent their deserting it, so the later heathens,
more refined in their conceptions, but not more truly enlightened, sought to clasp the invisible and impalpable
to their souls by the craft of magical incantation. The
germ of a spiritual conception of God had been cast into
the heathen world by the hands of Jews and Christians'
but such was the strange and prodigious harvest it produced, when left to grow untended by the skill of the
Divine husbandman.
The impulse thus given to the practice of divination
was accompanied by a revival of the use of oracles.
The impostures which had died to the roots under the
neglect of genuine unbelief, sprang up again, renewed in
life and vigour, amidst the cravings of superstition. The
misery of the present time, the prospect still more
gloomy beyond it, seemed to impel all men of devout
sentiment to anxious enquiries into the future. To the




REVIVAL OF DIVINATION AND ORACLES.    141
happy and contented God is love; to the alarmed and
miserable God is fear.  To decrepit heathenism God was
fear, dismay, and confusion of faces. The priests themselves, stricken with the universal panic, swept along in
the common vortex of despair, amidst the fall of institutions and dissolution of ideas, were the first victims of
their own artifices.  They demanded to qualify themselves for their mystic service by fasts and exercises, by
strict seclusions, by a studied excitement of the nervous
system to a pitch of frenzy beyond their own control.
In this ecstatic state the prophet, self-deceived, saw incommunicable visions, and imagined Divine inspirations.
We need not doubt that much of this delusion was
perfectly genuine. They were given over to believe their
own lies.  Worn out with fastings they saw visions,
drugged with poisons they dreamed dreams, unnerved by
frenzy they imagined apparitions, fluttered by the pulses
of spiritual pride they believed that they were workers of
miracles and prophets of the future. But more conscious
imposture was sure to follow: for imposture follows fanaticism as its shadow, and avenges with a righteous
judgment every moral extravagance.  The impostors
themselves found their Nemesis in the aroused curiosity
of the sceptics, and the final detection of their organized deceit. What yet remained of reason in the
heathen world, first staggered, then irritated, at last
aroused to strict enquiry by the audacious attempt to
master it, tore the veil asunder, and exposed the empty
pretension. The records yet remain; and alas! that in




142                 LECTURE VI.
these days there should again arise special reason for remembering and referring to them,-records, I say, still
remain of the various forms of deception then currently
practised, and of the exact way in which they were effected. We are acquainted with some, at least, of the
expedients employed to represent the apparition of gods
and demons and the spirits of the departed to the eye of
the half-delirious votary. Ife was bid to look into a
basin filled with water, the bottom  of which had been
covertly replaced with glass, with an opening in the
floor beneath.  The form for which he enquired was revealed to him from below; or the figure was traced invisibly on the wall, and lightly touched with a combustible composition; a torch was applied, and the god or
demon or spirit was suddenly displayed in fire. The
ancients, it seems, could employ many of our secret
agents of deceit; sympathetic ink was not unknown to
their adepts and impostors. Their conjurors and jugglers were to the full as skilful as ours; and their arts
were turned to account for objects far more serious than
the mere buffoonery of the streets. It is well, even for
our use and instruction, that those tricks were exposed
at the time, and the record of them perpetuated. The
phenomena of modern  spiritualism, whatever their
actual origin, are, I believe, an exact reproduction of the
presumed wonders of the third century; of an age not
unlike our own in credulity, and in incredulity, in
nervous irritability, in impatience of the grave teachings
of experience. For our age, as well as for his own, even




ANCIENT AND MODERN SPIRITUALISM.       143
the scoffer Lucian has not lived in vain. We cannot
even yet afford to consign his banter to oblivion.'
I have noticed how in these performances delusion
and deceit were actually intermingled. Must we make
allowance for the weakness of poor human nature?
Must we grant indulgence to its fond efforts to create a
soul under the ribs of the spiritual death which it was
daily dying?  Such allowance, such indulgence, I for
one dare not claim for it. I believe that the attempt
was conceived in sin, as it issued in sin. God saw that
it was sin; sin in its perversion of the moral law; sin
in its veiling of the natural light of truth; in its conceit of human power and independence.  The sin was
revealed in its results. For conjuring and necromancy
led promptly to a cruel fanaticism; they excited a fearful apprehension of the spiritual world, of the hideousness of the angry demons of darkness; and to the most
terrible expedients for baffling or appeasing them. An
atonement of blood was demanded for a reconciliation
with hell. Hence the revival of human sacrifices with
which many an altar was stained; still more the conviction, deliberately entertained, that it was only by the offering of man's best and dearest that the inscrutable
could be discovered, and the implacable appeased. Belief in God, belief in a personal connection with God,
in the possibility of personal communion with God, led
the natural man directly to the fearful sense of his
1 See Note B B.




144                  LECTURE VI.
distance from  Him, of estrangement from  Him, of
dread of His wrath, of despair of His mercy. The persecution of the Christians, the martyrdoms of the stake
and the amphitheatre, the cry of'the Christians to the
lions,' was one vast scheme of human sacrifice for the
propitiation of this averted Deity.  The persecution by
Nero was an atonement for the burning of the city; the
persecution by Domitian for the destruction  of the
Capitol; the persecution by Trajan for the overthrow of
Antioch by an earthquake; the persecution of Aurelius
for the world-wide pestilence which swept the empire
with an universal disaster. Not yet satisfied, not yet relieved-nay, as dangers and distresses thicken around
him, more agitated, more alarmed, more furious than
ever-the heathen defies the Christian to mortal combat
in the latter persecutions of Decius and Diocletian: he
will sweep away the enemies of his gods in one hurricane
of slaughter, or perish together with them in the impending ruin of his polity and culture.'
This last revelation of cruelty and fanaticism was not
needed to convince us of the moral superiority of the regenerated believer over the heathen seeker after truth.
Whatever be the weaknesses betrayed by the early Christians themselves, whatever ignorance or credulity, whatever superstitious fancies, whatever extravagance in act
or creed, whatever disparagement has been cast on Christian faith and truth by the errors of its early disciples, on
1 See Note C C.




SUPERIORITY OF THE CHRISTIANS.       145
whom the shadows of an age of darkness still partially
lingered; this I am bold to affirm, that morally and intellectually, in heart and understanding, the Christians
of the empire are to the heathens of the empire as men
of a purer blood and a nobler spiritual lineage. In their
writings, whatever errors we may note in them, we breathe
a purer atmosphere; in their actions, whatever infirmities
we may trace in them, we discover a higher rule. Their
society is pervaded by a new and freer spirit. A new
principle is developed in it. Their love indeed is but the
love of the most refined of the heathens ten times refined; his sympathy infinitely expanded: but their faith,
their belief in the being and providence of God-in the
love and goodness of God-in the reality of sin and
human corruption, mingled with the assurance of God's
reconciliation to sinners-in the one sufficient atonement
by the blood of a divine victim-is a new principle, a
new germ of religious life, the token of a genuine revelation. The fashion of the ancient world is perishing;
and the modern world, with a philosophy and morality,
a faith and practice of its own, is shaping itself out of
chaos. Again the Spirit of God is moving upon the face
of the waters: again the voice of the watchman on the
hills is heard replying to the challenge,'What of the
night?' the genesis of a new heaven and a new earth is
commencing, with the new Adam for their Lord, with
the Gospel for the bow of His covenant, with the new
Jerusalem for their metropolis, and the kingdom of God
10




146                  LECTURE VI.
for their final inheritance. Even from the bosom of an
effete and dying society a new life is springing, in which
the signs of health and vigour, of truth and soundness,
are the more plainly revealed from the very abomination
of corruption which is manifested around it.




LECTURE VII.
THE DOCTRINES OF CHRISTIANITY RESPOND TO THE QUESTIONS
OF THE HEATHENS.
ST. MATTHEW XXVIII. 19.
The name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.
WE have marked the breaking down of the ancient
mythology of the Pagans, and again of the political religion which replaced it; the diffusion among them of
larger and more liberal conceptions of the nature of man,
and of his relation to God; the awakening of their conscience to a sense of sin, and the consequent straitening
of the bands of human sympathy among them; their
yearning for access to God and communion with Him
in prayer, their fuller acknowledgment of His Being and
Providence, however disfigured it became by the extravagance of mystical devotion in the more refined, of gross
superstition in the vulgar; with a resort to magical arts,
with self-abandonment to the grossest spiritual terrors,
culminating in panic, despair, and bloodshed. Many a
mind was now ripe for conversion to the true God, to the
religion which teaches the equality of men in His sight,
which proclaims the abolition of exclusive spiritual priv



148                 LECTURE VII.
ileges, and merges the city upon earth in the city of God
in heaven; which finally leads the sinner to the one
Being who can forgive sin, bids him seek God in the
prayer of an enlightened faith, entreat for reconciliation
with Him, and accept the doctrine of the divine Atonement, Mediation, and Redemption.
While thousands day by day were going through this
spiritual process and attaining to this blessed conversion,
it is remarkable how meagre are the records of their experience which have been transmitted to us. We would
give much for a genuine and full account of the heathen
pilgrim's progress'from this world to that which is to
come.' One partial glimpse at such progress, and I believe one only, is afforded us in a work called' The Clementines,' which pretends to narrate the conversion of a
certain Roman named Clemens; and which, though itself
a fiction, is clearly a fiction drawn from real life in the age
before us. It represents the mental condition of a youth,
devout and pious by nature, harassed by intellectual
doubts, unsettled by the strife of conflicting opinions,
longing for the truth, and painfully seeking it, till led at
length, after many a pang of disappointment, to the only
sure refuge and haven of the soul.'From  my youth,' says Clemens,'I was exercised
with doubts, which had found an entrance, I know not
how, into my soul-" Will my being end with death?
and will none hereafter remember me, when infinite
time shall whelm all things in oblivion.... When
was the world created, and what was there before the




THE CONVERSION OF CLEMENS.          149
world? If it has existed always, will it continue to exist for ever? If it had a beginning, will it likewise have
an end   And after the end of the world, what then?
The silence of the grave? or something else, some other
thing of which we can form no notion  "  Haunted by
such thoughts as these, which came I know not whence,
I was sorely troubled in spirit. I grew pale, and wasted
away: when I strove to drive them from me, they returned again and again with renewed and increased violence, so that I suffered greatly. I knew not that in
these very thoughts I enjoyed a friendly companion,
guiding me to eternal life, nor allowing me to rest till I
found it. Then, indeed, I learned to pity the wretched
men whom, in my ignorance, I had deemed the happiest... But, while thus perplexed and worried, I ran to
the schools of the philosophers, hoping to find a foundation on which I could rest in safety. But nought could
I see but the building up and tearing down of theories;
nought but endless dispute and contradiction: sometimes, for example, the demonstration triumphed of the
soul's immortality, and then again of its mortality.
When the one prevailed I was happy; when the other I
was dispirited. Thus was I tossed to and fro by contending arguments, and forced to the conclusion that things
appear not as they really are, but only as they are represented. I grew dizzier than ever, and sighed from my
heart for deliverance.'
Thus distressed, the devotee of Truth would seek relief and conviction elsewhere. He would visit Egypt,




150                 LECTURE VII.
the land of mysteries and portents, and extort from a
necromancer the apparition of a departed spirit.  Could
such a being be presented to him, he would know for
certain the existence of a spiritual world, the immortality
of souls. No reasoning, no logical demonstration would
thenceforth shake his abiding conviction. But a wiser
man dissuaded him from this vain endeavour, and from
seeking God's truth by arts which God has forbidden;
from sacrificing peace of conscience for peace of the understanding.  The Providence of God led him  at this
crisis to the preaching of the Christians, and among them
he found in a legitimate way the assurance of peace which
he had fruitlessly sought amid the wanton fancies of the
heathen.'
That assurance and peace were founded on the belief
in certain positive dogmas, which themselves exactly
fulfilled the conditions of faith which the heathen had
longed for. The creed of the Church —the creed transmitted from the first preaching of the Apostles-implied
in the sacred records of the Scripture canon-stamped
with the seal of Divine inspiration; the creed maintained by bishops, confessors, and martyrs, through three
centuries of trial, and held by a firm concurrent tradition
in the east and the west, the north and the south; the
creed, finally, drawn out in the confession of the Nicene
fathers, and ratified by the Spirit of God, presiding at a
general council of the Church;-this creed, in its three
great divisions, the name of the Father, the Son, and the
1 See Note D D.




THE CHRISTIAN BELIEF IN GOD.         151
Holy Ghost, replied to the questions of the heathen, solved
his doubts, showed to him the nature of God, of sin, of
redemption, and the fact of a future judgment and final
retribution. It laid before him  the scheme of Divine
providence, for the salvation of a lost world. It vindicated God's ways to man. Not answering every importunate question of human curiosity, it might satisfy at
least every legitimate interest. It might fill him with
faith in the Author of his being, and persuade him that
with Him all things are possible, that to His all-knowledge and all-wisdom may be safely left every question yet
unanswered.
I. The creed opens with the assertion of the being of
God, of one Supreme and only God, supreme over all
powers and dominions, either in heaven or earth, supreme
over the abstract conception of a law of fate, or necessity.
Ile is the Father or Author of all being; He is the Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things that they contain, visible or invisible. He is not, as the heathen had
imagined, merely the disposer and arranger, but the
Maker and Creator.'Look upon the heaven and the
earth, and all that is therein, and consider that God
made them  of things that were not.'  Such was the
gloss of the later Jewish Church upon the less explicit
statement of the book of Genesis; and such was the conviction of the Christian Church, deduced from the undoubting ascription of omnipotence to God in the apostolic preaching, from the immeasurable eminence in which
1 2 Mace. vii. 28.




152                  LECTURE VII.
He is placed in the minds of Christ's disciples above all
being and matter, existing before it, and outside of it,
and independent of it;-as when it is said of Him  in
Revelations:' Thou hast created all things, and for Thy
pleasure they are and were created.' 
Again, there is no conflict between Him and mind;
no rival will, no concurrent principle of action. The
evil in the world and the power of evil, however real and
personal, is only a perversion, a corruption of the good
which He originally created. It exists only by His sufferance, and for His designs, under such limits as He has
put upon it.  The dualism, or double principle of the
philosophers, a reality to them, is a mere expression, an
accommodation to human thought, among Christians.
It is enough for the believer to know that his life below
is a state of trial, and that evil is permitted for the perfecting of glory.
Further, God is Providence, and supports and sustains
all things by the hand of His power. He orders their
coming in and their going out; He keeps them in their
appointed channel; He leads every thought and action
of man to the end designated in His eternal mind; He
is a personal, living, and ruling Providence. He numbers every hair of our heads; to Him  are known the
motions of the stars and the measure of the sea-sands:
not a soul is born or dies without His counting it; not
a sparrow falls to the ground without His noticing it.
Words fail us, imagination itself faints in the attempt to
1 Rev. iv. 11.




THE PERSONALITY OF GOD.            153
realize the infinite foresight and oversight of Providence,
as intellectually accepted by the Christian believer. The
heathen disputant Celsus might pretend that to suppose
there was one and the same God of the diverse nations
of Europe, Asia, and Libya was incredible and absurd;
but to the Christian, to limit this infinite solicitude of
the Almighty to the concerns of a single tribe or nation,
to confine infinite Providence to the fortunes of Greece
or Rome, to draw a fence of human interests and prejudices round His ever outflowing acts of consideration
and mercy, and make God the God of one people-a
mere provincial idol-would be the height of folly or of
blasphemy. The Creed of Nicea threw boldly into the
world this first fundamental conception of a true divinity; and deep was the satisfaction with which it was received by the vexed, the wavering, the terrified schools
of disenchanted heathenism.
II. But again, the God of the Christian is distinct
from  any abstract law and principle of nature.  Our
Theism must not be confounded with the Pantheism  of
the Platonists and Stoics.' Jupiter,' said the Stoics,'is
whatever we see, by whatsoever we are moved or influenced.''God is the world, and the world is God.''God
is all matter, and all mind.' The last utterance of heathen science was the declaration of the naturalist Pliny,
after casting his eye over creation, and scanning, with all
the lights of accumulated experience, the height and
depth and breadth of the universe; that' the world-this
heaven, as we also call it-which embraces all things in




154                  LECTURE VII.
its vast circumference, may be truly regarded as itself a
Deity, immense, eternal, never made, and never to perish.'   Hence followed the inevitable deduction, missed
only by those whose common sense was too strong for
their logic, that all weakness and infirmity,-man himself with all his sin and corruption,-all nature brute
and inanimate, the slave of man, and of creatures inferior to man,-all, all is God. Evil is God; Sin is God.
This is Pantheism, twin-brother of Atheism.  This is the
end to which the Theism of the heathen inevitably iends;
to which the Theism of the Christian would tend, and
too often is found to tend, unless counteracted by the
conviction, real and vital, of God's personality as revealed in Scripture. But for this revelation of God's personality, announced distinctly and characteristically in
the incarnation of Jesus Christ, the religion of the Christian would have run in just the same vicious course as all
human creeds and philosophies before it; no purity of
morals, no holiness of ideas, no conviction of miraculous
gifts, no assurance of an indwelling Spirit would have
saved it; for all these elements may be found in more
or less force among the heathen systems; the salt of
Christianity has been the dogmatic belief in the incarnation of the Divine; in the personal manifestation of
God; in Jesus Christ, the Son of God Himself, God
issuing from God, and returning to Him.'I believe,' says the Creed,' in Jesus Christ the Son
of God.' The fatherhood of God extends over all manSee Note E E.




THE INCARNATION OF THE SON OF GOD.        155
kind, claiming them all as His children, as all equal in
His sight, all heirs of His promise, all partakers of His
blessing. But this sonship is illustrated by the peculiar
relation in which the divine Son is said to stand to the
divine Father.' When the fulness of time was come,
God sent forth His Son... that we might receive the
adoption of sons. And because ye are sons, God sent
forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying, Abba,
Father.  Wherefore thou art no more a servant, but a
son; and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ.' 
This revelation of the sonship of Christ seals to us the
great and fruitful truth of our common descent from
God, and of the place we hold in the divine economy.' Come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith
the Lord... and I will be a Father unto you, and ye
shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty.'2
The fond notions of the heathens, and of the Jews also,
of a federal compact between God and a peculiar people,
are for ever extinguished. The principle which separates
Christianity from all previous forms of religion, the principle of its universality, is finally established. There can
henceforth be no return to Heathenism or Judaism. Any
system which is evolved out of Christianity, or raised
upon it, such as the Mahommedan, must accept this principle as its own foundation.  The enthusiast of Mecca
was compelled to claim for his own inventions the same
foundation as that which Jesus Christ had first assumed
for God's own truth.  The lurking heathenism  in the
Gal. iv. 4-6.               2 2 Cor. vi. 17, 18.




156                  LECTURE VII.
corrupt heart even of baptized Christians, struggles here
and there against it, and seeks to set up a local divinity
in the persons of tutelary saints; but the heart of
Christianity ever protests against this corruption; and the
votary of the intrusive shrine in the corners of the temple is still fain to colour his pagan superstition with fallacious glosses; he acknowledges even by his evasions
that God is one, the Father of all, that all men are
equally His sons, and equally under His sole undisputed
guardianship.
Further, it was' for us men, and for our salvation,'
that God' came down from  heaven;' came down into
the world, in the person of the incarnate Son. God saw
that sin was in the world. He knew, long before man
had made the discovery, the sin which, as we have seen,
became revealed in the fulness of time to the conscience
of the heathen world. He had prepared even from the
beginning the means of a reconciliation with Him whose
eyes are too pure to behold iniquity.  Man was uneasy,
terrified, stricken with despair, and with good reason;
his sin was greater than in the depth of his own self-accusation he had imagined; the power of sin and the
devil, the author of sin, was more engrossing, more constraining; the destined retribution for sin was heavier
than any human terrors had conceived of it. The consciousness of sin was the lurid reflection upon the heart
of the perils and sufferings of the world about it; but
man in his most dread alarm had not apprehended the
horrors of the future sufferings, the sufferings of another




SALVATION THROUIGH CHRIST'S LIFE AND SUFFERINGS. 157
world, which, when once revealed by God's certain word,
would strike despair into the soul of the sinner. Man
demanded sacrifices, the blood of animals, of men, of the
true believers, to avert a temporal retribution for the sins
of which he accused himself;-what would he have demanded-what hecatomb of victims would have seemed
to him sufficient to avert the spiritual punishment, the
death of the soul, the abandonment to hell, to the blackness of darkness for ever-had he been fully aware of the
estrangement in which he lay from God, of the blank
hopelessness of his condition, as an outcast from the divine presence! But Christ Jesus came down from heaven, dwelt upon earth, died upon the cross, was buried
and rose, and again ascended for the salvation of man;
the all-sufficient sacrifice was accomplished; man was redeemed from  the power of the evil one; his soul was
restored in the divine image; he was assured of acceptance with God, and eternal happiness in the bosom of his
Father.  Such had been the terror of the heathen conscience, and lo! such again was the teaching of the Christian Creed.'  Such was the teaching of the divine
records. For it was not a mere conjecture of devotees
and philosophers. It was not the invention of sage and
godly speculation. It was not the augury of a Plato, the
yearning of an Aurelius; it was not the cheerful hope
of a Plutarch, or the pious fiction of the schools of Alexandria. Such hopes, such fictions we have noted and
lamented in the restless perturbations of the heathen
See Note F F.




158                 LECTURE VII.
mind; but we have seen that they led-that they could
lead-to nothing but fond and ghastly extravagances.
And why?  Because they had no basis of fact to rest
upon; no touchstone of experience to be tried by; no
record of history to be traced to. Christianity is history.
It is a religion which teaches by examples; a revelation
stamped with the seal of accredited fact. This it is, or
it is nothing. But this, I say, it is. And so the creed
emphatically proclaims of it. When we recite the solemn
words-Christ'for us men and for our salvation came
down from heaven... was made man... was crucified under Pontius Pilate, suffered and was buried, and
the third day rose again... and ascended into heaven,'
-we appeal to recorded facts, witnessed by men upon
earth, and attested as things most surely known and believed among them. We appeal, now as ever, to a Book,
to a standing and abiding testimony, open to all readers,
addressed to all hearers, upon which sixty generations of
men have successively passed their judgments. We appeal to the long experience of mankind, who have weighed and pondered the records of this Book of books, each
according to his own light and intellectual leanings:
who have pressed it to their hearts in faith, or criticized
it with all the powers of the understanding; have sometimes worshipped it as an idol; sometimes inquired of it
as an oracle; have again sifted it as the pleader sifts the
testimony at the bar, and cross-examined it with heat
and acrimony, as seeking to catch it tripping, and extort
from it evidence against itself. And this is the result:




THE GOSPEL AN HISTORICAL RECORD.        159
the testimony to the truth of our record is admitted to
be more complete, more varied, more consistent than to
any series of events announced in the secular history of
antiquity. No mere man, king or statesman or warrior
of old, is so fully pourtrayed to us in the incidents of his
career, as Jesus Christ in the narrative of the Gospels.
No writings on a common subject leave so little room for
questioning their general agreement on all points of interest as the Gospels and Epistles; the fidelity of none
is more strikingly attested by fresh discoveries even from
day to day of their minute accuracy in detail.  They
claim and they sustain the test of genuine history. No
other account of their origin, however often put forward,
has ever long maintained itself against them; but one
theory overthrows another, each generation launches its
own extravagance, and each gives way to a successor.
The infidel makes no real progress, but returns from age
to age upon his own footsteps. Voltaire's theory of imnposture is supplanted by Strauss's theory of the myth;
and lo! in thirty years Strauss's theory of the myth is
replaced by Renan's theory of imposture.
This Jesus Christ, thus declared, and thus proved to
the conviction of the heathen, has ascended into Heaven.
He has gone back to the Father, has quitted the world
which He visited once for all. No; not once for all
only: He will come again once more; a second advent
remains for us. He will come-not as a Teacher or a
Saviour, but as a Judge; for to Him  the Father hath
committed the judgment of the world, and in the fulness




160                  LECTURE VII.
of time He will determine the future state and destiny
of His creatures. He will come to make a final separation between the good and- the evil, the penitent and
impenitent, the Church and the World. There will be
no respect of persons then; the heathen notions of merit
and works will be utterly disregarded; the philosophic
dream of an aristocracy of souls, a spiritual claim to
immortality confined to a few favourites of God, to those
who can claim  affinity to the Divine, to those who are
themselves God-like, will be finally dissolved. Jesus
Christ will know His own by another test-by the test
of faith, fruitful in holy practice.  The systems of the
ancients will sink into the obscurity they justly merit;
man will breathe again, relieved from the incubus of terror they had cast upon him; he will breathe freely in
the joyful anticipation of a righteous judgment, according to the blessed revelation of the Holy One and the
Just.
III. But when shall all this be   There was a time,
in the first flush of Christian faith, when the Second
Coming was daily, nay hourly, expected; when the believers looked little to the future, which seemed to be
about so suddenly to close upon them, and fancied that
the ministry of Jesus Christ had been but the beginning
of the end. But time went on; there was no sign of
His appearing.  Jerusalem  was overthrown.  In one
sense He then appeared; His judgment was made manifest upon Israel; His Gospel was established on the abolition of the law; Christianity was shifted from its Jew




THE MISSION OF THE HOLY SPIRIT.       161
ish foundations, and the Gentiles were admitted to the
promises of God. Still the end was not yet.'I am
with you,' He had said on His departure,' even unto the
end of the world.' From day to day this saying assumed a deeper significance.'I will not leave you comfortless; I will send you the Holy Ghost to comfort you.'
From age to age this promise demanded its confirmation.
And so, in the fulness of time, the Church of Christ came
forward with the third great article of its creed:'I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and Giver of life; who
proceedeth from the Father and the Son; who with the
Father and the Son is worshipped and glorified; who
spake by the prophets.' And thence it went on to proclaim the existence of the Church as of Divine appointment,-with all the graces and privileges which are
divinely vouchsafed to it,-as the pillar and ground of
truth, as the eternal witness to the faith, as having the
spirit of knowledge, and the promise that Jesus Christ
will be forever with it.
Here, then, was a substitute for the visible presence
of Christ upon earth. Here was an answer to the question, When will He appear? and how shall His Church
continue without Him?  His visible presence is not required. His appearance may be indefinitely delayed.
His faithful disciples shall ever have the witness of His
presence in their hearts by the indwelling of the Holy
Spirit.  The world shall ever have the witness of His
existence in Heaven in the visible Church which He
has founded and protects and keeps for His own for
11




162                LECTURE VII.
ever. The saints of God shall ever have the assurance
of His power throughout the history of religion, in the
record of the Divine operations contained in the Holy
Scripture: for He'spake by the prophets.' The Bible
assures us that the Holy Spirit of God has from the first
inspired and fashioned this record of His revelation of
Hilmself; the manner, the extent of this inspiration is a
mystery to which the human mind has no key; the operations of the Holy Spirit are manifold and diverse; they
act more or less upon all men; they tend to a Divine conclusion in all their manifestations; but we know not the
how or the when, the whence or the whither. They are
compared to the wind, invisible and unsearchable, which
bloweth where it listeth.
But so it was, that when the heathen who had sought
in vain for a basis for his faith in the traditions and
speculations of old, turned to the Church of Christ, and
asked for the proofs and sanctions of its teachings, he
was directed to a Holy Book, a book of vast antiquity,
of high pretensions to authority-a book which gave a
plain and intelligent account of God's dealings with the
world-which pointed to the tokens of His providence
running through it-which evinced design from one end
to the other-which bespoke a unity of purpose, and in
the highest sense a unity of authorship —which revealed
a purer conception of God than any known before, a
higher law, a holier idea of religion-which sometimes
in history, sometimes in prophecy, sometimes in the
character of individual men, again in the waxing and




THE CITY OF GOD ON EARTH.          163
waning fortunes of a people, betrayed a thread of continuity, a sequence, an appointment, such as men had
yearned for and vainly imagined in human affairs, but
had never been able fully to realize.
The City of God took the place of the city of man,
and overlapped it on every side; more ancient, more extensive, and more enduring. The last and fondest, as we
have seen, of the heathen religions, had been the belief
in the divinity of Rome, of the Roman Empire, of the
Roman fortunes. Through many an age of victory and
triumph this faith had grown and flourished, while still
implicit and unavowed. It was in the decline of the Pagan city that men seemed most fully to realize its divinity, and cling to it most passionately. Long did they
struggle against defeats and disgraces, against misgiving
and despair. The faith of Christ was already enthroned
in the East; half the empire had been torn away from the
city of the heathen. Still the trembling votary fastened
upon what remained-still refused to listen to the creed
of Nicaea, proclaiming the Church of the Holy Spirit as
the true city of the Christians. Then at last in the fulness of time came the assault of Alaric and the Goths;
the crumbling of the walls, the conflagration in the streets;
the abomination of desolation stood in the holy place of
heathendom; the temples fell, the idols were broken, the
spell of ages was dissolved; the Romans ceased to be a
nation, and Rome the national deity had no more worshippers for ever.
That was the moment to make a blessed impression




164                 LECTURE VII.
upon the mind of the heathen. Conversion was at hand.
The hour had come, and the man was not wanting; the
man who should interpret and apply, under God's providence, the teachings of the Holy Spirit in Scripture.
The manifestation of the City of God by Augustine, the
explanation of God's divine appointments from the creation to the redemption of man, was a full and final appeal to the conscience of the inquiring heathens, the
stricken and despairing votaries of the discredited city
of the Romans. The manifestation of the Holy Spirit
of God working through all time, by revelations to the
patriarchs, kings, and prophets of old, to the disciples
of Jesus Christ in the latter days;-the manifestation of
a church or spiritual society, revealed to Abraham at
Haran, latent in Egypt, wandering in the desert, militant
in Canaan, triumphant in Jerusalem, captive in Babylon,
oppressed under the Syrians and the Romans; sustained
by heavenly food, by visions and inspirations, by miracles
and portents, by God's effective stay on the right hand
and on the left;-of a church revived and sanctified by
the special revelation and ministry of Jesus, refined and
purified, and brought ever nearer-aye, into actual union
with God; expanded (once more) by communication to
the Gentiles, preached to all the world, established in the
high places and the low places of the earth, tried by
malice and envy, purged by suffering, confirmed and
rooted by the storms of persecution, protected through
every trial, and against all the powers of earth and hell,
by a heavenly arm which no believer could fail to recog



THE CITY OF GOD IN HEAVEN.          165
nise;-this manifestation, I say, crowned as it was by a
visible completion under the first of the Christian emperors, when the Sancta Sophia, the Holy Wisdom  of
God, was enshrined in the metropolitan temple of the
empire-this manifestation established to the full belief
and satisfaction of men the existence of a city of God
upon earth.
And finally, he was encouraged to believe that this
church or city upon earth was but the type and shadow
of the universal city of God in heaven, to which it led,
and in which it became absorbed and mingled. The
things that are seen became to his imagination shapes
and patterns of the holier things that shall hereafter be
revealed.  Such from the first was the mind of Scripture,
the sense of the divine revelation. When the Psalmist
proclaimed triumphantly of the city of the children of
Israel,' Glorious things are spoken of thee, O city of
God,' the Christian believes that he had a further spiritual meaning, and that the holy city on the hill of Zion
was a type of the Church of the faithful of all ages,
transfigured into an abode'incorruptible and undefiled,
reserved in heaven' for them. And yet the two cities
are so closely joined together that he could hardly separate one from the other in idea or in language.'We
are come,' he would say in impetuous anticipation,'we
are come unto Mount Zion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable
company of angels, to the general assembly and church
of the first-born which are in heaven, and to God the




166                 LECTURE VII.
Judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect,
and to Jesus the mediator of the new covenant, and to
the blood of sprinkling, that speaketh better things than
that of Abel."'
And there, according to the preaching of his great
teacher Augustine,-in that abode of beatified spirits,
the spirits of the just made perfect in life everlasting,-'there will true honour be denied to none deserving it,
accorded to none undeserving.  There will be true
peace, where none will suffer harm either from himself
or from  others. The reward of righteousness will be
He who Himself imparted righteousness, and who promised Himself, than whom there can be no gift better or
greater.'
For what else has He said by His prophet:'I will
be to them a God, and they shall be to me a people:'
what else but this:'I will be that whereby they shall
be satisfied; I will be all things that men righteously
desire; life and health, and food and abundance, glory
and honour, and peace and all things?' For so is that
rightly understood of the apostle;' that God may be all
in all.' He will be the end of all our desires, who will
be seen Himself without end, will be loved without satiety, will be praised without weariness. This affection,
this business, this function of our being will be common
to us all, like life itself everlasting.' 
1 Heb. xii. 22-24.              2 See Note G G.




LECTURE VIII.
THE GODLY EXAMPLE OF THE CHRISTIANS COMPLETES THE
CONVERSION OF THE EMPIRE.
ACTS xvII. 6.
These that have turned the world upside down are come hither also.
I SHOWED in the last Lecture how the dogmas of the
Christian Church, set forth by the council of Nicaea,
replied to the most urgent questions of the heathen on
spiritual matters, and offered to them assurance and repose from intellectual perplexity.
What then remained that they should not be converted and baptized into the faith of Christ  Their old
gods had failed them, and lo! a new divinity was presented and recommended to them. There remained that
which must always remain at the bottom of all religious
questions, that condition of full belief and acceptance
which no reasonableness of doctrine, no harmony of system, no holiness of moral precept can alone fulfil;-the
tender and yearning soul of the devout inquirer still requires the satisfaction of his heart and conscience; he




168                LECTURE VIII.
demands to follow the doctrines in their results, to scan
the precepts in their effects, to observe the religion in
action; to know how the professed revelation of God's
will works practically in the world. He wants to trace
the operation of inspired truth upon the heart and soul of
the believer, and above all upon His own soul by personal
experience. He must know and feel the beauty of true
holiness, and learn where to find it, and how to attach it
to himself as an eternal possession. He must comprehend
the spirit of that saying of the Apostle:' Whosoever shall
confess that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, God dwelleth
in him, and he in God."
On bringing to a close the partial survey we have
taken of the conversion of the Empire to Christ, we
must now glance at the aspect of Christian society, as
it presented itself to the view of the still dubious and
hesitating heathen.  The men who had turned the
world upside down had come to him, had found him
out, wherever he was, in the stronghold of his religion,
of his philosophy, of his pride, of his indifference.
They had come to him, and their importunity allowed
him  no rest.  Who and what manner of men were
they 
Now, we read in the lith chapter of the Acts of the
Apostles, that when Paul and Silas crossed over from
Asia into Europe, and preached the Gospel in Thessalonica, the first great city on this side of the Hellespont
-and when some of those which consorted with them
1 John iv. 15.




TEE ASPECT OF CHRISTIAN SOCIETY.       169
believed-the Jews there residing, moved with envy,
gathered a company, made a tumult, drew some of the
brethren before the heathen rulers, crying,'These that
have turned the world upside down are come hither also.
And these,' they continued,'all do contrary to the decrees of Coesar, saying that there is another king, one
Jesus.'
To those who look back upon the history of Christianity, what irony appears in this passage! How peevish an exaggeration seems this cry in the mouth of those
who uttered it! How little had the preachers of the
Gospel yet done! How far were they from turning the
world upside down-from overthrowing the beliefs of the
time, from upsetting the deep-rooted system of religious
domination; from unhinging the conscience of the heathen world, even of that Eastern world, the world of
ancient creeds and philosophies, from whence they had
come'hither,' to the West, to make their first assault on
the steadfast polities of Europe. What had they accomplished hitherto?  In a few cities of Asia they had
impugned the national belief of a handful of Jewish residents. In Jerusalem, the home of the Jewish people
and the Jewish creed, their Founder had suffered death
for His temerity, their preaching had been forbidden,
they had been imprisoned, scourged, threatened with
death, one or more of their number had been stoned or
beheaded; their doctrines were scorned, their manners
and practices maligned.  Such success as they obtained
was limited to alarming the consciences of a few only,




17O                LECTURE VIm.
and those mostly of the lower sort, among the Jews, and
casting into the minds of speculative thinkers some
germ of doubt and suspicion of the will of Jehovah to
save Israel from her sins, and restore her political independence. They had scattered here and there the seeds
of a spiritual interpretation of prophecy, and had led one
man or another to look for a spiritual realization of their
long-treasured promises of a new heaven and a new earth,
and a king from the loins of David, namely one Jesus,
a Saviour and Redeemer of souls.
This was all they had yet effected, as far as human
vision could penetrate! And how had they been requited? Wherever they had presented themselves with
the words of love and wisdom, they had been met with
insult and violence by the Jewish residents in heathen
cities; the feelings of the natives had been prejudiced
against them, they had been overborne with clamour,
the arm of the magistrate had been invoked to punish
them for the tumults insolently raised by their opponents.
They had been driven from one city to flee to the next.
Never, surely, was there a charge more grossly belied by
the fact than this, at this time made against them, that
they had turned the world upside down. They had only
cast off its dust from their feet. Nor more true was the
further charge, more insidious, more invidious, appended
to it, that they' did contrary to the decrees of Caesar,
saying that there was another king, one Jesus.'
Yet there was something strangely prophetic in these
charges. Far as they were from the truth at the time,




THE GOSPEL REJECTED AND MALIGNED.    171
an era was coming when they might truly be alleged.
At the era of the council of Nicgea it was indeed true
that the Christians had, to use a figure well understood,'turned the world upside down;' that they had proclaimed another king, another polity, a temporal rule
under a new sanction; that the whole framework of the
heathen state was overthrown through their preaching,
and a new city established, the law of which was God's
law, the faith of which was God's truth, the chief of
which received his unction from the Holy One, and bowed his knee to Jesus, as King of kings and Lord of lords.
What manner of men, then, it might fairly now be
asked, were these who had thus turned the world upside
down? What was the law and rule of life through which
they had done such great things?
It was none other but this, as declared of old by the
Apostle:'This I say therefore, and testify in the Lord, that
ye henceforth walk not as other Gentiles walk, in the
vanity of their mind, having the understanding darkened,
being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their
heart: who being past feeling have given themselves
over unto lasciviousness, to work all uncleanness with
greediness. But ye have not so learned Christ; if so be
that ye have been taught by Him, as the truth is in Jesus:
that ye put off concerning the former conversation the
old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts;
and be renewed in the spirit of your mind; and that ye




12                 LECTURE VIII.
put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness..           And so after
practical exhortations to divers acts of holy living-' Be
ye kind one to another, forgiving one another, even as
God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you.'1
And how were the Christians seen to carry out this
divine morality?  The Apologists may answer; Justin
and Tertullian and the rest; who writing on the spur of
actual exigency, replied to the current calumnies of the
day, and retorted upon the slanderers of the Christian
Church with truths manifest to all, and which could not
be gainsaid. The lives of the believers were for the most
part exemplary amidst the seething corruption of the
times. The heathens, whose conscience, as we have seen,
was roused to feel the enormity of their own conduct,
and of the familiar vices which had become ingrained in
them, but who had not courage or constancy to reform
themselves, to expel the devil who had taken possession of
their own hearts, might behold in the Christians the example and pattern which they sighed for. They remarked among them sobriety in the midst of moral and sensual intoxication; chastity in the midst of flagrant and
allowed licentiousness; good faith, where to betray a
trust and deny a deposit was the rule and habit of society; forbearance, where hate and vengeance were commonly approved and sanctioned; kindness and charity
one towards another;  almsgiving and collecting for
the necessities of the saints; tending in sickness, even
I Ephes. iv. 17-24, 32.




THE MORAL EXAMPLE OF THE CHRISTIANS.   I73
to the foundation of charitable hospitals, an institution
unknown to the selfishness of the heathens; redeeming
of captives; burying of the dead; courage in the midst
of pestilence and contagion; the fostering care of the
community extended to the infants and the aged; regard
for the sanctity of human life, as the image of the source
and parent of all life; love to man as the child of God
the Father.  And more particularly they might remark
that parental affection, too often violated in those selfish
days, which shrank with horror from the custom of expos.
ing children, and devoted itself with resolution and
industry to the task of providing for the pledge of God's
love in marriage, instead of fleeing basely from the burden imposed by it. And further, the heathen might
remark with admiration the firmness of the brethren in
relinquishing many modes of profitable employment
which were deemed incompatible with the Christian profession; their boldness in the confession of their faith in
the face of the persecutors; in refusing compliance with
the forms and usages of the heathen religion, with the
demand for sacrifice to idols, to.swear by the name of the
Emperor, to wear the chaplet of the triumphant soldier,
to bear the banner of the Pagan army. And finally,
they might regard with awe the patience of the Christian martyrs; their constancy under torments, their selfdevotion unto death, their implicit reliance on the spiritual promises of their Master, who seemed even in death
and torments to impart to them a portion of His own
divine endurance.'
See Note I I.




174                 LECTURE VIII.
Such was the outward bearing of the individual Christian, such the character of his society, patent to the observation of the incredulous world around it.
And such the heathen, proud and incredulous as he
was, himself acknowledged it, in the well-known letter
of Pliny,-the first Christian apology, as it has been
called; when with every wish to find reasonable ground
for the complaints advanced against the Christians, he
could on the strictest inquiry discover none; when the
slanders of the wicked resolved themselves on examination into a confession of their innocence, and the curse
was changed into a blessing. They used, it was found, to
meet together on certain days; theyjoined in a hymn of
praise to Christ their God; they bound one another, not
to the commission of any crime, but to refrain from theft,
from adultery, to keep their promises and hold their
pledges sacred; they partook of a simple meal in common,
a meal of charity and sobriety. And hence the crowning
eulogium which another heathen was constrained to pass
upon them:'See how these Christians love one another.'
Nor were these outward tokens of purity and holiness
merely casual and variable. The heathen indeed might
judge them by the signs which were apparent only, by
outward phenomena; but the Christian knew the law by
which these phenomena were regulated. The Christian
could appeal to rules and public institutions, which became a standing guarantee of the fixedness of these
practical graces. The institution of baptism was a pledge,




THE CARE OF CHRISTIAN MORALITY.        175
given in the face of the Church, given before jealous witnesses, that the believer once initiated, once received,
should keep to the uttermost every promise then made
by him. Baptism was a sacrament, a vow pledged to
the highest authority, to God Himself through His appointed ministers; a vow such as the Roman felt the full
force of, which brought to his imagination the holiest
sanctions of his own religious ritual. Giving his hand
to the bishop or minister, the candidate for admission to
the Christian covenant declared aloud his renunciation
of the devil, the world, and the flesh; his abjuration of
all heathen ceremonies, of the idols and demons of the
heathen hierarchy.  He separated himself from  the
kingdom of the Evil One, and came over to the dominion
of Christ; he swore to be His soldier and servant, as the
Roman legionary swore obedience to his military chief.
He swore to abandon, with God's grace, the lusts of the
rebellious flesh, to lead a holy and a Christian life, after
the rule of the Church and the Gospels, after the teaching of the Apostles, after the pattern of Christ Himself.
He presented his forehead to the laver of generation; he
bowed under the sign of the cross; he rose again in newness of life, in the assurance of a special grace imparted
by the Holy Spirit of God, by which every moral stain
was purged away, and remission of his sins had been
granted to him. All this he said, he promised, he imagined, he felt, in the face of the assembled believers,
with the full assurance of excommunication here, if he
should fail to keep his vow, and of final perdition hereafter.




176                LECTURE VIII.
And further, he acknowledged that to will and to do
all these things required not only grace and strength imparted at the moment, but constant refreshment and
renewal from a divine source of strength and vigour.
The law and system of his Church informed him where
to look for this support, and how to secure it. The
Word of God was given him to study, access to God
was given him in prayer, he might open his heart to his
Maker, and receive Him therein as to a private shrine
and a special sanctuary.  But no private communion
with the Invisible, no mystical union with Him, no ascetic devotion, no seclusion from the world could release
him from the duty of using and applying to his own
particular case the public and general means of grace by
seeking Christ in His own temple, at His own altar, in
the elements of an eucharistic meal at which His presence was specially vouchsafed, in the midst of the congregation of believers like himself. The Christian then
believed-and we believe it now-that at such eucharistic communions a special virtue and grace were imparted
to the faithful communicant. He believed in the presence of Jesus Christ in His temple, upon His altar, in
the elements of bread and wine. And even the heathen, who cared not perhaps to inquire into the idea of
the Christian mysteries,-who would hesitate no doubt
to accept the Christian rule and theory-could not fail to
see in this belief thus publicly avowed-in the vows of
holiness by which it was accompanied thus publicly ratified-in this sacramental act of faith and obedience, so




THE SACRAMENTS OF THE CHURCH.        177
congenial to its own spiritual aspirations, thus from age
to age continued and repeated-an assurance that the obligations thereby imposed were not lightly undertaken,
and would by none be lightly disregarded.
The sacraments, then, of the Christian Church were
a pledge to the heathen of the sincerity and trustworthiness of the Christian votaries. When the heathen beheld or heard speak of them he began to know something
of the men who had turned the world upside down, who
had put faith in the place of materialism, hope in the
place of desperation, love in the place of selfish and sensual corruption-and how they had done so, and why
they had done so. He felt, moreover, the assurance that
they would persevere, and continue to do so more and
more unto the end.
The core of their whole system was plainly the
belief in Christ's personality.  This it was that gave
strength, cohesion, and permanence to the whole fabric
of Christian faith and practice. In Holy Scripture the
believer read of the Lord Jesus as the author and
finisher of his faith; il every office of the Church he
recognised Him  as the great object of his worship;
every sermon spoke of Him, every hymn was addressed
to Him, every prayer was made through Him.  He
was the Way, and the Truth, and the Life. He was a
perfect model of holy living; a perfect example of all
goodness. The Christian could turn from the abstract
conception of virtue recommended by the cold rhetoric
of the philosophers, to the incarnation of all virtue in
12




1 T7S              LECTURE VIII.
the life and practice of the blessed Jesus. And when
he was dazzled by such brilliancy, when he fainted in
spirit at the contemplation of so inimitable a pattern,
when his head swam with sickness at the thought of
his own weakness and insufficiency, he was invited to
come week by week, day by day, to the commemoration of the one sufficient sacrifice, to the holy communion of the faithful with one another, and with Him
of whom they all spiritually partook and were strengthened. In their hearts this Jesus the Redeemer, with
His Spirit the Sanctifier, was gloriously enthroned.
They acknowledged by this act of obedience the kingship and rule which He exercised over them. They
believed that IHe had all authority over men's souls
given to Him of the Father. They called Him their
king, and themselves His people. Of His kingdom
there should be no end:  of the glory which they
should inherit in communion with Him  in heaven,
far above all the powers and principalities of the
Gentile world, there should be no limit in time or
eternity,-no  defect in its circle, no shadow  on its
brightness.
They knew, and therefore they believed. They did
not need the upsetting of the domination of the world to
convince them of their future rule and glory with Him.
To the last moment,-to the day of the battle of the
Miilvian bridge and the whelming of their last persecutor
in the waters,-to the eve of the Decree of Milan, and the
establishment of their Church in security and honour,



COMMUNION WITH GOD.               179
they dreamt not of the fall of the heathen empire upon
earth; and when it came, their first thought was that
the frame of human society was loosened, and about to
fall utterly in pieces. To the last they expected no conversion of Caesar unto Christ; no setting up of a Christian emperor over the nations of the world.' God,' said
Tertullian,'would long since have converted Caesar to
His faith, if the world could have existed without the
Csesar, or Christians could have been Coesars themselves." The heathens themselves were not more perplexed
by the conversion of Constantine than the Christians.
The Church was taken by surprise,-it was put out in
its calculations,-confined in its prospects,-baffled, I
believe, in some of its dearest and most spiritual anticipations.  This event threw  back the near-expected
millennium  into the illimitable future. The political
establishment of the Church of Christ proved no unmixed
good to the faith of Christ; and doubtless there were
many good Christians who regarded it with pious apprehension.  So far were the believers from wilfully setting
up another Csesar in Jesus.
Nevertheless the time had come for the public confession in the world of the Lord Jesus Christ whom
Pilate  had  crucified.  God's  designs were to  be
accomplished, and His ways are not as our ways, nor
can His ends be measured by our notions of expediency
or fitness. The confession of Christ's spiritual kingship
was to be extended to the acknowledgment of His pre.'Tertullian, Apol. c. 21.




180                 LECTURE VII.
eminence over the kings and rulers of this world also.
The believers had passed from  city to city, preaching the eternal kingdom of the anointed Son of God.
They had been misunderstood, slandered, persecuted;
they had been accused of turning the world upside
down, with all its political combinations; of rejecting
the laws of the empire, and setting up another ruler in
the place of Caesar; while in fact the vital principle of
their faith had resided in the steadfastness with which
they clung to a purely spiritual idea, and shrank from
mingling it with any temporal alloy. This self-denial,
this simplicity of purpose, had now reaped its reward.
The graces of the Christian had  shone brighter from
the effort. The slanders of the heathen  had  been
converted into actual truth.  At the meeting of the
fathers of the church at NIicea the heathen were for the
first time solemnly invited to see the men who had
thus turned the world upside down, and had set up by
the hands of their champion Constantine another law,
another rule, a new order of political life. We have
traced through various channels the preparation for the
Gospel which had been long in progress in the minds
of the heathen: the  disruption of their old creeds
and intellectual bonds-the extinction of their familiar
prejudices-the awakening of many new moral senses,
the sense of spiritual equality, the sense of sin, of a
need for a Redeemer, of a fearful and desperate apprehension of their lost and hapless condition. Again we have
seen how the dogmas of the Christian creed, now at last




FINAL INVITATION TO THE HEATHENS.       181
discovered to them, might precisely meet the demands
of the latest heathen speculation; and to-day we have
observed, still further, how the character of the Christian
life and conduct might reassure them in their last moments of hesitation, and complete the golden proof of
the descent of Christianity from God. Thus they were
prepared on all sides. Gently the Holy Spirit had trained
and manipulated them, and they stood like spirits ilnprisoned waiting for the word of God to set them free. A
word, a touch, an invisible impulse, a breath of sympathy
from the source of life everlasting, might kindle their
imaginations as with fire, and set their hearts aglow with
holy flame. And the awful suspense of that central
moment, the solemn issues pending, the suddenness with
which the blessed movement should be at last communicated, and the confession of Christ imperiously extorted
-the final triumph of faith over the sluggish scruples of
the understanding-all this is indicated to my mind by a
striking incident recorded at the time, by a story of individual conversion which betokens, as it were, in a single
typical instance, the operation of the Holy Spirit diffused
at one moment in the hearts of millions.'Hearken to me, 0  philosopher,' said a Christian
divine to one who hovered, wondering and perplexed,
about the footsteps of the fathers as they marched triumphantly to the council;'hearken in the name of Jesus
Christ.  There is one only God, Creator of the heavens
and the earth, and of all things visible and invisible.
He has made everything by the power of His Word.




182                 LECTURE VIII.
and established all by the sanctity of His Spirit.  This
Word is He whom we call the Son of God; who taking
pity on the errors of men, and their way of life, like that
of the beasts which perish, has deigned to be born of
a woman, to dwell among us. and to die for us. He
will come again as a Judge of all their deeds upon earth,
as a Punisher and a Rewarder. Behold simply the sum
of our belief. Seek not with pain and anxiety for the
proof of things which faith only can realize, nor for
the reason of their existence. Say only, Wilt thou believe?  The philosopher trembled and stammered, "I
believe."' 
And so it was with the heathens generally.  The
case of this individual inquirer is a type of the heathen
society, gasping for spiritual life. In this story we read,
as in a myth, the conversion of the Roman Empire.
Argument and conjecture, testimony and proof, had
been accumulated from  generation to generation; the
decision of mankind was trembling in the balance. Then
came the last touching appeal to the court of final resort,
to the heart, to the source of all spiritual faith. God
was in it; the world believed; the Roman Empire was
converted.
Nor is the history of this splendid conversion without its application to ourselves. It is, as I have shown,
on a grand and general scale, the history of many an individual conversion. It shows how God even now works
on the heart of the natural man; for every man is by
1 See Note K K.




CONVERSION OF THE EMPIRE.           183
nature a heathen. Every man has his innate pride, his
fancied claims upon God, his complacent self-reliance in
spiritual things; every man fashions a God or Idol of
his own, after his own heart, and adapted to his own
conceit. Every man has an inveterate hankering after
material things, and rises with pain and weariness to the
conception of the spiritual; can hardly retain his hold
of it, if he has in any wise attained to it. But let fear
or sorrow awaken the sense of sin in him, a sense by
God's mercy not difficult to awaken in most men, and
the whole man is changed. Alarm and agony take possession of him, he will do anything, he imagines anything,
that may seem to offer a prospect of salvation. He
rushes to the extreme of superstition and fanaticism, to
wild and gloomy practices, to magical arts, to purifications by blood, to self-torture and immolation. To restore the balance of his mind he requires the stay of pure
and simple doctrine;-a knowledge of God and of the
true means of grace in Him, founded upon a historical
basis; something firm to grasp, stable to rest upon,
something to fill the heart, to feed the imagination, to
satisfy the understanding. He wants something that he
can feel, and at the same time something that he can
reason about. Christianity offers him an exercise for the
moral, the intellectnal, and the spiritual faculty. It is
abundant in consolation, fruitful in argument, overflowing in its apprehension of the divine. It is what every
tender and pious soul would wish to make its own by
believing. Then let him finally trace it in its results.




184                 LECTURE vm.
Let him examine what it has effected on the souls of
men, as far as his vision can penetrate, and this is but
skin deep; what it is now doing; what it promises to
do in him  and in all men; what love, what holiness,
what resignation, what hope it produces! The lives of
Christians have been ever the last and surest argument
for Christianity. This completed the conversion of the
Empire: this completes day by day the conversion of
the worldling and the sinner. It defies criticism; it transcends philosophy. It leads direct to the throne of God,
to the source of all moral goodness and holiness, and
reveals the object of our faith, the Author of every good
and perfect gift, in whose image we are made, in whose
righteousness we trust hereafter to be clothed. Faith in
Him, thus revealed to the imagination, will calm  the
last fluttering tumult of the soul, and rock us asleep in
the bosom of our Redeemer. And such is the blessed
end to which the sacred record leads us, in words which
breathe a strain of heavenly music, wafted onward from
age to age, from generation to generation:' But ye, beloved, building up yourselves on your most holy faith,
praying to the Holy Ghost, keep yourselves in the love
of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ
unto eternal life.'"
Jude 20, 21.




NO TE S.








NO TE S.
NOTE A, p. 27.
THE language used by Caesar, Cato, and Cicero, in the debate
on the punishment of the Catilinarian conspirators, has drawn
the marked attention of inquirers into the religious opinions of
the ancients.  Among others, Warburton made great use of it to
enforce his opinion that the students of heathen philosophy were
universally disbelievers in a future state of retribution, although
from prudential motives, legislators and statesmen generally combined to uphold one.  More recently, Lord Brougham, in his'Discourse on Natural Theology,' referred to it in discussing
Warburton's views on the general question, and elicited a shrewd
and accurate review of the debate before us from Dr. Turton.' I
will state,' says the last-named writer,'as briefly as possible, the
circumstances of the case. The question proposed to the senate
was, " What should be done, with regard to those of the agents
in Catiline's conspiracy, who were in custody  "  Julius Silanus,
as consul elect, spoke first, and was of opinion that they should
be put to death. Caesar, who, it will be recollected, was an Epicurean, dwelt upon their deeds as crimes to which no sufferings
that could be devised would be adequate; represented death as,
in cases of grief and wretchedness, the termination of sorrows, not
the exacerbation-all the ills of life being dissipated by that




188                            NOTES.
event, beyond which there was neither trouble nor joy; and recommended the severest punishment that was consistent with the
continuance of life.
[" Equidem sic existumo, Patres conscripti, omnes cruciatus minores
quam facinora illorum esse:... De poena possumus equidem  dicere
id quod res habet: in luctu atque miseriis mortem aerumnarum requiem non
cruciatum esse: earn  cuncta mortalium mala dissolvere: ultra neque curm
neque gaudii locum esse."-Sallust, Bell. Catil. c. 51.]
Cato, a Stoic-in a speech also given by Sallust-mentioned,
with commendation of the manner and no dislike of the matter,
Caesar's dissertation on life and death; slightly observing that he
supposed Caesar to consider as false the things that were reported
of the infernal regions; namely, the separation of the good from
the bad, who were consigned to places abounding in every thing
disagreeable and horrible.
[" Bene et composite C. Caesar paulo ante in hoc ordine de vita et morte
disseruit; falsa, credo, existumans, quae de inferis memorantur; diverso itinere malos a bonis loca tetra, inculta, fceda atque formidolosa habere" (Sallust, c. 52). I trace the irony of the speaker in the words, " bene et composite," still more in the parenthetic "credo."  Plutarch supplies other instances of what I have called Cato's humour. See in the Life chapters 12,
21, 24, and 46.]'So far we have depended upon the authority of Sallust, and
notwithstanding the  " Sallustian  style"  [Brougham's Discourse,
p. 28.6] in which he has reported the speeches of Caesar and of
Cato, there is ample reason to believe that he has accurately given
the substance of what was spoken. Let us now turn to the orations of Cicero, and see what information can be gathered from
that great master of the academic school, in his own style. In
the course of his address he mentions the two opinions which had




NOTES.                            189
been delivered: the one enforcing death, the other the severest
punishment in this life: the former, as demanded by the  annger
to which the Roman people had been exposed; the latter, as being
more efficacious than death, which was not ordained for punishment at all. He goes on to describe Caesar's plan, as subjecting
those miscreants to chains and imprisonment and poverty and despair, as leaving them nothing but life-which being taken away,
they would be freed from  the punishment of their wickedness.
So that, by way of terror to the evil, the ancients were of opinion
that some punishments should be assigned to the impious in the
infernal regions, conceiving that, without such punishments, death
would not be an object of dread.
[" Video duas adhuc esse sententias: unam D. Silani, qui censet, eos,
qui haec delere conati sunt, morte esse multandos: alteram C. Cesaris, qui
mortis poenam removet, caeterorum suppliciorum omnes acerbitates amplectitur...Alter eos, qui nos omnes, qui populum Romanum vita privare
conati sunt, qui delere imperium, qui populi Romani nomen exstinguere,
punctum temporis frui vita et hoc communi spiritu non putat oportere.
Alter intelligit mortem a Dis immortalibus non esse supplicii causa constitutam; sed aut necessitatem naturae, aut laborum ac miseriarum quietem esse.... Itaque ut aliqua in vita formido improbis esset posita, apud inferos
ejusmodi quaedam illi antiqui supplicia impiis constituta esse voluerunt, quod,
videlicet, intelligebant, his remotis, non esse mortem ipsam pertimescendam."-Cicero in Catil. iv. 4. 5.]' We see, then, how completely Sallust's account of the debate
is confirmed by Cicero's oration, as preserved in his own works.... We see, also, with what indifference the avowal of Caesar's
Epicurean disbelief of a future retribution was treated in the Roman Senate.  Considered simply as a matter of religion, it seems
not to have been deemed worthy of a remark,' &c. &c.-Turton,
Natural Tlheology considered, &c., 1836, p. 320, fol.
Plutarch, I may add, in stating the conflicting opinion of




190                        NOTES.
Caesar and Cato, and mentioning the curious fact that Cicero had
provided means of having Cato's speech taken down by reporters
for dispersion among the citizens, makes no reference to the religious bearing of their arguments. This may tend to show the indifference of the audience to the expression of sceptical views on
such subjects, but it can by no means invalidate the substantial
correctness of Sallust's report, confirmed as it is by the comment
of Cicero himself. Sallust was about twenty-three at this period,
and had not yet apparently entered upon his public career or attained a seat in the:late; but he was a party man, intimate
with the public characters of the day, and an adherent of Caesar's.
Caesar and Sallust, it may be said, were of the party of progress,
and it was their policy, as well as their temper, to unsettle the
foundations of national prejudice and usage: but at the same
time, it will be remembered, Lucretius, the friend of Memmius,
the client and poet of the nobility, flung into the world his daring
manifesto of unbelief, a work which marks in itself an era in the
progress of free thought and expression among the Romans. The
entire denial of a Deity, a Providence, a spiritual nature in man,
or a moral purpose in creation, in the rhapsody' De Rerum Natura,' is exactly analogous to Caesar's declaration against a future
retribution; while the strange inconsistency of the poet's address
to Venus, the Mother of the Romans, the Delight of gods and
men, the favourite of Mars, the divine source of life, is not less
analogous to the inconsistent position assumed by Caesar as a
materialist in philosophy and a minister of religion. I shall have
occasion to say more, in subsequent lectures, of the opinions of the
heathen at Rome on the subject of Divine retribution. Here I
wish chiefly to point out the licence of speech and thought regarding it, and the indifference with which sceptical views on the
subject of a future life would be regarded at least by the upper
classes of the Empire.




NOTES.                             191
NOTE B, page 35.
The principal texts referred to occur in the Life of Constantine by Eusebius Pamphilus (iii. 7), and the ecclesiastical histories
of the same Eusebius, of Socrates (i. 11), of Sozomen (i. 18), of
Rufinus, and  Theodoret.   I have borrowed from  De Broglie's
vivid grouping of the council in his L'Eglise et l'Empnire Romnain
(ch. iv.).
It should be remarked that the object of the Council of Nicaea,
in regard to the settling of dogma, was not to establish, as is
sometimes loosely said, the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, but to
determine the position of the Divine Son in the scheme of revelation.  The actual symbol subscribed at Nicaea, after asserting the
various articles of our'Nicene Creed,' as far as relates to the
Father and the Son, terminates with a single additional article:' I believe in the Holy Ghost.'  The articles which define the character and functions of the third person in the Trinity, and those
which follow to the end of our received formula, were added towards the end of the century at the Council of Constantinople,
A. D. 381; but, as forming the accredited complement of the Creed
of Nicsea, and popularly considered as included in it, I have not
hesitated to cite them  also as a substantive portion of the symbol
in question.  They serve to complete and bring out in strong relief the contrast to which I point between the scepticism of the
Pagan and the dogmatism of the Christian assembly.
The text of the creed, as authorized at Nicaea, is given by
Socrates, Hist. Eccl. i. 8:-' 11OTrevo tev Etc iva Oe6v, Tarepa 7ravroicparopa, TravrTv OparLTv re Kal.
aopardv rollrjTv.'Ka'l elc Eva KLvpov'Iyaolv Xpl6rov, rov vlov To7  Oeo0' yevvrl0eV7a bK
ob rrarTpbof ovoyevi ~ ror' 6' Tv, tK Rfe o       voia a T OV Tarpol, Oebv Ki OeoV xal
0iU  C e    vor07, Oe0v atlcrvoLv iE Oeov aZrOytov'   yevvr6~Vtra o9 TroLuOQvra,
uocoobalov r)o,rarpi  6' ov ra ravra ~y~vero, ra T~e  v i6) ovpavw Kat ria tv




192                            NOTES.
r, y7c At' rjiu a ToVg avOprovw Kaical 6dt  rv Iuerepav caorTpiav KaeareOQ6vaa,
Kat aapKoOevra, Kai evavOpGorr'7avra' TraO6vra, Kat avaCravra  irT rpilr
1uipa, ave2O6vra eia roC7   ovpavovc, epXd6Fevov Kpivat c)vraC Kca veIKpovc.' Kal eic Tr ayLov 7rvev[La.'
To which was appended an explanatory statement, concluding
with an anathema:
Tovc 6de u'yovTrac, rT-t Ov iro o re OVKtc v'  cal prpiv yevv2rOQvaL ok cv * icai
brT e: oic 6vrov kyevero' fj s erETpac IvroaricreaO a   ovi~iaac faiovrac eivat -
KcrlTarpov,,  rperv,   ao7voltaorv  rovv v T rov 0eov a'va0euari7et' ayia
KaOo2CttKV Katc &Toaroti70tCK KEKKJ7ia.'
NOTE C, page 41.
I distinguish here between the conception of a Future State,
as pretended to be revealed in the ancient mythology, and such
as the philosophers might represent to themselves from the light
of reason or imagination.  Undoubtedly the common sentiment
of mankind demands a belief in a future Retribution, and such
we find to have been the teaching of the earliest mythological
systems of Paganism. Such a belief is implied repeatedly in casual expressions of Homer, and is more positively declared in his
description of Elysium and Tartarus.  Nevertheless, when he sets
himself deliberately to give an account of the infernal regions,
his views become at once confused, and his picture of the state
of the blessed is little less gloomy than that of the punishment
of the wicked. This gloom is evidently a reflection of his own
perplexity, and the painful feelings it naturally produced. As
long as the Pagans could refrain from thinking on this subject,
they might acquiesce implicitly in the mythological teaching; but
this otiose assent vanished immediately when they began to reflect, and to draw logical inferences from the bare outlines of their




NOTES.                        193
traditional creed. The poets, to whom the fantastic stories of the
popular religion furnished inexhaustible attractions, continued
long to foster this unreflecting belief or acquiescence, and the
common language of the people would still longer retain the tone
of ages of a more real faith; but the philosophers meanwhile discarded without reserve the fables of the ancient mythology, and
generally lost their grasp altogether of the idea which lay at the
bottom of them.  The positive side of their tenets on the subject
of a future life will be referred to in another place. I believe
there will be no question as to the truth of the statement in the
text of the general unbelief of the educated people in Greece and
Rome.  The well-known passage in which Juvenal is often supposed to rebuke the discredit into which the mythological creed
had fallen, seems to me, on the contrary, to show that in his view
and that of the classes he addressed, not only the ancient Hades
was a fable, but the ground-idea of a future retribution was
equally baseless. See Sat. ii. 149:'Esse aliquid manes, et subterranea regna,
Et contum et Stygio ranas sub gurgite nigras,
Atque una transire vadum tot millia cymba,
Nec pueri credunt, nisi qui nondum aere lavantur:
Sed tu vera puta: Curius quid sentit et ambo
Scipiadoe,' &c.'Puta,' I conceive, both from  the common use of the expression, and from the analogy of the writer's teaching elsewhere, can
only mean,' But suppose them  true!' Juvenal not only rejects
the superstition of the vulgar, but is at a loss to refer to any more
hopeful ground from reason or revelation for inculcating a religious belief in a future retribution at all. Throughout his moral
teaching he is consistent in confining his views to temporal rewards and punishments only.'Dans les classes cultivees les mythes du Tartare et de
13




194                            NOTES.
l'Elysee 6taient trait's de fables absurdes; un materialismne grossier n6 de l'Epicurisme, ou bien une resignation orgueilleuse a
l'an6antissement produite par le Pantheisme stoicien, parfois un
rave platonicien ou plutot oriental de metempsycose, telles 6taient
les croyances predominantes parmis les paiens eclaires.'-Pressense, Hist. des Trois Premiers Siecles de l'Eglise Chretienne, 2e serie,
i. 111.
NOTE D, page 43.
The ceremony of lustrating the city by a procession of the
priests of the four great colleges (quatuor summa vel amplissima
collegia), namely, the Pontifices, Augures, Quindecimviri, and
Septemviri or Epulones, to whom, in the Imperial times, were
added the Augustales, occurs frequently in the early history of
Rome, on the occasion of disasters to be expiated or averted.
The Supplication was a solemnity of similar import, and of still
more frequent occurrence: in the one the procession made a circuit of the space to which the lustration or expiation was to be
applied; in the other the images of certain deities were carried
from shrine to shrine, with hymns, sacrifices, and other formalities.
Both these ceremonies were resorted to under the empire, as we
read in Tacitus, Annal. iii. 64; xiii. 24; Hist. i. 87; iv. 53.
I refer in the text to a lustration of the city which seems to
have taken place in the culminating period of Roman irreligion,
on the alarm at Caesar's crossing the Rubicon. The historian, Appian (Bell. Civ. ii. 36), says simply: evXia 6e, c &7ri ~opfepopc, rpoi,
ypaoovro.  I see no reason to doubt that Lucan follows a genuine
tradition when he paraphrases this statement with a rhetorical description of a lustration of the city, such as he may himself have
witnessed about a hundred years later, A. D. 56, in the reign of
Nero.  (Tac. Ann. xiii. 24).'Urbem  Princeps lustravit ex re.
sponso haruspicum, quod Jovis ac Minervae aedes' (the Capitol)' de ccelo tactee.' Lucan's representation of the ceremony which




NOTES.                             195
took place on such solemn occasions is ample and vivid, Pharsalia, i. 592, foil.'Mox jubet et totam pavidis a civibus Urbem
Ambiri, et festo purgantes moenia lustro
Longa per extremes pomeria cingere fines
Pontifices, sacri quibus est permissa potestas.
Turba minor ritu sequitur succincta Gabino,
Vestalemque chorum ducit vittata sacerdos,
Trojanam soli cui fas vidisse Minervam.
Turn qui fata deuim secretaque carmina servant,
Et lotam parvo revocant Almone Cybeben;
Et doctus volucres Augur servare sinistras;
Septemvirque epulis festis, Titiique sodales;
Et Salius lseto portans ancilia collo;
Et tollens apicem generoso vertice Flamen.'
It may be interesting to compare this poetic description with
the prose narration of what was doubtless a very similar solemnity
by Tacitus, Hist. iv. 53 (A.D. 70).' Curam  restituendi Capitolii in L. Vestinum  confert.
Undecimo calendas Junias, serena luce, spatium  omne, quod templo dicabatur, evinctum vittis coronisque. Ingressi milites, quis
fausta nomina, felicibus ramis: dein virgines Vestales, cum pueris
puellisque patrimis matrimisque, aqua vivis e fontibus amnibusque
hausta perluere.  Turn Helvidius Priscus praetor, proeeunte Plautio MEliano pontifice, lustrata suovetaurilibus area et super caespiter  redditis extis, Jovem, Junonem, Minervam praesidesque imperii deos precatus, uti ccepta prosperarent, sedesque suas pietate
hominum inchoatas divina ope attollerent, vittas quis ligatus lapis
innexique funes erant contigit.  Simul ceteri magistratus et sacerdotes et senatus et eques et magna pars populi, studio laetitiaque
connixi, saxum  ingens traxere; passimque injectae fundamentis
argenti aurique stipes, et metallorum  primitiee nullis fornacibus
victre, sed ut gignuntur.'




196                          NOTES.
NOTE E, page 55.
Lactantius, Institutionum divin., vii. 6:-'Nunc  totam  rationem   brevi circumscriptione  signemus.
Idcirco mundus factus est, ut nascamur: ideo nascimur, ut agnoscamus factorem mundi ac nostri Deum: ideo agnoscimus, ut colamus; ideo colimus, ut immortalitatem pro laborum  mercede capiamus, quoniam  maximis laboribus cultus Dei constat: ideo
praemio immortalitatis adficimur, ut similes angelis effecti, summo
patri ac domino in perpetuum  serviamus, et simus oeternum Deo
regnum.  Hec summa rerum est, hoc arcanum Dei, hoc mysterium
mundi, a quo sunt alieni, qui, sequentes proesentem voluptatem,
terrestribus et fragilibus se bonis addixerunt, et animas ad ccelestia genitas suavitatibus mortiferis, tanquam luto ccenove demerserunt.  Quaeramus nune vicissim, an in cultu Deorum  ratio ulla
subsistat: qui si multi sunt, si ideo tantum ab hominibus coluntur, ut preestent illis opes, victorias, honores, quaeque alia non nisi
ad presens valent; si sine causa gignimur; si in hominibus procreandis providentia nulla versatur; si casu nobismetipsis ac voluptatis nostree gratia nascimur; si nihil post mortem sumus: quid
potest esse tam  supervacuum, tam  inane, tam  vanum, quam hu
mana res, et quam mundus ipse; —qui, quum  sit incredibili magnitudine, tam  mirabili ratione constructus, tamen rebus ineptis
vacet?  Cur enim  ventorum  spiritus citent nubes, cur emicent
fulgura, tonitrua mugiant, imbres cadant, ut fruges terra producat, ut varios fcetus alat: cur denique omnis natura rerum laboret,
ne quid desit earum rerum, quibus vita hominis sustinetur, si est
inanis, si ad nihilum interimus, si nihil est in nobis majoris emolumenti Deo?  Quod si est dictu nefas, nec putandum est fieri posse,
ut non ob aliquam  maximam  rationem  fuerit constitutum quod
videas maxima ratione constare; quee potest esse ratio in his erroribus pravarum  religionum, et in hac persuasione philosophorum, qua putant animas interire? Profecto nulla.'




NOTES.                            197
NOTE F, Page 59.
M. Denis, in his Histoire des Theories et Ides Mlorales dans'Antiquite (i.. p. 149), thus describes the spiritual deity conceived by
Plato:(1.)'Au-dessus du monde sensible, l'esprit congoit necessairement un autre monde, celui des intelligibles ou des Id6es, et au
sommet du monde des Idces brille d'une eternelle splendure I'Idce
du bien, cl'ou toutes les autres 6manent.  Le bien, dit Platon, est
fort au-dessus de l'essence en perfection et en dignit; le bien n'est
point la verit6 ni l'intelligence: il en est le pbre.  De meme que
le soleil, qui est l'image visible du bien, rogne sur ce monde qu'il
6claire et qu'il vivifie: de minme le bien, dont le soleil n'est que
l'ouvrage, rbgne sur le monde intelligible, qu'il enfante en vertu de
son inepuisable fdcondit&.  Le bien, c'est Dieu ^mme dans ce qu'il
a de plus essentiel. C'est vers cette perfection souveraine que la
raison s'elance; c'est A cette beaut6 infinie que l'amour aspire.
"Beaut6 merveilleuse," s'ecrie Platon, "beaut6 6ternelle, incr6e,
imp6rissable, exempte d'accroissement et de diminution;.....
beaute qui n'a rien de sensible, ni de corporel, comme des mains
ou un visage; qui ne reside pas dans un etre different d'elle-mdme,
dans la terre, dans le ciel, ou cans toute autre chose, mais qui existe 6ternellement et absolument en elle-meme et par elle-m~me;
beaute de laquelle toutes les autres beautes participent, sans que
leur naissance ou leur destruction lui apporte la moindre diminution ou le moindre accroissement, et la modifie en quoi que ce
soit," &c.  Compare among many other passages Convivium, p.
211; Timwus, 28, 29, 30, 37.
(2.) Of God's Providence.  Denis, p. 150: —' Si telle est la nature de Dieu, on peut juger de son action sur l'univers.  C'est lui
qui a fait ce bel ordre visible que nous appelons le monde...
I1 l'a done fait selon son intelligence et selon sa bont6; l'eil tou
jours fix6 sur les idles ou sur le modEle eternel et immuable, il a




198                            NOTES.
partout introduit l'ordre, la mesure. le nombre et l'harmonie.
Si Dieu conserve, soutient et gouverne ce monde, peuc-on croire
qu'il ne s'inquiete pas cle la partie la plus divine de son ouvrage,
de celle qui certainement vient de lui quant a sa substance, lors
mnme que tout le reste ne viendrait pas?  Non....  Sage
simplement par rapport aux objets sensibles, Dieu est juste par
rapport aux esprits.  Nous avons dcl6j vu comment il est le principe de la justice est de la loi.  Mais se pourrait-il qu'il negligeat
ceux qui se conforment a ses decrets eternels, et qui, en obeissant a'
la justice, s'efforcent de lui ressembler?  Quiconque est juste doit
etre heureux,... mais en voyant des hommes violents et impies
s'elever de la plus basse condition jusqu'aux plus hautes dignitds
et.mnme jusqu'i la tyrannie, ne voulant pas accuser Dieu de ces
desordres, nous en venons a penser qu' la verit6 Dieu existe, mais
qu'il dldaigne de s'occuper des affaires humaines.  Les apparences
nous degoivent, et nous ne voyons pas quel terrible tribut ces
hommes heureux doivent un jour payer a l'ordre gen6ral.'-Plato,
Leges, p. 716; collp. pp. 889, 906; Meno, pp. 99, 100.
(3.) Plato seems to have augured the possibility of a future
state of retribution, rather than to have insisted on it as a certain
or probable fact.  When he says, as in the'Laws,' p. 716, that
divine justice always follows those who fall short of the divine
law, he may regard punishments in this life rather than in another.  The use he makes of the mythological fables of Elysium
and Tartarus seems to imply a consciousness that he could not appeal to the reason of mankind on the subject, and must content
himself with working on their feelings.' Quoi qu'il en soit,' says M. Denis, p. 160,'il est evident que
l'immortalite de l'ame est necessaire a sa morale.  Aussi ses dialogues sont-ils pleins d'allusions aux biens et aux maux que la
justice de Dieu reserve a nos vertus ou a nos vices.  " Lorsque
l'ame," dit-il dans les'Lois,' "   fait des progrbs marquis, soit
dans le bien, soit dans le mal, par une volont6 ferme et soutenue;




NOTES.                           199
si c'est dans le bien et qu'elle se soit attachbe a la divine vertl
jusqu'a en devenir divine comme elle, alors elle re9oit de grandes
distinctions, et du lieu qu'elle occupe, elle passe dans une autre
demeure toute sainte et bienheureuse; si elle a vecu dans le vice,
elle va habiter une demeure conforme a son etat.  Ni toi, ni qui
que ce soit, ne pourra jamais se vanter de s'ltre soustrait a cet
ordre fait pour Otre observe plus inviolablement qu'aucun autre, et
qu'il faut infiniment respecter.  Tu ne lui echapperas jamais,
quand tu serais assez petit pour p~netrer jusqu'aux ablmes de la
terre, ni quand tu serais assez grand pour t'6lever jusqu'au ciel."
I1 est impossible d'affirmer plus fortement cette verit6; mais Platon ne la traite gubre, en general, que comme une ample matiere
A de beaux mythes poetiques.'
(3.) On the duty of Repentance.  Denis, p. 104:-' Ne consid&rez, toutefois, que le fond des idees, et vous verrez que Platon a le
premier etabli la n6cessit6 morale de la penitence, dont le christianisme a fait depuis un de ses dogmes.  I1 faut que nous soyons
punis de nos fautes; et ce n'est pas moins notre interet que notre
devoir de courir au devant de la justice irritee, de nous exposer a
ses reproches et a ses chatiments, de r6tablir par la penitence la
sant6 de l'ame corrompue par le p6ch6: voila ce que pr^che le
christianisme; voila cc que Platon enseignait quatre siecles avant
Christ.  Mais la verit6, telle que le philosophe la pr6sente, ne sait
point se prater a notre faiblesse et compatir a notre n6ant...
Le dirai-je?  Emanation du plus pur spiritualisme, cette v6rit6
conserve encore, au moins dans l'expression de Platon, quelque
chose du materialisme des anciens ages.  Le philosophe semble
plus regarder aux peines physiques qu'a la contrition du cceur,
qui seule constitue la vraie penitence.  On dirait qu'il craignait de
n'ftre point compris des esprits materiels de son temps. Mais,
sous quelque forme qu'elle se prdsente, la vdrit6 est la verite, et
lon ne saurait trop admirer de rencontrer au sortir de la Sophistique, et dans la corruption des Grecs, une morale si hardie, si profonde, et si austere.'




200                            NOTES.
In the Gorgias (p. 480) Plato enjoins the criminal to accuse
himself to the judge:-''Eav id ye &dtiG, q aiiK  avroc?' 2UoC rtcg  i )v av K67dra, avrov eKovra
tevat eKcele,  ov 6T TOV   r  tara du6act d6iKCv, xapa Trv dltKcaav,  afTrep 7rapa
rov iarpov, aTrevdovra i07rog utu i'yXpovtoaev ro v6(fiua rT7 &adtciac iV7oveOV
rcv vtxv 7rotlC7C KatL av tvar'v.'
(4.) Under the name of Justice, Plato enjoins the practice of
love and charity towards our neighbours in terms which deserve
to be placed alongside of our Christian teaching. Denis, p. 99:-'Platon rejette toutes les d6finitions de la justice, qui avaient
cours dans la philosophie grecque; non seulement celle des Sophistes qui mettaient la justice dans le droit du plus fort, mais encore cette definition en apparence si raisonnable, qu'il faut rendre
A chacun ce qui lui est du.  Elle lui parait digne non d'un sage,
mhais d'un Pariandre, d'un XerxBs, ou de tout autre tyran.  Avec
quelle force il montre qu'elle revient a dire qu'il faut faire du bien
a ses amis, du mal a ses ennemis! Veut-on dire simplement qu'il
faut faire du bien aux bons et du mal aux mechants?  Et quoi!
est-il d'un juste de faire du mal a un homme quel qu'il soit? N'estce done pas une necessit6 que ceux a qui l'on fait du mal deviennent pires par cela meme?  L'homme juste ne doit-il pas, au contraire, servir jusqu'a ses ennemis, et ramener les mechants au bien
par sa vertu?'  Comp. Republ., i. pp. 331-336, and other places.
NOTE G, page 60.
M. Denis, i. 144:-' On aimerait que Platon fit all6 plus loin,
et qu'au lieu de s'arreter a la Grece, sa pens6e se fft 6tendue A
l'humanite.  Mais s'il declare que les Grecs sont naturellement
amis, et qu'ils sont unis par la fraternite du sang, il declare aussi
qu'ils sont naturellement Strangers et ennemis a l'rgard des bar



NOTES.                             201
bares.  Sans partager absolument les prejug6s de ses compatriotes
a l'egard des Strangers, tout en soutenant que le roi de Perse est
au moins aussi noble que le plus noble des Grecs, que les Egyptiens sont les plus sages des mortels, et qu'on trouve aussi des
hommes vraiment divins chez les barbares, il accepte pourtant la
division grecque de notre espgce en deux parties naturellement
hostiles; et si l'on rencontre chez lui l'amour non de telle ou telle
cit6, mais de la patrie, il est impossible d'y trouver l'amour de
l'humanite.'  Compare the Republic, v. p. 470:-'f alu   yap ro ueiv'EXivulKbv yeivog air  avrT  oiKeiov elvat Icai Svyyevcf,
rT() d pappaplKuo BOve6Ov r Kal auoTrplov.... "EX2iruvac,Uiv apa p/appapotc, Kal fpappapovc "'Ei2,;7C Troseueiv paxo/uevovg re T cJoueV, Kcal Troeuiovc qViae elvat...'"EUvaC  e d"EiZE Vatv Orav T TOrOVTO 6dpoC, ~'boes
[ttv 0i2ovc elval, voaeiv Se e  T ra rocoirVr) TrV'E22ada Kcal aractGiecv.'
And further, i. 373:-'Platon, non plus qu'Aristote, ne con9oit de r6publique que
s'il l'enferme dans une certaine enceinte; il lui faut pour cela un
lieu convenable et de son choix; il veut qu'il n'y ait dans son Etat
imaginaire que dix mille citoyens comme a Sparte.'
NOTE H, page 61.
The views of Aristotle with  regard  to  slavery  are  thus
summed up by Wallon, Hist. de l'Esclavage dans l'Antiquite, i.
372 foll.:-'L'Etat, selon la definition d'Aristote, est une soci6t6 compos6e
de telle sorte qu'elle trouve en elle de quoi suffire a toutes les n6cessit6s de la vie... Ainsi va se marquer, dans la masse des
hommes qui le composent n6cessairement, une ligne de partage
nettement trac6e.  D'un cot6, le citoyen accomplissant a lui seul
la destination de la cit6, tendant au bonheur par la vertu au sein




202                               NOTES.
du loisir; et de l'autre, des hommes dont le seul but paralt etre de
rendre aux citoyens ces loisirs possibles: pour l'agriculture et'industrie, des laboureurs et des artisans, pour le service priv6 des
esclaves.'Cette organisation  necessaire a l'Etat ainsi con9ue, Aristote
la retrouve jusque dans la famille, jusque dans la nature meme de
l'homme.  Car l'homme est n6 sociable.  I1 n'est donc complet que
dans'association domestique; et cette association comprend trois
etres: l'homme qui commande la famille, la femme qui la perpetue, et l'esclave qui la sert.  Supprimez une de ces trois lignes d'un
triangle, et le triangle n'est plus; de m~me l'esclave est en quelque
sorte un troisieme cot6 de l'homme; supprimez-le, et vous n'avez
plus l'homme; l'homme en societe, c'est a dire, l'homme vrai. Mais
la relation d'esclave A maitre ne se trouve pas seulement dans la
constitution de l'homme sociable, dans la famille, Aristote la d6couvre jusque dans le fond meme de l'homme individu: c'est le
rapport du corps A l'ame.  L'esclave est un corps, et l'id6e finit par
en passer dans le langage: on  l'appela purement et simplement
corps, ou#a.'
For the essential difference between the master and the slave,
as Aristotle conceived it, see the whole of the second chapter of
the first book of the Politica.  Compare, for instance:-' bVe    e  opuav oiv Gt6ptarTa  r'a ajXv mKal ro dovlov... oVro yap &a
acrore2olro KaItcurTa rC)v bpyCLv  iCKacTov, {1 iro;2XOTl epyotg i2' evX  dovei'ov.'Ev de roi 7g  apfpapot  rb O 62v cKai doVilov r v aiVrrv exet CraLtv
aT-lov d6, rOTlTO  iVrEL apXOp   OVK eXOVLtV, a/ai yiyveratl 7 Kotovica  air7v
dov';ir  Kal dovi ov.  Ati6  aalcv oi qrotlura'  Bappiapwv 6' "E^''27vac apXelt
eiK6g' Ci- avTarO  biVet /apipapov Kal dovg2ov 6v.''AvacyKc  yap elvai Trtvag  6avai roVic Feiv iravraxo  doiVZovc, rov  6''
oiVa1toV... aflov7t yap, Vcrrep f: avOpTKrov  avOpoTrov Kai iKc  7pipv
yeveaOat 2Opltov, OVTo Kaol e i  ayaOiv aiyaO6v....  "OrT ev oFiv o   XE rtva
Syov 2  aUtCjlif3r7a7GC, cai Et=tv ol yev  C6vact doVi ot, ol 6' E2eirOepol, 42XtOV.'




NOTES.                              203
The inextricable  difficulties in  which  this theory involved
him  must appear at first sight, and are well stated by Wallon:-' Mais,  en  admettant  qu'il y  ait un  esclavage  naturel,  de
quel appui serait-il  I l'esclavage comme il est constitu6 dans la
socit6?' &c.
M. Troplong (De l'nflufence du Christianisrme sur 7e Droit Romain, i. ch. iv.-a book of which I shall have to speak again)
thus compares the views of Plato and Aristotle on the subject of
slavery:-' Platon disait: " Si un citoyen tue son esclave, la loi
declare le meurtrier exempt de peine, pourvu qu'il se purifie par
des expiations; mais si un esclave tue son maitre, on lui fait subir
tons les traitements qu'on juge a propos, pourvu qu'on ne lui
laisse pas la vie." Aristote allait plus loin, s'il est possible, dans
sa thlorie de l'esclavage.  " I  y a peu de difference dans les services que l'homme tire de l'esclave et de l'animal.  La nature meme
le veut, puisqu'elle fait les corps des hommes libres differents de
ceux des esclaves; donnant aux uns la force qui convient a leur
destination, et aux autres une stature droite et elev6e."  Puis l'illustre philosophe conclut ainsi:-" I1 est done evident que les uns
sont naturellement libres, et les autres naturellement esclaves, et que,
pour ces derniers, l'esclavage est aussi utile qu'il est juste." (Politic. i. 2.)  Ainsi l'esclavage est de droit naturel; il trouve sa 16gitimit6 dans la justice et la nature: telle est la doctrine qu'Aristote expose sans objection.'
NOTE I, page 65.
Plutarch  (or Pseudo-Plutarch), De Alexandri l. Virtute aut
Fortuna, i. 6:-' Ov yip, ij'AptLrorL'rYg Cvvepovi2evev avirT), ro70  jauv "E2Qraltv VyepuovtK&C, roi d  pflappapotl 6deuortsoc6  xp6uevoc'  cat r6v [uev  Scg pAoi Kca'
o;iceiov E'7-lte2oVi evog, rotl dE', (5C l5otC' pvroV7,  7po(o  ep6 v/tevo, rTpoo2O, OlO




204                               NOTES.
Ovy2iv evezriVae Kcai Cracerv ViroIJOVcv Vr'v'ye/Ioviav, 6iua' KcotvbO i]tetv  roeOev
dpiUourTC Kal dGtaXPaKrT   r C)v o2uv voiUiv, o~C 7T  2u6y9 #  aCVViye, TO'l
rXrotg fPta6#iuevof, elg Tr avira vveveyK6cv Tr rwavraxdOev, bcrep iv cparTpt
OT7         ovryoc, pirafg rob  iKaovf ical nd;16, Kal rog y7a6ov Kai 6tairag, wrarpida
u~v r7v otKov/uEVVv 7rpooCTaSev  yeai6Oat r6vrcaf, Tv     aKp67&rov d6 Kcal gpovpav TO
crpaTrorTiov, avyyeve~l 68 ro g ayaOov', a'Z^oOv2novc ( 6e rovC  rovVpov'g TO a d8'EXiyvucKv Kca  p3app/apKucv /ut 2XXaMvSt, / z7d6 7r6 TTT,,,#t6d  aKuCtvaKt, jtyS
ic6vdvi diopiltv, a 2a TO (ev'E2X2vtKv &pni, n0 de apTT,  appapav cKalci
TreuaioacOat  KCOltva 6e Tragf E'cOraCf ~/yei7at Kai Tpanr;af, aKa  yatovf Kal
dtaitTa, 6d' aipiaTro( Kal TSKVov avaKepavvvl~vovC.,
If this treatise is not by Plutarch himself, it breathes the spirit
of his age and of his views of history.  It regards the character
of Alexander's conquest from  the point of a much later generation, and of a liberal and humane philosophy.  It judges of Alexander's policy from  a comprehensive view  of the effects it produced, and  ascribes, fondly perhaps, to the man, a deliberate intention of which he may have had no conception.  The earlier
historians of Alexander, and Livy, who acutely criticizes his military  character, indulged apparently in no such imaginations regarding him.  Whether they were right or wrong in describing
him   as a mere conqueror need not be considered here.  In any
case the effect of his conquest was the same, and we may acknowledge our obligation to the author of the treatise before us, for
calling attention to it in his own fashion.
NOTE J, page 68.
I transcribe a passage from  Denis (Idees Morales, &c., i. 369),
in which  he signalizes the effect of the Macedonian conquest on
the  speculations  of  Greek  philosophy, and  especially  of the
Stoic:' Alexandre avait essay6 de faire un seul peuple des Grecs et
des barbares, et de les unir dans une vaste communaut; de droits,




NOTES.                            205
d'interets, de langage, et ce civilisation.  Le Stoicisme semble
avoir h6rit6 de l'esprit universel qui animait le heros cans sa conquOte.  Je le sais, l'idee seule de l'honno te pouvait conduire un
esprit juste et rigoureux A concevoir l'unite du genre humain, et
tous les devoirs ou les droits qui en ddrivent.  Car lorsqu'on n'apprecie les hommes que par leur capacit6 naturelle pour la vertu,
toutes les distinctions et toutes les indgalitds disparaissent: il n'y
a plus de Grecs ni de barbares, de maltres ni d'esclaves; il n'y a
que des 6tres raisonnables qui, possedant tous la libert6 A un egal
degr6, sont tous soumis a la mcnme loi universelle.  Mais pourquoi
ZMnon, qui n'etait peut-8tre qu'un esprit mediocre, a-t-il eu des
vues plus larges et plus humaines que les grands esprits qui l'avaient preced6? C'est que, pour tirer les consequences du principe
moral, il n'avait pas besoin de faire violence a ses prejug6s, ni de
s'elever beaucoup au-dessus de la raalit6: il lui suffisait, au contraire, d'ouvrir les yeux et de regarder les faits.' A cette 6poque, un Grec retrouvait partout la Grbce, sur les
cotes de l'Italie m6ridionale, en Sicile, a Pergame, a Alexandrie, a
Seleucie, a Babylone, dans une partie de l'Europe, et presque dans
toute l'Asie jusqu'aux bords du Gange et de l'Indus.  I1 pouvait
done se croire A juste titre non plus citoyen de Sparte ou d'Athenes, mais citoyen de l'univers.  La vanit6 pouvait encore le separer du barbare; mais les haines et les animosit6s, qui entretenaient
auparavant les pr~jug&s nationaux, s'eteignaient de plus en plus
dans un commerce et des relations de tous les jours.  On vit bientot, jusque dans les 6coles des philosophes, une image de cette soci6t6 mnlee qui venait de toutes les contrees de la terre.  Comme
toutes les conditions se rencontraient dans le Portique et que, selon le mot de Timon, "une nue  e  Penestes ou de serfs et de
gueux," tels que le manceuvre Cleanthe et l'esclave PersSe, s'y
pressaient a cot6 des citoyens les plus riches et les mieux n's: de
mnme on voyait a cot6 des vrais Grecs une foule d'hommes de
toute nation, partis de Tyr, de Carthage, d'Alexandrie, ou d'An



206                            NOTES.
tioche pour se former dans Athenes a la sagesse hellnique.  Le
fondateur du Stoicisme n'etait lui-m^me qu'un Stranger, et ses ennemis lui reprochaient sottement son origine phlnicienne.  Les
hommes, jusqu'alors separes les uns des autres par la distance ou
par la haine, se rencontraient enfin pacifiquement et apprenaient
a se connaitre.  La verit6 et la vertu ne paraissaient plus enferm6es dans les bornes d'une cit6 ou d'une nation; l'on racontait
mille merveilles sur les mceurs, sur les lois, sur la religion et sur la
philosophie des peuples lointains, qu'avait a peine entrevues les
compagnons d'Alexandre; on allait meme jusqcu'a rabaisser la
science des Grecs devant la sagesse de ces Indiens, dont les austerites remplissaient Zenon d'admiration, et dont le mepris pour la
vie lui faisait dire qu'un Brachmane, mourant tranquillement sur
le bucher, lui en apprenait plus sur la patience et sur le courage
que toutes les argumentations des philosophes.  La fusion entre
les idles commengait avec la fusion entre les peuples: les Grecs
retrouvaient, ou croyaient retrouver, partout le berceau de leurs
dieux et de leurs croyances; et d6ja le juif Aristobule, dont l'exemple devait etre suivi par tant d'Orientaux, alterait et la Bible
et les dogmes de la philosophie grecque, pour demontrer qu'Aristote, Platon et Pythagore n'avaient fait que piller Moise et les
prophetes.  Le cosmopolitisme 6tait partout, mais obscur et indecis encore comme les vagues pressentiments de l'instinct.  II devint une th6orie aussi claire que fortement arritle sous les mains
de Z6non et de ses disciples.  Mais ce n'etait, je le ripate, qu'une
conslquence naturelle des grands 6v~nements qui venaient de
changer la face du monde.  Alexandre avait voulu, dans sa gigantesque entreprise, faire du monde entier un seul empire, et
malgr6 la mort qui vint si vite interrompre ses desseins, malgr6 le
dcmembrement de sa conquete, il avait jusqu'A un certain point
rmussi: il avait laiss6 la Grece dans l'Asie, le mouvement dans
l'immobilit6, la vie dans la mort, la civilisation dans la barbarie.
L'audace du conqu6rant a pass6 dans les speculations des philo



NOTES.                          207
sophes: ZVnon, lui aussi, medite une republique universelle, la
grande republique des intelligences, avec Dieu pour maitre, et sa
pensee 6ternelle pour conduite et pour loi.' Que la republique de Platon, ce rave si vantS, est loin de la
grandeur d'une telle conception!' As far, one might say, as in its
historic development, the national Church of Judaism  from the
Catholic Church of Christendom.
MI. Denis, after the manner of the French school of history, assumes without question Alexander's personal aims and aspirations. On this difficult subject a soberer criticism will perhaps
suspend its judgment. The effect of his conquests is undeniable,
whatever views or no views we may attribute to the conqueror
himself. Droysen, after writing the political history of the successors of Alexander, has entered on the great subject to which
it naturally leads, and in his Geschichte des i~ellenismus promises
to unfold in all their magnificence the features of the momentous
social revolution which followed upon Alexander's conquests, and
formed the most general preparation for the reception of Christianity.
NOTE K, page 71.
I quote again from M. Denis, from whom I have borrowed this
contrast between Plato (with whom I class the Stoics and others
who derived from  him) and the earlier philosophers (Idees Morales, i. p. 126):
Qu'on remue tant qu'on voudra les institutions et les mceurs
de la Grace, on n'y trouvera jamais la trace des speculations
presque mystiques de Platon.  M^me si on le compare A X6nophon et A Socrate, non plus aux idWes populaires, mais aux doctrines philosophiques, quelle profonde difference! Ce qui fait le
prix de la temperance aux yeux de Socrate et de X6nophon, c'est
qu'elle nous met a mgme d'agir virilement; ce qui en fait le prix




208                           NOTES.
pour Platon, c'est qu'elle nous d6tache du corps et de la terre,
Le courage, tel que le convoit Socrate, a pour but de nous procurer l'empire, ou tout au moins la libert6.  I1 n'est pour Platon
que le complement de la temperance, qui nous apprend a mourir
au corps, au monde et A nous-mgmes. Je sais que Socrate, en tant
que philosophe, estimait surtout cans la temperance et le courage
la libert6 int6rieure qu'ils nous assurent.  Mais aurait-il compris,
et son bon sens aurait-il approuv6 ce que Platon appelle si 6nergiquement la meditation de la mort?  Ce qu'il y avait dans Socrate de plus original apres son caractere, c'6taient ses idWes sur la
sagesse et sur l'amour; mais qu'elles paraissent timides et terre a
terre a cotW  de celles de son eleve! II ne suffit pas A Platon de
comprendre ce qu'il y a de rationnel dans la nature de l'homme et
dans celle de l'univers; il aspire a la vision face a face du divin.
L'amour n'est plus pour lui cette amiti6 qui doit unir les hommes
par les liens de la vertu et des bienfaits; c'est la passion de l'lternel, regret d'un monde meilleur, et pressentiment de notre future
immortalite. Ces idees et ces aspirations paraissent si 6tranges
dans un Grec, qu'on croit partout y reconnaitre l'inspiration de
l'Orient.'
The relations of Plato with Zoroaster and the Brahmins are
matters of conjecture only; but of the influence of these and
other teachers upon the later Greek philosophy of Zeno and his
successors there can be no question.
NOTE L, page 71.
I would not be supposed to merge Judaism in the mass of national religions to which this language may be justly applied.
The circumstances which render the Revelation to the Jews essentially a religion by itself, however similar in some outward features to the common type of the Heathen cults, require, and have
often received, special and separate treatment.  One great and




NOTES.                         209
vital distinction between them is that Judaism, alone as far as we
learn, presents the character of an exclusive national religion,
combined with the worship of one God.  All Heathen nations
believed in their own god or gods as peculiar to themselves, and
opposed to other gods of their enemies.  There are numerous
traces, indeed, of a tendency among the Jews to this false but
attractive conception; but it is distinctly repudiated by the real
genius of the Mosaic Revelation. I find this remark in Colani's
Jesus- Christ et les Croyances Messianiques, p. 3:-'La grande originalit6 des Israelites consiste precisement en
ceci, qu'ils ont cru avcc une egale energie i l'unite de l'Ptre divin
et A sa predilection pour leur race: il n'y a d'autre Dieu que Jehova, et Jehova a fait une alliance eternelle avec Jacob. La conviction etonnante qu'ont eue certains hommes d'6tre si bien elus
du TrNs-Haut qu'Il n'aurait pu se passer d'eux, le peuple juif l'a
eue, en tant que peuple.'
NOTE M, page 75.
On the opinions of the Stoics regarding the Future Life, I refer again to Denis (Idees Morales, i. 359):-'Doit-on ajouter a cette morale religieuse le dogme de l'immortalit6 de l'Ame.  Si je ne me trompe, les Stoiciens, tant ceux
de la seconde Cpoque que ceux de la premiere, n'ont jamais insist6
fortement sur cette idee consolante.  Caton se tue en lisant le
Phedon de Platon, et non pas un livre de quelqu'un de ses bons
amis les Stoiciens.  Epictite, Marc-Aurlle et Senbque ne parle
qu'incidemment, et non pas mOme sans r6serve, de l'immortalit6.
Jamais ils n'en font le but et l'encouragement de la vertu.  On ne
peut cependant douter qu'ils. ne l'aient admise, je ne dis pas
comme une opinion 6tablie et fermement arr~tee, mais au moins
comme une grande et belle esperance.  Parmi les principaux repr6sentants du Portique, Panetius est le seul qui nous soit signal6
14




210                                NOTES.
comme niant toute espbce ce vie future, malgr6 sa predilection
pour Platon....  Quant aux autres Stoiciens, leurs opinions
peuvent sembler etranges, mais elles indiquent 6videmment la
permanence possible de l'ame.  "Ils avangait," nous dit Cic6ron,
" que les ames continuent A exister aprbs qu'elles sont sorties du
corps, mais qu'elles ne doivent point toujours durer, nous gratiiiant ainsi non de l'immortalit, mais d'une longue vie, a peu pres
comme des corneilles."   Diogene nous explique ces mots de Cic6ron.  Selon lui, Cleanthe pensait que les ames se conservent jusqu'a la conflagration du monde, c'est-A-dire, jusqu'au moment ou
l'univers rentre dans le sein de Jupiter d'ou il est sorti, de sorte
que toutes les ames, celles des hommes et celles des dieux, doivent
un jour se perdre et s'andantir dans la substance de l'Etre premier.
Mais Chrysippe n'accordait cette permanence et cette duree qu'aux
ames des gens de bien et des sages.*  I1 parait done penser avec
Platon, que ]'ame n'emporte avec elle dans lautre vie que ses actes
intellectuels et moraux.  L'ame survit done au corps, du moins
lorsqu'elle a 6t6 vertueuse; et selon Chrysippe, elle conserve les
vertus et les verit6s dont elle s'est orn6e.  Mais sur quelles preuves
les Stoiciens affirmaient-ils cette espbce d'immortalit6?  Je n'en
trouve qu'une seule; s'il faut en  croire S6neque, nous devons regarder comme tout stoicien l'argument du consentement unanime
* [Comp. Plutarch, De Placit. Philos iv. 7.' 0O ST-WiKOl et.ovoaov aT OV aotCLTWV
vbroqepeaoaL a  T    E~V rev  eveOrTpav anta TO7Z avy~Kptiaaot  yeveCOaL, TaVTlV S' eyvam Te V
aTraL8ev'TWV, T 6V' ioavpoTepav, oia eoTil 7rep T'OVS  o-oob, Kal -ekXpt Tg s eKrvpc6oeows.
Seneca, Consol. ad AMlarc. 26.'Et quum tempus advenerit, quo se mundus renovatu
rus exstinguat: viribus ista sese suis cmdent, et sidera sideribus incurrent, et omni
flagrante materia, uno igne, quicquid nunc ex disposito lucet, ardebit. Nos quoque,
felices animae, et eterna sortitse, quum Deo visum erit iterum ista moliri, labentibus
-unctis, et ips.e parva ruinse ingentis accessio, in antiqua elementa vertemur.' Comp.
also Epict. Diss. iii. 13. 1. Eusebii Prcepar. EvaGzgel. sv. 20.'To 6  8StaFvcetv 7T&a
ivXds oViOw Xe^ovoV,  OT SLane4vo/ev  1ae; 4ivXat yv6ev6aevoL, rov aerogaTo XC PLO0evTro
Kal eli eAaMTTo fLeTaP3ah6vro1  o(bo(v  v T gV TbS 4vxiS. Tas S6 T&v a.p6vosv Kae aoX6ywv  aoLv
vvx&a avvaerA^vdvaQact'oS crT/aoas.']




NOTES.                            211
des peuples....  Si les Stoiciens se bornaient r         eellement a
cette raison, j'en conclurais qu'ils ne voulaient pas abandonner
l'immortalit6 de l'ame, parce qu'elle est une opinion salutaire, mais
aussi qu'elle ne faisait point partie de leurs dogmes arrptes et philosophiques.  Ils ne Ia rattachaient pas d'ailleurs au principe moral. Car c'est pour eux une idee invariable que la vertu se suffit
a elle-m~me, et qu'elle trouve en soi sa recompense, comme le vice
renferme en soi sa propre punition. Or, si les bons avaient dcu recevoir dans une autre vie le prix de leurs vertus, pourquoi les mechants n'auraient-ils aussi renu le prix de leurs actions mauvaises?
Mais ni Cleanthe, ni Chrysippe, ni leurs disciples grecs ou romains
de l'poque imperiale ne paraissent avoir admis cette necessit6 soit
de la recompense, soit de l'expiation;... pour eux toute
mauvaise action porte en.elle-mmle son chatiment, et le vice ne
parait heureux qu'aux insenses. Ils ne voulaient pas d'ailleurs
qu'on dirigeat les hommes par la crainte des dieux et de leurs
vengeances.  " Non," disait Chrysippe, "ce n'est pas un bon moyen
de d6tourner les hommes de'injustice que la crainte des dieux."
"I1 ne faut done pas traiter les hommes comme des enfants a qui
l'on fait peur, et il n'y a de veritable moralitO que lorsqu'on aime
et qu'on embrasse la vertu pour elle-mame et par raison.  Voila
le motif, je n'en doute pas, pour lequel les Stoiciens parlaient si
peu de l'immortalit6 de l'ame, et ne se riaient pas moins que les
Epicuriens de tout ce qu'on dcbite sur les enfers.  Platon aime a
insister sur les croyances populaires: il est politique autant que
moraliste.  Les Stoiciens ne sont plus que moralistes; ils blament
Platon d'avoir eu recours a des fables et presqu'a une fraude,
parce que le philosophe ne doit pas remplacer la verit6 et la raison
par l'imagination, ni la moralit6 par l'egoisme et la peur.'




212                             NOTES.
NOTE N, Page 77.
M. Denis, Idles Morales, i. 344:-' Si la loi n'est que la droite
raison, elle n'existe que pour les Otres raisonnables. D'oui il suit
qu'il n'y a  aucun droit naturel entre les hommes et les bates.
Mais il en existe un entre les hommes, et nul ne peut le violer
sans crime et sans abjurer la nature, puisque tous participent a la
raison.  Or, c'est cette participation, cette sorte de parent6 rationnelle, qui est le fondement de la justice et de la communaut6
sociale.  I1 y a plus: le mOme cdroit unit les hommes ct les dieux,
puisqu'ils ont une origine et une nature communes.  II les rattache les uns et les autres au principe de la nature et de la v6rit6,
A Jupiter, d'ou emanent toute justice et toute raison.  Que si c'est
la communaut6 de droit qui constitue l':tat, il n'y a donc qu'un
seul Itat, comme il n'y a qu'une loi universelle: c'est le monde,
r6publique des hommes et des dieux.  " I1 n'y a pas plus d':tats
distingu6s par nature," disait Aristote, " qu'il n'y a naturellement
de maisons, d'h6ritages ou de boutiques de serruriers et de chirurgiens."  Done tons les ERtats de la terre ne le sont que de nom;
le monde seul l'est de fait et de droit.  Aussi les Stoiciens ne
regardaient-ils pas comme des magistrats ceux qui ne doivent
leurs titres et leur autorit6 qu'aux suffrages du sort ou de la foule.
Le seul lgislateur, le seul magistrat, le seul juge, le seul souverain lgitime est le sage.  De 1  ce paradoxe que le sage seul est
libre et citoyen, tandis que les insens6s ne sont que des exiles, des
Strangers et des esclaves.  II y a un grand sens sous ces 6tranges
paroles...    N. ous trouvons dans cette fiction une haute
pens6e philosophique, l'id6e de la sociWt6 des esprits, dout Dieu
est le pere et le souverain. Et quand nous voyons que le Stoicisme
admettait dans cette cit6 inferieure les esclaves si meprisds des
anciens, nous oublions volontiers ses imaginations antiphysiques,
pour saluer la premiere apparition du droit et de l'humanit6....




NOTES.                            213
M. Denis adds in a note a little further on:-' La thdorie de la loi
et de la cit6 universelles a et6 donn6e par quelques modernes
comme appartenant surtout a Cic6ron et aux Stoiciens postdrieurs.
C'est une des plus graves erreurs historiques.  Quancd je n'aurais
pas les tdmoignages de Plutarque, de Clement d'Alexandrie, de
Philon et de bien d'autres qui attribuent cette th6orie au Stoicisme
en g6n6ral, je saurais par Ciceron m~me que c'est la une thdorie
toute stoicienne.  Dans les Lois il avoue qu'il expose les id6es du
Portique.  Dans les trait6s des Fins, des Devoirs, de la Nature
des Dieux, et dans les Acadcmiques, il donne cette th6orie non
pour sienne, mais comme appartenant a Z6non et Chrysippe. J'en
dis autant de S6nbque, et d'Epictbte, qui en parlent toujours comme
c'une chose reconnue.  Et n'est-il pas question de la loi unique
et universelle dans l'hymne m~me de Cl6anthe?'
The beatification, so to say, of the true philosophers hereafter,
and the spiritual communion of the saints of Stoicism in heaven,
is a well-known dogma of the school, though not altogether peculiar to it; for which it is sufficient to cite the verses of Lucan.
Pharscal. viii. init.:'Quodque patet terras inter lunseque meatus
Semidei Manes habitant, quos ignea virtus,
Innocuos vitae, patientes setheris imi
Fecit, et seternos animam collegit in orbes.
Non illic auro positi, non thure sepulti
Perveniunt. Illic postquam se lumine vero
Implevit, stellasque vagas miratus et astra
Fixa polis, vidit quanta sub nocte jaceret
Nostra dies....




214                           NOTES.
NOTE 0, page 77.
St. Augustin, De vera Neligione, i. 3:-' Si enim Plato ipse viveret, et me interrogantem non aspernaretur; vel potius, si quis ejus discipulus, eo ipso tempore quo vivebat, eum interrogaret, cum sibi ab illo persuaderetur, non corporeis oculis, sed pura mente veritatem  videri: cui quwecumque
anima inhaesisset, earn  beatam  fieri atque perfectam: ad quam
percipiendam mihil magis impedire quam  vitam libidinibus deditam et falsas imagines rerum sensibilium, quae nobis ab hoc sensibili mundo per corpus impressae varias opiniones erroresque generarent: quamobrem sanandum esse animum ad intuendam incommutabilem  rerum  formam, et eodem  modo semper se habentem
atque undique sui similem pulcritudinem, nec distentam locis, nec
tempore variatam, sed unum atque ideml omni ex parte servantem,
quam  non crederent esse homines, cum  ipsa vere summeque sit:
coetera nasci, occidere, fluere, labi, et tamen in quantum  sunt, ab
illo feterno Deo per ejus veritatem  fabricata constare: in quibus
animre tantum rationali et intellectuali datum est, ut ejus Teternitatis contemplatione perfruatur, atque afficiatur orneturque ex ea,
aeternamque vitam  possit mereri: sed dum  nascentium  atque
transeuntium rerum amore ac dolore sauciatur, et dedita consuetudini hujus vitae atque sensibus corporis, inanibus evanescit imaginibus, irridet eos qui dicunt esse aliquid quod nec istis videatur
oculis. nec ullo phantasmate cogitetur, sed mente sola et intelligentia cerni queat:-cum  haec ergo a magistro sibi persuaderentur, si ex eo quaereret ille discipulus, utrum  si quisquam existeret
vir magnus atque divinus, qui talia populis persuaderet credenda
saltem, si persipere non valerent, aut si qui possent percipere, non
pravis opinionibus multitudinis implicati, vulgaribus obruerentur
erroribus, eum divinis honoribus dignum judicaret:-responderet,
credo, ille, non posse hoc ab homine fieri, nisi quem forte ipsa Dei




NOTES.                            215
Virtus atque Sapientia ab ipsa rerum natura exceptum, nec hominum magisteiro, sed intima illuminatione ab incunabulis illustratum, tanta honestaret gratia, tanta firmitate roboraret, tanta denique majestate subveheret, ut omnia contemnendo qu.e pravi
homines cupiunt, et omnia perpetiendo quae horrescunt, et omnia
faciendo quse mirantur, genus humanum ad tam salubrem fidem
summo amore atque auctoritate converteret.'
NOTE P, page 96.
I cannot better illustrate this subject than by extracts from
Amedce Thierry's'Tableau de l'Empire Romain,' one chapter of
which (p. 273, foll.) is entitled  "Marche  vers l'Unit6 par le
Droit':' Otu  e d~c]le avec un surcrolt d'evidence cette r6volution
[marche vers l'unit6] dont nous retrouvons partout les vestiges,
c'est dans l'histoire du droit romain.... On l'y suit pas a
pas, depuis la grossirre organisation des sujets de Romulus, jusqu'au jour ou, de transformations en transformations, ce droit
local, devenu une formule applicable a toutes les societes, et, comme
on l'a dit, la raison 6crite, nous annonce a son tour, par la voix de
la science juridique, que la petite association des bords du Tibre
est devenue aussi l'association universelle.' Le droit primitif de Rome se montre a nous en effet avec un'
caractbre de rudesse tout a fait original.  La famille y est constitu6e sur des bases sans analogie ailleurs, les jurisconsultes
romains eux-memes nous l'affirment: ces bases sont la puissance
paternelle et la puissance maritale, qui se rattache 6troitement a la
premiere.'Dans cette  organisation l'esprit aristocratique domine, la
famille a sa rbgle particulibre, son autorit6 absolue.... Le
droit de propri6t6, de domaine, est un droit exclusif romain, au




216                            NOTES.
moins quant aux immeubles; l'etranger n'y participe qu'en vertu
d'un privilege special, comme le Latin et l'Italien.' Ce droit si fortement marque au cachet du patriciat, le patriciat s'6tait reserv6 le privilege de l'interpr6ter.  II avait seul le
clef de cette procedure a moiti6 religieuse, de ces jours fastes et
n6fastes, de ces gestes symboliques, de ces paroles fatales, qui
dominaient la loi. Mais les mysteres du sacerdoce juridique furent
enfin d6voil6s.... Le droit passe des-lors de l'6tat de tradition et de doctrine occulte a l'6tat'de science.'Mais tandis que, dans sa sphere propre et dans son d6veloppement normal, la jurisprudence civile 6prouvait ces grands changements, il s'etait ouvert en dehors d'elle une carrihre de discussion
bien autrement libre, un champ de progres bien autrement vaste,
par la creation de la pr6ture..'La preture eut pour objet l'administration  de la justice.
Papinien en definit les attributions principales par les trois mots,
aider, suppleer, corriger le droit civil: aider la loi en l'interpr6tant
quand elle 6tait obscure; la supplier quand elle etait muette; la
corriger quand elle choquait dans l'application le sentiment naturel
d'6quit6, ou quand elle ne concordait plus avec les besoins contemporains et le changement des mceurs..' La juridiction pr6torienne avait eu, des le principe, un grand
problhme A resoudre, celui-ci: quel droit 6tait applicable aux
Strangers?..   Or la loi romaine 6tait, dans toute son
5tendue, le patrimoine du Romain; dans certaines proportions
d~termin6es, le privilege du Latin ou de l'Italien; mais le provincial, mais le sujet d'un gouvernement vassal, quand ils se trouvaient
A Rome, ne pouvaient invoquer aucune loi ecrite.  Quelle legislation auraient-ils rdclamee comme leur bien?' La difficulte fut tranchee comme elle devait l'ftre: le preteur,
dans la necessit6 de rendre justice sans loi pre6tablie, fit la loi luimnme; son 6dit, interpr6tatif du droit civil quant au Romain, fut,
quant a l'6tranger, un acte l1gislatif pur.  Et lorsque le pr6teur




NOTES.                             217
des Strangers vit se presser autour de son tribunal des representants du monde entier, Europeens, Africains, Asiatiques, hommes
civilises, hommes barbares, quand  il rendit des sentences qui
retentissaient bientot d'Italie en Grace, et de Grace en Asie, le
droit prdtorien prit une importance, la dignit6 pretorienne un
eclat..'Cette obligation de tout construire imposait l'obligation de
chercher et de connaitre beaucoup.  On se livre avec empressement A l'6tude des legislations qui regissaient les plus considerables, et les plus  cclairdes des nations conquises..' Ce ne fut meme 1 qu'un premier degr6 dans le travail de la
generalisation.  Des donndes de l'exp~rience, l'esprit s'elanga vers
les speculations abstraites. I1 voulut remonter aux notions eternelles du juste et de l'injuste pour en redescendre, avec des pr6ceptes et des regles de philosophie morale suplrieures a tous les
faits juridiques, au droit des gens comme au droit civil; et le droit
naturel se forma a F'aide de la philosophic grecque, a l'aide surtout du Stoicisme, dont la doctrine ferme et 6levee convenait bien
a la gravit6 des lois..'Grace A cette science nouvelle, l'etranger eut sa loi qu'il put
invoquer, et qui prit de jour en jour plus de stabilit6 cdans l'dit
du prateur...... C'est ainsi qu'il se crea un domaine du droit
des gens, qui vint se placer a cotc du domaine quiritaire; une
propriet6 pretorienne, etc.....  On apercoit d'un  coup  d'cil
quelle alteration ce m6lange dut apporter dans le droit national.
Le droit pretorien, devenu synonyme d'"eqite, representa le bon
sens humain et la science philosophique, en opposition a l'interpr&tation et a la routine du droit civil....' C'est A partir de cette epoque  [of the edictum perpetuum of
Hadrian and the edictum provinciale of M. Aurelius]' que le droit
romain, fond6 sur ses deux bases, 6galement solides d6sormais, la
loi des Douze Tables et Fl'dit perpetuel, se developpe avec le plus
de r6gularit6.  La lutte f~conde des 6coles avait produit ses




218                            NOTES.
fruits; les idees s'6taient fixees; la conciliation du monde romain,
qui marchait alors aI si grands pas, acc6lerait la conciliation du
droit civil et du droit des gens, dans les theories de la science...'Les travaux des jurisconsultes contemporains de Septime et
d'Alexandre S6vbre nous montrent l'alliance du droit quiritaire et
du droit universel dans son plus beau developpement.  A mesure
qu'on s'6loigne de ce siecle, l'element national ddcroit, son sens
antique devient de moins en moins compris, son cachet s'efface; et
dans la legislation de Justinien, d'elagage en elagage, le droit romain se rdduit a peu pros au droit des gens....'Au frontispice de ce grand edifice on lit des lignes telles que
celles-ci: —'" 1. Justitia est constans et perpetua voluntas jus suum cuique
tribuendo.  Ulpian. 1. x. Dig. de Just. et Jur.'" 2. Jurisprudentia est divinarum atque humanarum rerum notitia; justi atque injusti scientia.  Ulpian. 1. x. Dig. cod. tit.
"' 3. Veluti erga deum religio; ut parentibus et patriae pareamus.  Pompon. 1. ii. Dig. de Just. et Jur.' 4. Utpote cum  jure naturali omnes liberi nascerentur....
sed postea quam jure gentium servitus invasit. JUlpian. 1. iv. Dig.
de Just. et Jur.'  Servitus est constitutio juris gentium  qua quis dominio
alieno contra naturam subjicitur. Florent. 1. ix. Dig. de Stat.
ornz.'" 5. Juris prsecepta sunt haec: Honeste vivere, alterum non laedere, suum cuique tribuere.  Ulpian. 1. x. Dig. de Just. et Jur..."'C'est dans ce dernier etat que le droit romain nous est arrive,
et qu'il a fond6 les mceurs des nations modernes sorties de la societe romaine.  I1 y tient une place immense; et cette place
s'agrandira encore    meesure que les restes de la barbarie feodale
disparaltront en Europe, et que la civilisation s'etendra.  " Si les
lois romaines," dit Bossuet, " ot paru si saintes que leur majest6
subsiste encore, malgr6 la ruine de l'Empire, c'est que le bon sens




NOTES.                        219
qui est le maitre de la vie humaine, y regne partout, et qu'on ne
voit nulle part une plus belle application des principes de l'quite
naturelle."'
These extracts may suffice to indicate the nature of M. Thierry's argument, which well deserves a more complete study. It
must lead to the conclusion that the expansion of Roman law was
caused not by the influence of individual statesmen and legislators, in advance of their age, nor by the more general diffusion of
philosophical views, nor, again, by the humanizing tendency of
Christian sentiments. It was mainly at least the work of natural
circumstances; it flowed from the necessity of the position of a
conquering people in the centre of a great aggregation of subject
communities. The attempt to trace every liberal advance in Roman ideas of law to Christian influence must be regarded as unsuccessful. The rhetoric of a writer like Chateaubriand on such
a subject may be dismissed as frivolous. Hugo, in his'History
of Roman Law,' refers to a work of Rhoer directed especially to
this point, which does not appear to have deserved much attention. Hugo himself considers the influence of Christianity in this
matter to have been,'on the whole less than might have been expected' (~ 382), a phrase wanting in clearness and precision.
More recently, M. Troplong has written his work I De l'Influence
du Christianisme sur le Droit Civil des Romains,' in which the
subject is treated with ample learning, and with all the neatness
and logical acumen of a great French scholar, except for the original confusion, as it seems to me, between cause and effect. In
the main, I should contend that the expansion of Roman law led
to a just appreciation of Christianity, rather than the converse.




220                        NOTES.
NOTE Q, page 100.
I have pointed out some particulars in which the teaching of
St. Paul seems to be imbued with the ideas of Roman jurisprudence.  Seeking to place before his readers the true relation in
which the believer stands to God, he adopts significant illustrations from a subject familiar to himself, and familiar perhaps at
the same time to those whom he immediately addresses.
1. The mission of our Lord Jesus Christ for the salvation of
man is described in Scripture in two ways; sometimes as being
done of His own will, sometimes as the accomplishment of a task
imposed on Him by the Father. It will be found that while St.
John and St. Peter represent it in the former light, St. Paul introduces the notion of the Father's will controlling Him, and insists
strongly upon it. Thus we have in St. John's Gospel, xviii. 37:'To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the
world; that I should bear witness of the truth.' 1 Epist. iii. 16:'Because He laid down his life for us.' St. Peter, 1. iii. 18:'Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust.'
Comp. iv. 1. In one place St. John passes on towards the other
view, where he says (1. iv. 9):' In this was manifested the love of
God towards us, because that God sent His only begotten Son into
the world that we might live through Him.' But in St. Paul, the
view  of Christ's work being one of obedience to the Father
becomes more prominent. Romans iii. 25:' Whom God hath set
forth to be a propitiation.' V. 19:'As by one man's disobedience
many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be
made righteous.' Gal. i. 4:' Who gave Himself for our sins,. 
according to the will of God the Father.' Phil. ii. 8:'Who. 
humbled Himself and became obedient unto death.' Col. i. 19:'It pleased the Father that in Him should all fulness dwell; and
having made peace through the blood of His cross, by Him to
reconcile all things unto Himself.' Heb. v. 8:' Though He were




NOTES.                          221
a son, yet learned He obedience by the things which He suffered.'
Comp. x. 7. It is not meant that there is any real discrepancy in
the two views here indicated, but that the one apostle dwells
more upon the obedience of Christ, the others on the spontaneousness of His sacrifice.
But this notion of the absolute subjection of the Son to the
Father agrees exactly with the well-known principle of Roman law
involved in the patria potestas, or authority of the father. Down
to a late period of the Empire, the law of the Twelve Tables,
which gave the father power over the person and property of his
son, even after he had come of age, continued, at least in theory,
unabated. Gaius, under the Antonines, still speaks of it as peculiar to Roman law (Institut. i. 55):-' Item in potestate nostra sunt
liberi nostri quos justis nuptiis procreavimus, quod jus proprium
civium  Romanorum  est: fere enim nulli alii sunt homines, qui
talem in filios suos habent potestatem, qualem nos habemus.' He
adds:'nec me praeterit Galatarum  gentem  credere in potestate
parentum liberos esse.'
It is curious at least that these Galatians should be the persons
whom St. Paul addressed in the following language (Gal. iv. 1):'Now I say that the heir, as long as he is a child, differeth nothing
from a servant, though he be lord of all; but is under tutors and
governors until the time appointed of the father. Even so we,
when we were children, were in bondage under the elements of the
world.  But when the fulness of time was come, God sent forth
His Son,' &c.  So in Romans viii. 21, the'bondage of corruption'
seems to allude to the subjection of the Roman son to his earthly
father.
2. In the Epistle to the Galatians, iii. 15, we read: ade7oot,
Kara avOprOov LZyO, ozwC arOp6 1ro  v        tKeVpOUEvri 6acKW oiSed aOerel 
eirrt6ar6acerat, where the apostle declares that he is making use of
an illustration from  secular customs, and seems to refer to the
Roman law of wills, according to which the testator, after certain




222                          NOTES.
formalities fulfilled, could neither revoke nor alter his disposition
of his property. Thus when we are told by Suetonius that Cuesar,
and subsequently Augustus, placed their testaments in the hands
of the Vestal Virgins (Jul. 83, Oct. 101), we are to understand that
they thereby renounced the power of cancelling or adding a codicil
to them.  Comp. Schleusner in voce dtaOSic.  See also the abovecited passage from the same epistle, iv. 1.
Again, in the Epistle to the Hebrews, there seems to be such a
reference to the Roman law  of testation, where, however, the
writer apparently mixes up the ideas of a covenant and of a will.
Ileb. ix. 15-17: cKal 6la ro7lro 6dtaO    Katvic pFeaC~ ~iT  arv, kc. r. 2.  He
had been describing Jesus Christ as the mediator or intermediate
instrument of a new covenant, 61aOlc1, as opposed to the old covenant made by God with Moses; but he goes on to introduce the
idea of a wcill, suggested apparently by the death of Christ, the
word ltaO6oK having the double signification:'Trov yap d6aO6?c, OavatOV avayicv 0pecOat rTOb laOep~vov. 6daOS7cY yap ~7r vecpoif Pepaia, ~retl 1t
~rore iaXVeet re,l o  SlaOiuevoc; which Schleusner explains:'ut testamentum ratum fiat necesse est ut mors testatoris probetur judicialiter... Sic proferre, ut sit probare coram judice, legitur apud
Cic. pro Rosc. Amer. c. 24.' This forensic use here of the word
p0pecOac is remarked by Hammond, and is generally admitted.
This coincidence in the use of forensic language in an acknowledged epistle of St. Paul's, and another which must at least be
regarded as Pauline, is worth remarking, particularly when we
consider how peculiar the forms of testamentary law were to the
Romans.' To the Romans,' says Mr. Maine,' belongs preeminently
the credit of inventing the will.... It is doubtful whether
a true power of testation was known to any original society except
the Romans.  Rudimentary forms of it occur here and there, but
most of them  are not exempt from  the suspicion of a Roman
origin. The Athenian will was, no doubt, indigenous, but then,
as will appear presently, it was only an inchoate testament...




NOTES.                         223
Similarly the rudimentary testament which (as I am informed) the
Rabbinical Jewish law provides for, has been attributed to contact
with the Romans...   The original institutions of Jews have
provided nowhere for the privileges of testatorship.'-Ancient Law,
p. 194, foll.
3. Upon these apparent illustrations from  the Roman law I
should, however, lay little stress, where they not confirmed by an
unquestionable reference in the use St. Paul makes of the idea of
adoption.  The spiritual connection of the true disciple with God
is repeatedly represented to us under the figure of sonship. This
idea is brought prominently forward by St. John; as in 1 iii. I:
tva reiva Oeov KIOLmUev,' that we should be called,' i. e.,' should be,
sons of God.' v. 9: 6o eyevv uwejvoo  Kc roe Oeov. v. 10: Tr r Ecva rov Oeov.
iv. 6: rac6 o aya7rSwv eK Oeo6 yeyrvTrat; and elsewhere. But whereas
St. John always represents this idea in its simple form, St. Paul,
and St. Paul only, describes this sonship more artificially as adoptive. This view is set forth in a marked manner in the Epistle to
the Romans, viii. 14, foll.:' As many as are led by the Spirit of God,
they are the sons of God. For ye have not received the spirit of
bondage again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption
whereby we cry Abba, Father...; 21: Because the creature
itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into
the glorious liberty of the children of God. For we know that the
whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now.
And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the first fruits
of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for
the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body.)  Now this
illustration is not taken from any Jewish custom; the law of
Moses contains no provision for such a practice, nor is there any
indication of its having obtained among the Jewish people.
Adoption was an essentially Roman usage, and was intimately
connected with the Roman ideas of family. The maintenance of
the sccrac privata, the domestic rites of the family, was regarded




224                        NOTES.
by the Romans as a matter of deep political importance, and their
law accordingly described minutely the forms under which, in
default of natural heirs, the paterfamilias might thus prospectively secure it. The son was considered as the absolute property of
his father from his birth to his father's decease. In order to his
being adopted out of his own family into that of another man, it
was necessary that he should undergo a fictitious sale. But if a
son was sold by his father and recovered his liberty, he fell again
under the paternal dominion, and it was not until he had thus
been sold, emancipatus, three times, that he was finally free from
this paramount authority. Accordingly the adopter required that
the fiction of sale should be repeated three times before he could
be received into his new family and fall under the dominion of his
new father. When, however, these formalities had been complied
with, the adopted son became incorporated in the family of his
adopter, identified as it were with his person, made one with him;
so that on the decease of the adopter he became not so much his
representative as the perpetuator of his legal existence. He assumed also, on adoption, the burdens or privileges incident to the
performance of the rites of his new family.  He relinquished
his former sacra, and attached himself to those of his new parent.
All this appears to have been in the apostle's mind when he
addressed the Roman disciples in the passage before us. The
Spirit of God, he says, bears witness with our spirit, confers upon
us an inward persuasion, that we are now, by adoption, the
children of God, whereas we were before the children of some
other father, the world, or the Evil One. But we are delivered
from the bondage of corruption, from the state of filial subjection
to this evil parent, and admitted to the glorious liberty of the
happy children of a good and gracious father, even God. He goes
on to insist on the hardness of the bondage of the son of a bad
father (such as the world), his sighing and groaning for the
blessed change which should henceforth ensue to him; such an




NOTES.                        225
expectation or hope of escape as may often have been felt by the
victims of the cruel law of Rome, and which is here likened to the
hopes mankind might be supposed to feel of an escape at last from
their bondage to the world, the flesh, and the devil. And how
was this escape to be effected? God paid a price for it. As
the Roman adopter paid, or made as if he paid down copper
weighed in the scale, so God gave His Son as a precious sacrifice,
as a ransom to the world or the Evil One, from whom He redeemed His adopted children.'He spared not His own Son, but
delivered Him up for us all.' Henceforth we become the elect, the
chosen of God.
The same illustration is indicated in a passage in Galatians, iv.
3:'When we were children we were in bondage under the elements of the world,' addicted to the sacra of our original family;'but when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth His
Son... to redeem them that were under the law, that we
might receive the adoption of sons....  Howbeit,' it continues,'when ye knew not God,' and were not enrolled in this
family,'ye did service unto them which by nature are no gods.
But now, after ye have known God... how turn ye again to
the weak and beggarly elements,' such as the sacra of your former
family,'whereunto ye desire to be again in bondage?'
The' adoption of children' is mentioned again in Ephesians i.
5, where it seems to point to a recognised custom. Ephesus, it
may be remarked, as the capital of the province and the residence
of a proconsul's court, must have been familiar with the ordinary
processes of the Roman civil law.
On the word' Adoption,' the writer of the article in Smith's'Dictionary of the Bible' says:' St. Paul probably alludes to the
Roman custom of adoption, &c... The Jews themselves were
unacquainted with the process of adoption; indeed, it would have
been inconsistent with the regulations of the Mosaic law affecting
the inheritance of property.  The instances occasionally adduced
15




226                         NOTES.
as referring to the customs (Gen. xv. 8, xvi. 2, xxx. 5-9) arc
evidently not cases of adoption proper.'
NOTE R, page 101.
There seem to be some indications in the Scripture records that
St. Paul was considered, both at Rome and among the Romans
and the governing class in the provinces, as a person of some social
rank and distinction. The respect with which he is treated by
Festus and Felix, Agrippa and Gallio, implies that the rulers in
the provinces regarded him as of a somewhat different stamp from
the Jews, the mere subject-provincials, with whom he had connected himself.  The courteous treatment he received on his
voyage to Italy, and by the chief men of the island of Melita,
accords with this view of his position. The consideration extended to him, apparently beyond his expectation, at Rome; his being
allowed to dwell, while awaiting the judgment which he had
claimed of the emperor himself, in a private residence under the
surveillance of the police, attests the same consideration.  To this
may be added the fact,' which it seems reasonable to admit, that
the place assigned him for his sojourn was within the precincts of
the Imperial quarters, as they may be called, on the Palatine; and
that his preaching was attended by the Greek and Jewish freedmen attached to the Imperial household. Even before his arrival
at Rome the Church of Christ in the city comprised members of
the upper class of freedmen, that is, the clients and dependents,
often prosperous, wealthy, and accomplished, of noble Roman
houses. They' of the household of Narcissus' may have been such
dependents of the celebrated favourite of Claudius, lately dead, a
freedman himself, but equal in wealth and position to most of the
old patrician heads of families. Names identical with those of
several persons included in St. Paul's salutations to disciples at
Rome, such as Tryphmena, Philologus, Amplias, Hermas, have been




NOTES.                        227
found among the sepulchral inscriptions in the columbaria of the
Claudian Caesars; and it is difficult to resist the conjecture that
many of those whom the apostle addressed as recognised members
of a circle of devout inquirers, and at last converts to the Gospel
at Rome, were domestics of the Imperial palace. So a little later
he himself sends from Rome the greetings of'many of Csesar's
household.' The curiosity at Rome about Jewish opinions and
customs, and the progress they had made there among the Romans
themselves, as well as among resident foreigners, is strikingly
witnessed in the literature of the Augustan age. The reaction
against them after the great revolt in Palestine, is strongly marked
in the change of tone observable in Tacitus, Juvenal, and Martial,
as compared with that of Ovid and Tibullus.
Notwithstanding the persecutions under I'ero and Domitian
the Gospel continued, I believe, to attract notice in high quarters
at Rome; and the staid, reserved, and almost tame character of
Roman Christianity, compared with its more salient and vigorous
features in Greece, in Africa, and in Egypt, in the first ages, may
perhaps be ascribed to an early and continued connection with
the court and courtly society. The curious history of Callistus, in
the reign of Commodus, as detailed in the work of Hippolytus,
seems to indicate a fatal degeneracy among the Roman Christians,
resulting from this very connection.
NOTE S, page 108.
It is common among the freethinkers of modern times to augur
the constant moral advance of society, in conformity with its
advance in material knowledge. Impatient at the slow progress
they observe in this moral movement, they are tempted to impute
it to the discouragement which the Christian teaching throws,
as they say, upon it. They accuse Revelation of turning men's




228                         NOTES.
thoughts backward to a pretended Paradise, a past state of
original bliss which can never be regained in this life. Such, they
declare, is the teaching of all mythologies; the fancy of a golden
age deteriorating to a silver, a brazen, and an iron age. On the
other hand, Philosophy, they allege, has generally taken the
opposite view, and, tracing mankind back to its cradle in the
primeval Past, has represented it as developing, advancing, improving, from them till now, and capable of indefinite improvement in the illimitable future. Lucretius, no doubt, in a wellknown passage (v. 923 sqq.), in accordance with the Epicurean
denial of a Providence, does so trace the history of man to his first
crude, barbarous origin, and marks the various stages of his
material and moral progress. Nor is it the philosopher only who
resorts to this solution. Many of the mythological legends of
classical antiquity point to a belief in such a progressive development, and going much farther back than Lucretius, derive man
from the first elements of nature, from  animals, from birds, from
trees, and from stones. I do not find, however, in Lucretius, any
expectation of a continuous progress hereafter. With him morals,
no doubt, as well as arts,'ad summum  venere cacumen.' The
ancient philosophers held that the species had fully attained the
limits of its progress. They admitted the existence of a principle
of evil in the world, which leavened, and must continue to leaven,
the mass to all time, and keep the moral world at least at a standstill, if it did not, according to the common persuasion of mankind, gradually corrupt and undermine it altogether. The common opinion, derived neither from philosophers nor from mythologies, but from men's personal experience, and their disappointment at the constant frustration and baffling of their own hopes
and efforts, represented man as ever declining from the height to
which he had by some happy providence attained, and gliding down
a fatal incline to an ever worsening Future. The sentiments of
Virgil and Horace,' omnia fatis in pejus ruere;'  etas parentun




NOTES.                        229
pejor avis,' &c., seem to me fully borne out by the general feeling
of antiquity at the period of its highest moral and material attainments. If, indeed, we have more sanguine aspirations in our
modern schools of thought, it is to the teaching of Christianity
itself that we mainly owe them. For Christianity first led men to
look steadfastly to the future, and to hope for the attainment of
consummate perfection hereafter through gradual, and feeble, and
imperfect attempts at improvement here. The theory of Christianity is the most temperate, the most modest, and, as far as
appearances have hitherto  gone, the truest theory of moral
development.
The later Greek philosophy is distinguished by its everdeepening sense of the universality, and the real evil of sin.' We
have already seen,' says Dollinger (Gentile and Jeio, ii. 153, Engl.
trans.),' what a close connection there was between the defective
knowledge which the old philosophy had of human freedom and
of the nature of evil, with the relation in which the Deity stood to
both. These thinkers were wanting in an insight into the nature
and conditions of the personality of God as well as of men; and
therefore looked upon evil as partly resulting from mere defectiveness or infirmity of means of knowledge; they set it down to
ignorance, and thought, accordingly, there was no other or higher
remedy than philosophy. And partly from  not distinguishing
between the physical evil and the moral bad, they charged matter
and its natural repugnance to the intellectual with being the
source of the bad. Hence, the idea of sin was in fact strange to
them; they had no perception how a free act of evil done by the
creature bore upon divine holiness and justice. In fine, the Stoics
had further obscured this important question by their theory that
evil was as absolutely necessary in the order of the world as the
shadow is to the light, and that all evil was equal. They raised
man above all responsibility and account, and represented him
as without freedom, the irresistibly determined tool of destiny.




230                          NOTES.
Even the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, with his mild temperament,
found a complete justification herein for the greatest criminal.  A
man of a certain nature can do nothing else but act viciously.  To
make him  responsible for his actions would be on a par with
punishing another for having bad breath, or bidding a fig-tree
bear anything besides figs. It was utterly impossible for vicious
men to act otherwise than we see them  act, and to demand
impossibilities is folly.'This view of evil was expressly combated by Platonists like
Plutarch. Evil had not come into the world like an episode,
pleasant and acceptable to the Deity; it filled every human thing.
The whole of life, equally stained from its opening to its concluding
scene, was a mass of errors and misfortune, and in no part pure and
blameless.  " No one," he said, "is sober enough for virtue; but
we all of us are unseemly and in unblest confusion."  This severe
notion of evil, its universality in the life of man, and the deep
roots it had struck in his nature, is a characteristic of thinkers of
this period.  We meet with similar expressions in Seneca, to the
effect that not a man will be found who does not sin, has not
sinned, and will not continue sinning to his dying hour.  Galen, a
physician, and at the same time one of the acutest of the philosophers of this latter time, went farther still.  He declared the
dispositions of children to evil to be in excess, and thought that
only by little and little the disposition to good got the upper
hand, the more the intelligent soul got the mastery over the two
others, for he adopted with Plato a " threefold division of the
soul."
The solution of the problem of the origin of evil appeared all
the more difficult now. All did not accept the comfortable
expedient of Platonists like Celsus, of its having sprung from
matter in existence from eternity; or, like Plutarch, who accepted
an evil and eternal world-soul, and an unintelligent clement of
essential evil in the soul of man.  Miaximus of Tyre, therefore,




NOTES.                          231
thought that Alexander, instead of consulting the oracle of
Ammon about the sources of the Nile, should rather have put a
question of importance to humanity generally, namely, that of the
origin of evil.  He then made an attempt of his own at a solution,
which only ended again in placing the seat and fount of all evil in
matter.  (MI. Anton., iMedit. ix. 1; x. 30; viii. 14; v. 28. Plutarch,
Adv. Stoic. 14.  Senec. de Clement. i. 6. Maxinius Tyr. Diss. xli.
p. 487 seq.)'
NOTE T, page 111.
After describing the rebellious attitude of the Stoic philosophy towards the CGesars, and the measures of the government to
control it, M. Denis says (Idees Morales, vol. ii. p. 62 foll.:-' Le
Stoicisme grandit dans cette lutte de l'esprit contre la force brutale.  I1 devint une foi ardente et vigoureuse, une sorte de religion
des grandes ames, qui cut ses devots et ses martyrs....De
la les caractbres nouveaux du Stoicisme; le ton de la predication
remplagant la discussion philosophique, une science jusqu'alors
inconnue de la vie, et un art singulier de d6meler les plus obscurs
sophismes du vice et de la faiblesse, mais par-dessus une austere
tendresse pour l'humanitM.  Le philosophe n'est plus un logicien
qui dispute, ni un beau parleur, qui cherche les applaudissements.
C'est un maitre qui enseigne; c'est un censeur public, charge du
soin des consciences; c'est un tdmoin de Dieu, qui ne doit aux
hommes que la verit...   I1 ne faut pas chercher dans ces
philosophes de profonds et subtils raisonnements, mais des conseils affectueux ou s6v0res, des remontrances, des exhortations, et
d'instantes pribres de se convertir a la vertu et A la loi de
Dieu.. 




232                               NOTES.
NOTE U, page 114.
Epictet. Dissertat. iv. c. 8: "AAvOpure, Xet160C(or0v  po5rov'  6ov o ov
rjiv op7> v... cylvoelUOat Ie7rTVicov  rpir'ov TVrlf' Cavr6,M  Stkood060 ov
O? Iyov Xpovov.  OiVTo Kaporbg yiverat ~ Kaaropvyrvat J6ei Ek  Tiva Xpovov r6
o7r'FpLa, icpvoO6vat, Karda tlcpOv avi2Oi7vat, "va ree F opi yO0j... ro7torov
el Ica CV opv vapcov.  OTTroV roV eiovTroC  vOtcKac, 6arocKav6ac c  o6 XGCCu3V.
K. r. a.... c. 10.'AyaOBa 6ov iaro0avr,, yevvalav Trp&aiv erTireuv i'    irei
yap 6eZ 7ravr)f adToOvevavev, Tvdyc  ri 7rore 7roloTvra  eVpe6Ovai... r oVV
Oieeltg irot c)v epeOival vra  roV OavaCiV;'Ey6) iev, ro ~ibv F,0po0C, epyov T
TOr' avOpU7rTlKov, ~Ec py-vp ov, eKOVGOCpyer v, YoVe evvalov,...  c. 12.  Ti ov r;
dvvarbv avaacprjrov i i  Elvat;'Au7jXavov   XX 6' Ee' ivo dvvarov, 7rpOf rb,I7/ dlaprapvelv rer6~ Oat d(6iVKcIj.... NIv 6' oray V Ei7Tr,'A7r' avSplov
rpocE7o' ioOt, rt TroTro ZEyCt,'ZuiEpov  Pcopat avaiaXvvTro, iaKapoc,
rareLv6o.... B fre, boa KcaKc  acavr, iEr7rpTrept.  it. r. T.
Seneca, Epist. xciv. 52: Nonne apparet nobis opus esse aliquo
advocato, qui contra populi praecepta prsecipiat?   Nulla ad nostras aures vox impune perfertur: nocent qui optant, nocent qui
exsecrantur.  Nam  et horum  imprecatio falsos nobis metus inserit,
et illorum  amor male docet bene optando... Non licet, inquam,
ire recta via: trahunt in pravum  parentes, trahunt servi: nemo
errat uni sibi, sed dementiam  spargit in proximos, accipitque invicem.  Et ideo in singulis vitia populorum  sunt, quia illa populus dedit.  Dum  facit quisque pejorem, factus est.  Didicit deteriora, deinde docuit; effectaque est ingens illa nequitia, congesto
in unum, quod cuique pessimum  scitur.  Sit ergo aliquis custos,
et aurem  subinde pervellat, abigatque rumores, et reclamet populis laudantibus.  Erras enim  si existimas nobiscum  vitia nasci;
supervenerunt, ingesta sunt. Itaque monitionibus crebris opiniones
que nos circumsonant compescamus.  Nulli nos vitio natura conciliat; nos illa integros ac liberos genuit..... Itaque si in medio urbium fremitu collocati sumus, stet ad latus monitor, et con



NOTES.                                 233
tra laudatores ingentium  patrimoniorum  laudet parvo divitem, et
usu opes metientem, &c.
M3. Antoninus, Mleditat. vi. 30: "Opa  7j aTroKltcapuo?cg, It' paf3ac'
yiverat yap *' rTp;aov o'v aeavrov drAoto v, ayaaov, 6aipatov, cevOrbv, 6Ko#Pov,
rov dIKaiov ~ilZov, Oeo06ep0, f,      TO, e6Vev, ltvTvopyov,  UpvooV C 7rpao  r  nrpe77ovra'pya. ayvlcvtat, lva rotovrog cv/eivFC O, oiov oc e6      e 6jc ToTrotfcat   Zoro(pia.
aedov OeovC, nU~;e 6vOprT'ovg. p3paxg o   o6 i'o. eiC KcapTrog rg 7irtyeiov (co~,
dt6aOerig ooia, Kal 7rp6aet KotvwvtKaet.,ravra, (c5'AvrTviv ov faO??rTif...
IC. r..
Plutarch, De cohibenda ira, 2, reports the saying of Musonius
Rufus: Kai #iv Ov yE Iy e ieWvLOa Movouvicv Kaeluv ev ECTLV... rb Ieiv
ace 6epa7ervopevovcg v3o)v rTov aoSroeaOa  leriovTag.  Oi yap 6g iZe/3opov,
oiltal, ieZ Oeparevbavra 6rVCqK0Epetv r,) vomwjyartL TGV 26yov, ia2' eyiuivovra
Tr  bVX,}, VViXe^t rT C KpIESgC KaCi t vgea'eOv. K. r. v.
The gravity  of this sage's teaching  is further indicated by
Aulus Gellius, Noct. Att. v. 1: Musonium  philosophum  solitum
dicere  accepimus:  Quum  philosophus, inquit, hortatur, monet,
suadet, objurgat, aliudve quid  disciplinarum  disserit; turn, qui
audiunt, si summo et soluto pectore obvias vulgatasque laudes effutiunt, si clamitant etiam, si vocurl  ejus festivitatibus, si modulis
verborum, si quibusdam  quasi frequentamentis orationis moventur,
exagitantur et gestiunt; turn scias et qui dicit et qui audit frustra
esse: neque illic philosophum  loqui, sed  tibicinem  canere.  Animus is, inquit, audientis philosophum, si, que dicuntur, utilia ac
salubria sunt, et errorum  atque vitiorum  medicinas ferunt, laxamentur   atque  otium   prolixe  profuseque  laudandi non  habet:
quisquis ille est qui audit, nisi ille est plane deperditus, inter ipsam  philosophi orationem  et perhorrescat necesse est, et pudeat
tacitus, et poeniteat et gaudeat et admiretur: (seqq.)




234                          NOTES.
NOTE V, page 115.
Seneca, Epist. xlviii. 6, 7, 8: Vis scire quid philosophia promittat generi humano?  Consilium.  Alium  mors vocat, alium
paupertas urit, alium divitise vel alienee torquent, vel sue: ille malam fortunam horret, hic se felicitati sume subducere cupit: hunc
homines male habent, illum Dii.  Quid mihi lusoriaista proponis?
Non est jocandi locus; ad miseros advocatus es. Opem  te laturum naufragis, captis, Tegris, cgentibus, intente securi subjectum
pruestantibus caput pollicitus es: quo diverteris? quid agis? hic
cum quo ludis, timet.  Succurre: quid quod laqueati despondent:
in pcenis omnes undique ad te manus tendunt, perditae vitae, perituraeque auxilium  aliquod implorant, in te spes opesque sunt.
Rogant ut ex tanta illos volutatione extrahas, ut disjectis et errantibus clarum veritatis lumen ostendas. Die, quid Natura necessarium fecerit, quid supervacuum, quam faciles leges posuerit; quam
jucunda sit vita, quam  expedita, illas sequentibus; quam acerba
et implicita eorum, qui opinioni plus quam naturae crediderunt.
NOTE W, page 119.
Dollinger, Gentile and Jew, ii. 148 (Engl. transl.): —' Since the
middle of the first century after Christ, a growing prominence was
observable in the return to a more believing disposition. One
feels that a great change has taken place in the intellectual atmosphere when one compares Polybius, Strabo, Diodorus, and
Dionysius with Plutarch, Aristides, Maximus of Tyre, andDion
Chrysostom.'
M. Martha has given a sketch of the Sophists of the second
century, and of the character and teaching of Dion Chrysostom
as their representative, from which I quote a paragraph in illus



NOTES.                              235
tration of the views advanced in the text (Revue Contempovaine,
tome xxxi. p. 246.  1857):-'Parmi ces orateurs qui remplissaient le monde de leur parole
et de leur gloire, il en est un petit nombre qui ont fait de l'6loquence un noble usage en repandant partout les pr~ceptes de la
morale.  II faut remarquer ici qu'aux  plus tristes Cpoques de
l'histoire ancienne, c'est la philosophie seule qui soutient encore
les esprits, les ames, et rdsiste a cette lente degradation morale qui
menace de tout envahir.  Pendant que la politique est impuissante,
que les princes ne peuvent rien ou ne tentent rien pour relever les
mceurs, pendant que le monde se plonge de plus en plus dans la
corruption ou s'amuse a des futilit~s sophistiques, quelques philosophes, a la faveur de ces usages qui permettaient au premier venu
de prendre la parole dans les assemblIes, se glissent au milieu de
la foule tumultueuse et font entendre, non  sans peril parfois,
quelques le9ons de sagesse.  C'est la philosophie qui est la derniere.gardienne de la raison et de la dignit6 dans les societis antiques.
Elle survit aux lois, aux institutions, aux iceurs; elle 5chappe
mime g la tyrannic, parce qu'elle peut se rffugier dans l'invisible
sanctuaire d'un cceur honngte.  La matitre ne lui manque jamais,
puisque, l'ime humaine 6tant le sujet de ses ftudes, elle porte avec
soi Flobjet de ses mcditations.  Bien plus, le malheur du temps ne
fait souvent que raviver sa force, la corruption des miceurs'irrite,
la degradation des caractbres l'anime d'une ardeur plus genlreuse,
et la vue de la servilit6 lui fait sentir tout le prix de la libertO
inturieure.   Aussi ne faut-il s'6tonner si les dernibres paroles
sens~es, raisonnables, 6loquentes, sortent de la bouche des philosophes.'Cependant il faut reconnaitre  que l'enseignement philosophique 6tait bien dcchu.  II s'est fait simple et modeste, et, renongant aux grandes idees et aux problemes savants qu'il agitait
autrefois, il ne donne plus que des prdceptes de conduite.  Ce
n'est plus le temps ou de puissantes ecoles 6tablissaient, chacune a




236                            NOTES.
sa manihre, les regles de la morale, et fondaient de vastes systemes
dont les principes et les consequences etaient defendus avec une
sorte de foi jalouse.  Les hautes 6tudes de la philosophic se sont
affaiblics; on n'aime plus les recherches abstraites ni les deductions
rigoureuses, et mlme on peut dire que les disciples ne comprennent
plus la  parole  du maitre.   Les doctrines rivales de Platon,
d'Aristote, de Zenon, d'Ipicure, qui alors se partagent les esprits, se
sont fait tant d'emprunts et d econcessions reciproques qu'on a de la
peine a distinguer, dans les ouvrages du temps, ce qui appartient
aux unes et aux autres. Les philosophes se disent encore de telle
ou telle 6cole, ils en portent le norl et souvent le costume, mais ils
ne s'apercoivent pas qu'ils sont infideles a la doctrine qu'ils ensegnent.  Celui-ci se croit Stoicien et adopte les idees de Platon sur
l'ame et l'immortalit6; celui-lI, voulant s'eloigner un peu des
severites du Portique, glisse A son insu dans les molles delices
dc'picure.  Tous ces compromis et ces transactions entre les
diverses ecoles amenent le discredit de la philosophic dogmatique.
Quand  les doctrines ne s'affirment pas fortement elles-mnmes,
quand elles ne sont pas exclusives, qualnd elles practisent avec
l'ennemi, elles ne peuvent plus compter sur des adeptes devoues.
Aussi, soit affaiblissement genlral des etudes, soit indifference, soit
tolerance excessive, presque tous les bons esprits de ce sihcle
s'abstiennent de traiter les hautes questions de la mntaphysique et
de la morale, ou s'ils les tentent quelquefois, ils confondent tous
les systames, et ne laissent voir trop souvent que leur lgbretc et
leur ignorance.  La philosophie aspire a devenir populaire, elle
s'abaisse, elle se fait toute a tous, et pour 3tre comprise et acceptee,
elle puise ses idles non plus a la source  leve du dogme, mais
dans le reservoir commun qu'on appelle le bon sens public; elle se
rapproche de plus en plus de la pratique, ct se contente de donner
des prescriptions salutaires et incontestables, qu'elle r~dige en
maximes et qu'elle decore d'ornements litteraires. De lah une
nouvelle espece d'Mloquence qui n'est pas sans port~e ni sans mn



NOTES.                             237
rite, celle de ces orateurs philosophes qu'on appelle aussi des
sophistes, et qui seraient dignes d'un nom plus honorable."
Of these preaching philosophers, the most eminent are Apollonius of Tyana, and Dion Chrysostom.  The career of the latter,
as an itinerant preacher of moral truths, may be traced in his own
genuine writings.  We may infer nearly the same of Apollonius
from various sources, but his reputed biography by Philostratus is
a work of more than a century later, and is evidently fabricated
for a polemical purpose.  It represents its hero as a heathen
counterpart to  Christ, and  is valuable to  us, as showing the
impression made upon the heathen mind by the portraiture of our
Lord, and after Him  of His Apostles, as' going about doing good.'
The points of evident imitation of the Gospel history in the'Life
of Apollonius' are given in full detail by M. Pressens6, Hist. des
Trois Premiers Siecles, 2e partie, tome ii. p. 145 foll.  The Lives of
the Sophists by Philostratus and Eunapius discover to us a whole
class of such itinerant preachers among the heathen philosophers
of the second century. Others of a similar school of moral teaching fixed themselves in the great universities of the empire, or
passed their lives in private retirement.  The expression quoted in
the text was that of Demonax, commemorated  by Lucian:-'AOQvaiov d6 aKErrTTOrvwv  Kara (2Xov TOv TrpbO  KOptvOiTovc  aTracraaacOat
O0av FovoyaXuv, rpooeX6OJv eif av-rov, #7 rpodrepov, E0,, rara,'AOvaZlo
bjioecOe, av IL roV iXeov Trv fpOtov KcaaOi2tre. A  similar sarcasm  is
attributed also to Apollonius.  The sentiment was perhaps common to many.  Demonax is said also to have quelled a tumult in
Athens by the authority of his presence.  Zri-aewo 6de rore'AO6?'/vn
yevoiev7ir   eia2,Oev efv TTrv IK'c7}Jiaav, iKal pavclg tdvov auttTav'rtoibav
airobC; o 6i, 160S i)7} 7) e Tre7yvwK6rac, ov6ev eitrv eKa  avriT m rlg'rXayr.Lucian, -Demonax, 57, 64.




238                           NOTES.
NOTE X, page 120.
Denis, Idees Morales, ii. p. 154:-'Le Stoicisme ne s'arritait
point la: A la throrie de la justice universelle, ou de l'6galit6 des
hommes et de l'unit6 de notre espbce, il ajoutait celle de l'universelle charit6' The writer proceeds to give a full exposition of
this thesis, pp. 154-190. The doctrines and practice of Pagan
philanthropy, at their best and highest, fall far below the standard
of the teaching and the practice of Christian communities.  Nevertheless, they deserve to be noted in token of the purifying effect
of that consciousness of moral infirmity which entered, as I believe,
so deeply into the minds of the heathen, in the second and third
centuries. Cicero's slight mention of his father's death in a letter
to Atticus —' Pater nobis decessit A.D. viii. Kal. Dec.' (Ad Att. i.
6)-is often quoted as an instance of the hardness of feeling
engendered by habit and system among the Pagans in the palmiest
days of their philosophy. Considering how scanty are the traces
of more humane sentiment in respect of natural ties among the
Romans of that age, we may be justified in so quoting it. But it
is interesting to contrast with it the tribute of refined and cultivated affection which Statius, a hundred and fifty years later,
pays to his deceased parent:Quid referam expositos servato pondere mores;
Quae pietas, quam vile lucrum; qune cura pudoris,
Quantus amor recti; rursusque, ubi dulce remitti,
Gratia quae vultus, animo quam nulla senectus?
The poet continues, indeed, to expatiate on the theme with a
too elaborate rhetoric, which has cast suspicion on the genuineness
of his feelings. But, however this may be, it is not to the feelings
of Statius himself, but to the feelings of the age, which demanded




NOTES.                            239
or encouraged  such  a manifestation, that I principally look.
Comp. Statius, Sylv. iii. 3, 12, and foll.
There is another passage in Cicero's letters, often cited, in
which he checks himself for the sorrow he cannot help experiencing on the death of a confidential and favourite slave, the companion of his studies, and partaker in his philosophical speculations; and this is contrasted with the more natural and liberal
flow of sentiment in which the younger Pliny allows himself to
indulge on a somewhat similar loss.  But Statius, again, with
deeper and kindlier feeling, allows to the favourite slave of his
friend a place in Elysium, and is not ashamed to suggest that he
may there watch over the interests of his master surviving him on
earth.  How  great a step in humanity has been made fiom  the
cold exclusiveness of the Platonists and the Stoics, even in the
most genial of their respective representatives, a Virgil and a
Lucan!
Statius, Sylv. ii. 6:
Ssepe ille volentem
Castigabat herum, studioque altisque juvabat
Consiliis..... Subit ille pios, carpitque quietem
Elysiam.....
Pone, precor, questus; alium tibi fata Philetum,
Forsan et ipse dabit; moresque habitusque decoros
Monstrabit gaudens, similemque docebit amorem.
NOTE Y, page 132.
Seneca, as quoted by St. Augustine, De Civ. )ei, vi. 11, had
said of the Jews: Cum  interim  usque eo sceleratissimse gentis
consuetudo convaluit, ut per omnes jam  terras recepta sit, victi
victoribus leges dederunt.  He was speaking, it seems, of the
saceMramenta, or mysterious rites and customs of this people; and




240                           NOTES.
from the context it appears plainly that he had more particularly
in view the Jewish observation of the Sabbath.  We learn from
Ovid and Tibullus how much remark this usage had excited among
the Romans, and with what favour it was regarded by them. The
socialist Proudhon has written a book to recommend it on purely
economical grounds, and I can easily imagine a practical people,
like the Romans, being struck with the good policy of such an
institution. At a later period, when the Jews had fallen out of
favour at Rome, their Sabbaths are made the subject of scorn
and ridicule.
NOTE Z, page 134.
Denis, Idees Morales, ii. 234 foil.:-' Mais ce qui nous semble
nouveau, ce qu'on ne retrouverait pas au mnme degr6 dans Chrysippe, dans Cleanthe, ni dans Platon, c'cst la penske toujours pr6sente de la Providence, et de la bont6 divine, c'est le sentiment de
ferveur et de foi, qui anime des ames fortes et tendres, telles
qu'Rpictete et Marc-Aurele.  Dieu n'est pas seulement pour les
sages de l'empire'auteur et le maitre de l'univers, la loi qui conduit toutes choses au bien, la sagesse qui a tout fait avec nombre,
poids et mesure: c'est avant tout un pere bienveillant, un ami
toujours sur et fidlc, le refuge et la consolation qui ne manquent
jamais a l'honn^te homme.  " Qu'aurais-je a faire," dit MIarcAurele,   dcl'un monde sans providence et sans dieux? "  Dieu est
bon; ii a done ordonn6 toutes choses selon sa bont6, et par consequent dans l'inttret dernier de la vertu.... "Traitez-moi,
Seigneur, a votre volonte, s'ecrie Vpictbte, conduisez-moi ou ii
vous plaira, couvrez-moi de l'habit que vous voudrez, je suis resign6 A vos lois, et votre volonte est la mienne.  En toutes choses
je celebrerai vos ceuvres et vos bienfaits, et je serai votre t6moin
auprNs des mortels, en leur montrant ce que c'est qu'un homme veritable.".. Cette humilite de Marc-Aurele et d'Epictete est




NOTES.                            241
toute morale. Elle n'a rien de ce sentiment servile et superstitieux, qui nous fait voir dans un accident un coup de la Providence, et qui prate a Dieu je ne sais quelle jalousie par laquelle il
se plait a renverser ce qni s'leve, a exalter ce qui s'abaisse....
Si nous sommes si faibles, il semble naturel que nous priions Dieu,
soit pour le remercier du bien que nous pouvons avoir fait, soit
pour le demander un surcroit de force et de courage.  " Ou les
dieux ne peuvent rien," dit Marc-Aurble, "ou ils peuvent quelque
chose.  S'ils ne peuvent rien, pourquoi les prier?  Et s'ils ont
quelque pouvoir, pourquoi, au lieu de leur demander de te donner
quelque chose ou de mettre fin I telle autre, ne les pries-tu pas de
te ddlivrer de tes craintes, de tes dcsirs et de tes troubles d'esprit? "
On a raison de dire que Dieu entend et exauce les prieres de l'ame
raisonnable, meme quand elles demeurent sans voix...  " Mais
qui l'a dit que les dieux ne viennent pas a notre secours m~me
dans les choses qui dependent de nous?  Commence seulement a
leur demander ces sortes de secours, et tu verras.  Celui-ci prie
pour obtenir les faveurs de sa maltresse, et toi, prie pour n'avoir
jamais de tels desirs.  Celui-ci prie pour etre d6livre de tel fardeau; et toi, prie d'etre assez fort pour n'avoir pas besoin de cette
d6livrance."  Une telle priere ne ressemble pas a celles de la foule,
qui paralt marchander avec Dieu, et lui reprocher cd'tre un mauvais clbiteur, en disant: Si jamais j'ai fait fumer l'encens dans
tes temples, donne-moi telle ou telle chose en revanche.  Maxime
de Tyr la d6finit trbs-bien: c'est une conversation fortifiante avec
Dieu; c'est un temoignage que l'ame se rend de sa vertu en remerciant celui qui nous l'a inspiree; c'est un encouragement que se
donne la vertu, en demandant t Dieu des biens que, par sa faveur,
elle trouve et puise en elle-m~me. Les entretiens d'Epictbte sont
pleins de prihres de cette sorte, communications intimes et familieres avec Dieu, effusions d'une ame pieuse devant son maitre et
son pere, actes de foi et de reconnaissance envers la supreme
bont6...       Au  lieu  de s'6chapper en frivoles sarcasmes,
16




242                             NOTES.
comme Lucien, en invectives incens6es, comme Lucain, ou bien en
paroles ambres, comme Tacite, qui ne reconnait guere la providence de Dieu qu'a ses coups et a ses vengeances, le pauvre EpictOte, l'ancien esclave d'tpaphrodite, ne sait que b6nir celui qui l'a
si rudement 6prouv6; et je ne connais rien qui peigne mieux l'etat
de son ame, et les besoins religieux des esprits d'6lite au commencement de notre ere, que ce penchant A la pribre et a l'adoration.'
M. Denis refers to a variety of passages in Epictetus, M. Aurelius, and others.  He omits one example of the prayers of the
heathen, perhaps because it belongs properly to a later period,
though evidently formed on their model.  The commentary of
Simplicius on the'Conversations of Epictetus' thus concludes:-'IKereTVO ae, S6aeTTra, O6  arap cKal'Yerfov Tro  ev rjuZv 26yov, v'osvmcQaO-l
vat fiev y/aS T7i-  Eavr6iv eiyeveiac, f   17!4S?&tljev wrapa aoV' uav/urpaats d6
9g  aViTOKIctv7rTOLC slv, 7rp6 Ts e Ka6apaC v T rV a -ro TOV caFaTro Kica TiV 6a6yov
waOSJv, cKa Trpof rO  r v7repxev Kal appxev avrrSv, cKaci; opyavolf KteXpOat
Kcai-Ta   v Tpor]GKovra rp6rov. cavuptpaTretv  Teal TrpiOf 6d6pOpcatv aKipplp/
ro7   v kjtiv v   dyov, cKa l evoa6v aVTroV Trpof rTa 6ovr  ovT a, 6ia troV Tr7  a'6XOetag
(Or6C. Kat rO Tpirov Kal  ari 7pov  o itCere, V6eueiv Trez2o  TrIV aXxZv TrV
)vXKioJv iuj/v o/UUaTV V,'Op' eV ytv6amKCOuev (KaTa TOV "O1w#pov)   FIe O6eaOv
7ds Kal aivdpa.
NOTE A A, page 137.
De Broglie, L'glise et I'Empire Romain, iii. 165: —'L'ecole
d'Alexandrie ne faisait pas seulement descendre l'ame humaine,
par une suite de chutes n6cessaires, des hauteurs de l'etre absolu:
elle lui enseignait aussi y remonter par l'6tude et par la vertu...
Aussi n'est-ce par aucune facult6 humaine que l'homme, dans le
systeme n6oplatonicien, se met en communication avec cette supreme forme de l'Etre divin: c'est au contraire par une facult6
sup6rieure A lui, qui l'enlave a son essence, le transfigure et l'absorbe.  Ce que la raison ne peut lui faire connaltre, l'extase le lui




NOTES.                              243
r6vble.  Sous le nom  d'extase, l'6cole neoplatonicienne entend non
une facultW, mais un 5tat de l'ame.  C'est l'etre indivicuel qui
disparait et se perd dans la contemplation de l'Etre infini dont il
est sorti auttefois, auquel il doit retourner un jour.  Un vif amour
de la verite, une soif de la posseder, suppriment pour un moment,
des ici-bas, les limites de la nature finie, et lui permettent de s'abreuver et de se fondre dans la source meme cle son ltre.  Ce n'est
point alors l'ame qui connait Dieu, c'est Dieu qui descend en elle:
il n'y a pas deux etres, l'un connaissant, l'autre connu; il n'y a
plus, pour parler le langage technique, un sujet et un objet de la
connaissance; l'homme ne connalt pas Dieu, il est fait Dieu pour
un instant: l'eclair de l'extase, en le touchant, l'a difi...
Cette theorie de l'extase est le sommet de toute la doctrine neoplatonicienne.  L'extase est le terme dernier de tout connaissance,
et le couronnement de la vertu parfaite.  C'est par un patient
amour du vrai, par une constante pratique du bien; c'est par la
mortification des sens, le d6tachement des passions, c'est par le
mCpris du corps et de la terre, que le sage Plotin doit mrriter cette
anticipation  de l'immortalit6 divine.   C'est en  cessant  d'etre
homme qu'il peut se rendre digne de devenir Dieu.  Des pratiques
austereg renouveldes de Pythagore, excit6es peut-etre encore par
l'6mulation  des exemples chrftiens, avaient seules revel6 a Plotin
l'existence de cet 6tat surnaturel.  Porphyre en traGait le tableau
clans son trait6 De I'Abstinence, et empruntant presque les paroles
de l'Esprit-Saint, il engageait les hommes a purifier leur corps,
commle le temple ou doit descendre la gloire de Dieu.  Sa lettre a
sa femme Marcelle respire le meme enthousiasme d'aust6rite.  Son
d6gouft des choses de la terre 6tait mnme pouss6 si loin, qu'il fallait
l'intervention de Plotin pour le d6tourner du suicide. Et lui-meme
cependant, malgrr tant d'efforts, n'avait goutt  que rarement les
douceurs de l'extase.  "Pour moi," dit-il, en racontant les merveilles de la vie de son mattre, "je n'ai 6t6 uni qu'une seule fois
a Dieu, a ]'age de quarante-huit ans."'




244                            NOTES.
M. Pressense, in his History of the First Three Centuries (partie
ii. tom. 2, p. 62), after a lucid exposition of the doctrine of the
New Platonists, thus sums up his comparison between it and the
Christian:-'Le Christianisme, par l'humilite et la mortification, conduit a
la plenitude de la vie, et sa morale se resume dans cette parole du
Christ: " Si quelqu'un perd sca vie, ii la retrouvera."  Le n6oplatonisme, par l'ascetisme et l'extase, veut amener l'homme A l'an6antissement, car le dernier terme du progres, selon lui, c'est de perdre
toute conscience de soi, c'est d'Otre semblable a celui qui n'est pas,
c'est c4onc de ne pas Otre.  Lui aussi dit a l'homme: " Ecoute-moi
et tu seras comme un dieu; " mais ce dieu auquel ii faut ressembler, c'est l'abstraction pure, c'est le non-^tre, c'est le neant imparfaitement dissimul6 par un langage brillant, poetique....
Ainsi finit la noble philosophie grecque; elle va se perdre dans la
Nirvana  du boudhisme; elle pousse l'idce orientale jusqu'aux
dernibres consequences, jusqu'au suicide moral que les sombres
forits de l'Inde semblaient devoir seules abriter.' La philosophie de la nature a parcouru le meme cycle que la
religion de la nature; elles arrivent l'une et l'autre au m~me terme,
c'est a dire, A l'andantissement, tant ii est vrai qu'en s'enfermant
dans le monde inferieur, en cherchant la vie dans la nature, on
s'eloigne de la source veritable de l'Ptre.  Le principe de la nature
est au-dessus d'elle et en dehors d'elle; elle ne se suffit pas a ellemgme, et quiconque ne s'eleve pas a la region plus haute ou reside
le principe de toute vie, ne rencontre en bas que la mort, et ne
s'arrtte sur cette pente que quand il est arrive au n6ant.  Le naturalisme s'ensevelit necessairement, comme religion et comme philosophie, dans le monde inferieur, ou il croyait trouver une vie
suffisante.'




NOTES.                           245
NOTE B B, page 143.
The pretensions of the sorcerers are exposed in detail by Luciar
in his account of Alexander of Abonoteichus, the Pseudomantis, as
he calls him.  After referring to this celebrated exposure, Dillinger (Gentile and Jew, ii. 199) continues:-' The apparition of Hecate was equally efficacious.  Believers
were told to throw themselves prostrate on the ground at the first
sight of fire.  The goddess of the highways and roads, the Gorgo
or Mormo wandering among the graves at night, was then invoked
in verse, after which a heron or vulture was let loose, with lighted
tow attached to her feet, the flame of which frightening the bird,
it flew wildly about the room, and as the fire flashed here and
there, the prostrate suppliants were convinced that they were eyewitnesses of a great prodigy.  Similar artifices were employed to
make the moon and stars appear on the ceiling of a room, and to
produce the effects of an earthquake.  To make an inscription
show itself on the liver of a victim, the haruspex wrote the words
previously with sympathetic ink on the palm of his hand, which
he pressed on the liver long enough to leave the impression behind.  And so the Neo-Platonists contrived to cheat the Emperor
Julian when Maximus conducted him into the subterranean vaults
of a temple of Hecate, and caused him  to see an apparition of
fire.'
The subject of the prevalence of imposture and credulity at
this time in the Roman world is well reviewed by Denis, Idees
Jlorales, &c. ii. 277 sqq.:-'Non-seulement ils sentaient le besoin d'une rbgle et d'une
discipline, mais ils 6taient comme envelopp6s d'un atmosphere de
credulit6 et de superstitions.  C'est le temps, en effet, de l'astrologie, de la magie, et de mille croyances 6tranges sur Dieu, sur les
d6mons, sur l'ame et sur l'autre monde, qui de toutes parts




246                            NOTES
debordaient de lOrient sur l'Occident.  Les enfants perdus du
Portique et de l'Acadcmie et leurs adeptes de haut rang voulaient
a toute force penetrer l'avenir, soit en lisant dans les astres, soit en
mettant en communication avec les esprits, tandis que le petit
peuple courait aux cultes Strangers.  En vain les CMsars, a qui les
sciences occultes inspiraient une f6roce terreur, et qui, selon le mot
de Lucain, " ddfendaient aux dieux de parler," sevissaient contre
les imposteurs et leurs dupes, et faisaient dctruire publiquement
par le feu les livres de magie, d~porter ceux qui en possdcaient,
bruler vifs les charlatans de la Perse et de la Chald~e, exposer aux
bates ou mettre en croix les malheureux qui avaient la sottise de
les consulter.  En vain les hommes de sens soutenaient que tout
l'art des devins n'est qu'une imposture pour soutirer de largent
aux imbr cilles; qu'il n'y a point de relation entre une constellation et le sort si divers de tant d'hommes nes dans le mllme
instant; que les dieux ne peuvent Otre soumis a la puissance et A
la volont6 des mortels; qu'il faudrait etre d'une nature surhumaine
et porter en soi quelque image de la divinite pour avoir le droit de
proclamer les volontes et les ordres de Dieu.  II se trouvait
toujours des hommes, ou avides, ou impatients de la destinge, qui
avaient besoin d'etre tromp6s, et Tacite pouvait dire de l'astrologie
qu'elle serait toujours chass~e de Rome et qu'elle y regnerait
toujours.  Les Grecs etaient encore plus entetes de la magie, qui
leur 6tait venue de l'Asie et de l'Rgypte.  Tout leur paraissait
rempli de demons bons ou mauvais, et comme les dieux etaient
plus nombreux que les hommes dans certains cantons de l'Achaie,
les miracles y etaient aussi moins rares que les faits naturels.  II
faut voir dans Lucien jusqu'oui 6tait pouss~e la credulite.  La c'est
un magicien qui vole dans lair, qui passe au travers du feu, qui
attire ou qui chasse les demons, qui gu6rit les malades ou qui
ressuscite les morts.  Ailleurs c'est un Babylonien qui rassemble, a
laide de quelques mots sacr6s, tous les serpents d'un pays, et qui
les extermine de son souffle. Des malheureux sont fustiges toutes




NOTES.                           247
les nuits par de mauvais genies.  Des statues marchent, parlent et
mangent.  On ne prononce qu'avec un respect plein de terreur les
noms des morts, en ajoutant quelque formule qui pit leur plaire,
comme le Bienheureux ou le Saint.  Malheur a vous, si vous
paraissiez incr~dule A tant de contes ou de sottes superstitions!
Vous 6tiez un impie, et il n'eut pas tenu aux imposteurs ou a ceux
qu'ils trompaient, que vons ne fussiez lapidl.  A force de ne rien
croire, on en 6tait venu A ne plus croire que l'impossible et
labsurde.  Je ne connaitrais rien de plus triste que ce retour des
peuples a l'enfance par la decrepitude de la pensee, si je ne faisais
r6flexion que la vie germe toujours a cote de la mort, ct que ces
dcplorables extravaganes, etaient le symptome d'un besoin profond
et irresistible.  Epicure et les. sceptiques avaient fait tous leurs
efforts pour chasser le divin des esprits; et ils ne paraissaient avoir
que trop reussi.  Mais le divin y rentrait avec violence et par
toutes les voies, au risque d'y porter le trouble et la dbmence.'
NOTE C C, page 144.
The burning of Rome under Nero was imputed, as we know,
by popular hatred, to the Christians, and the first persecution
followed in consequence.  No such connection was imagined
between the burning of the Capitol in the civil wars and the hated
sectaries, nor can we trace the partial persecution of the Christians
by Domitian to any popular apprehension of the anger of the gods.
Nevertheless the character of this emperor and his superstitious
belief in his own divine appointment as the guardian and restorer
of the national religion, makes it probable that he was not uninfluenced by such a consideration.  The trial of Ignatius under
Trajan at Antioch, and the Christian martyrdoms that followed,
agree with the date of the great earthquake by which the Syrian
capital was partially overthrown, and it is impossible to overlook




248                           NOTES.
the apparent connection between this event and the persecution
which immediately ensued.  The same may be said of the great
calamities of the empire and the persecutions under M. Aurelius.
These calamities were redoubled under Decius and Gallus, and the
fury of persecution simultaneously increased. Diocletian for a
long time resisted the importunities of his colleague Galerius to
renew the same policy with greater energy than ever; and was at
last determined to it by the event, probably accidental, though
imputed to Galerius himself by Lactantius, of a conflagration in
his own palace.  Lactant., De Mort. Persecut. c. 15. That the
persecutions were repeatedly excited by the superstitious terrors
of the populace is the constant assertion of the Christian writers.
See the classical passage in Tertull. Apoll. c. 40:
Existimant omnis publicse cladis, omnis popularis incommodi
Christianos esse causam. Si Tiberis ascendit in mcenia, si Nilus
non ascendit in arva, si ccelum  stetit, si terra movit, si fames, si
lues, statim-Christianos ad leonem!
Comp. Cyprian, Epist. lxxv., where he attributes an outburst
of persecution in some parts of Asia Minor to the occurrence of
destructive earthquakes: ut per Cappadociam  et per Pontum
qusedam etiam civitates in profundum  receptoe dirupti soli hiatu
devorarentur, ut ex hoc persecutio quoque gravis adversus nos
Christiani nominis fieret.  See also Origen, Comm. in Jiattheumn,
iii. p. 859, ed. Delarue.
Cyprian, Ad Demetr. c. 3. Dixisti per nos fieri, et quod nobis
debeant imputari omnia ista quibus nunc mundus quatitur et
urgetur, quod dii vestri a nobis non colantur.  The motive and
principle of these wild and sanguinary impulses lie deep in human
nature, and deserve attentive consideration.
The sense of a personal relation to the Deity is assuredly an
earlier development of the religious instinct than that of a public
and national relation to Him.  The instinct which prompts man
to offer sacrifice to God was first directed to the attainment of




NOTES.                          249
favour for himself, or pardon and protection; and at a later period
extended to the attempt to conciliate God to his country, and to
its public interests.  Human sacrifices may be traced back to the
earlier period; in the earliest accounts we have of them, they seem
to have been offerings of individual worshippers, as when the
parent offers his child, the master his slave, and the choicest
victims are immolated at the tomb of the departed chieftain.
They mark in such cases the extreme point to which the hopes,
the terrors, or the remorse of the individual might impel him.
We may conjecture that these terrible offerings were first introduced into both Greek and Roman usage with such a view to
private and personal interests.  But both in Greece and Rome the
political instinct became early predominant, and gradually overrode all merely personal views of religion.  Human sacrifices were
consecrated in both the great nations of classical antiquity to the
special object of procuring divine protection for the State.  With
this object they were publicly sanctioned and regularly practised
in early times both in Greece and Rome. But the national instinct
of religion, and national devotion to religious usage, were never so
strong as the personal.  Men could not feel the same intense,
absorbing interest in the safety of the State, as in their own
personal safety.  They could not continue so ruthlessly to trample
upon the natural feelings of humanity for the one object, as they
might have done for the other.  Hence it would appear that, when
the idea of the need of human sacrifices was thus far dissociated
from the personal interests of the offerer, the advance of civilization and cultivated feelings led the Greeks, and especially the
Ionians and Athenians, the most cultivated among them, to discountenance, to modify, and finally to reject them  generally as an
instrument of public utility.  The influence of Grecian habits and
teaching operated strongly upon  the Romans, and gradually
tempered the gloomier instincts of that people also. Possibly the
national successes and the established security of the State against




250                         NOTES.
the most urgent calamities of war and conquest, aided powerfully
in producing this change of sentiment.  From the year B.c. 95,
the era of her most triumphant prosperity, the laws of Rome
expressly forbade human sacrifice. Her writers generally speak
of it with horror.  They felt no need of it, and they were free to
regard it with the detestation which human nature properly
entertains for it.  They  declare that no such usage exists at
Rome; that it is abhorrent from Roman manners and morality;
the chiefs of the Empire take measures to check it in their remoter
and less civilized provinces. So strong is the protest of Roman
civilization against it, that, on a superficial view of the facts it has
been often asserted that human sacrifice was actually abolished for
centuries under the sway of the Roman Emperors.
Such, however, was far from  the case. Even in the Stateritual of Rome some traces of the practice still continued to linger.
Even on public occasions, and for national objects, human sacrifices were from  time to time offered.  In cases of political
urgency, the' Gaul and the Greek' were still buried solemnly in
the forum.
Still worse, the practice creeps back again for private and
personal objects, and is associated with magical ceremonies.
When the State is merged in the ruler, it is difficult to distinguish
the personal from the public interest; but it was probably more
for their own sakes than for the sake of the commonwealth, that
irregular sacrifices of this kind were perpetrated by Julius Caesar,
by Augustus, by Tiberius, and Nero, and after them  still more
frequently and without disguise by most of the succeeding emperors.  Trajan himself sacrificed a beautiful woman after the earthquake at Antioch, as a propitiation, we may suppose, for the
safety of that city. The self-devotion of Antinous for Hadrian is
an instance of quasi-sacrifice. The significance of the rite, as the
voluntary offering of the best and dearest, seems to come back
upon the conscience of mankind as a revived revelation of man's




NOTES.                           251
relation to God.  The rhetorician Aristides believes himself to be
saved from imminent peril of death by the self-immolation of his
brother Hermias, and in a fresh access of his disease persuades his
sister Philumene to devote herself for him also.  The influence of
the earlier and healthier teaching of the Greek philosophers and
philanthropists had now become weaker; at the same time the
barbarous ideas of Asia and Africa were making themselves more
powerfully felt.  The calamities of the State seemed to demand
greater and more striking efforts to appease the manifest wrath of
Heaven.  Along with the increase of other wild and gloomy
superstitions, human sacrifices became more and more common,
and ceased to be regarded with the horror they naturally inspire.
Undoubtedly various feelings entered into the demand for the
persecution of the Christians.  The magistrate regarded them  as
transgressors of a principle in public law, as evil-doers, as fosterers
of treason and sedition; and was disposed to punish them accordingly.  But the people generally, and sometimes the rulers themselves, yielded to a superstitious impulse in ascribing to their
rejection of sacrifice and of idol-worship every public calamity,
which testified, as they supposed, to the wrath of the offended
deities.  The execution of the Christians was thus popularly
regarded as a means of propitiation.  This idea was sanctioned
and fostered apparently by the most usual manner of these executions; for the shows of the amphitheatre had sprung out of the
primitive custom of sacrificing human victims at the altar of a god
or the tomb of a deceased hero. Even to the time of Constantine,
it is said, a vestige of this idea was preserved in the annual immolation of a gladiator on the Alban mount to Jupiter Latiaris.
For a succinct but full discussion of the subject of human
sacrifice with a copious citation of authorities, I would willingly
refer the reader to a tract lately printed, but not yet published, by
Sir John Acton.  The writer extends his historical review to
modern times, and connects with it the notorious persecution of




252                          NOTES.
reputed witchcraft.  The other equal and parallel disgrace of
Christianity, the Romish Inquisition, he regards too leniently as a
merely political tribunal.  I believe that in both cases the popular
feeling which supported and impelled the action of the magistrate
was the same: but this too was a mixed feeling. First, as in the
case of the Imperial persecutions, there was the superstitious
anxiety to propitiate the wrath of an offended deity, the same
anxiety that has lain at the bottom of human sacrifice at all times;
but, secondly, there was the notion, peculiar, so far as appears, to
Christianity, and which may serve in a very slight degree to
relieve the horror of these Christian persecutions, that the sacrifice
is required for the sufferer's own sake, or if too late to save his
own soul, may at least secure the survivors from the contagion of
his fatal impiety.
NOTE D D, page 150.
Neander, Church History, i p. 43 (Engl. transl.):-' On every side was evinced the need of a revelation from
heaven, such as would give inquiring minds that assurance of
peace which they were unable to find in the jarring systems of the
old philosophy, and in the artificial life of the reawakened old religion. That zealous champion of the latter, Porphyry, alludes
himself to the deep-felt necessity; which he proposed to supply,
leaning on the authority of divine responses, by his " Collection
of Ancient Oracles."  On this point he says: " The utility of such
a collection will best be understood by those who have felt the
painful craving after truth, and have sometimes wished it might
be their lot to witness some appearance of the gods, so as to be
relieved from their doubts by information not to be disputed."
(See Euseb., Prep. Evang. iv. 7.)
The life of such a person, from his youth up harassed with




NOTES.                           253
doubts, unsettled by the strife of opposite opinions, ardently longing after the truth, and conducted at length, through this protracted period of dissatisfied craving, to Christianity, is delineated
by the author of a sort of romance (partly philosophical and in
part religious), who belonged to the second or the third century.
This work is called The Clementires, and, though fiction, is clearly
a fiction drawn from  real life; and we may safely avail ourselves
of it, as presenting a true and characteristic sketch, which might
doubtless apply to many an inquiring spirit belonging to those
times.  It commences thus:
Ego, Clemens, in urbe Roma natus, ex prima etate pudicitiwe
studium gessi; dum  me animi intentio velut vinculis quibusdam
solicitudinis et mceroris innexum  teneret.  Inerat mihi cogitatio
incertum sane unde initium  sumpserit, crebro enim ad memoriam
meam  conditioner  mortalitatis adducens, simulque discutiens:
utrumne sit mihi aliqua vita post mortem, an nihil omnino sim
futurus; si non fuerim antequam nascerer; vel si nulla prorsus
vitse hujus erit post obitum recordatio; et ita immensitas temporis
cuncta oblivioni et silentio dabit, &c.
The work, which runs to as many as ten books, and expatiates
in a number of worthless stories about St. Peter at Rome, and Simon Magus, and others, is printed in Coteler's Patres Apostolici, i.
493, under the title of' Recognitionum S. Clementis libri x.'  It
was attributed in early times to St. Clement, the disciple of Paul
and author of the Epistles to the Corinthians.  The work is fully
analysed by Neander in  the second volume of his  History,
p. 25 fol.  Similarly, in the conversation between Justin Martyr and his unknown interlocutor, the heathen  philosopher is
forced to admit the vanity of his master's reasonings on the
nature of God and the  soul, and to  seek speculative truth
in  the  revelations  made  through  the  Hebrew   prophets:
yeivovr6 rtver xrpo xroXob Xp6vov qravrov roVWrv rVWG votlcojuevuv t)lZoC60ov
7rauat6repo., iaecaptot, Kap l dlaLto Kcal Oeotleldc, Mei, 7rvevupart, a2javreyr Kali




254                            NOTES.
ra /1eZLov'a  Eavec:iavreg, a' 67 vvv yiverag' wrpoOprac dei avaovi Kaoatoezv.
OV7ot #6jtovot bX0eg Kal tca  eid ov KaV pSe7rov  V TOp 6potg, It7v' eviap/3JOeviec,
TSe 6(VE )'vOnVy6ireC iva-, [iL 3rTTj1eVOt d6fC, a2a (6va Tarava ei7r6vTe a
iKcovcav  a a cov deal a Eldpo yi  TrpEVTreC veCvarlt.-Justin M., Dial. cum
Trypil. c. 7.
The' Confessions' of St. Augustine, in which he gives a full
account of the intellectual and moral perplexities which led him
to renounce irreligion and heresy, and embrace a saving faith, is
of a later date, and belongs properly to the post-Nicene period.
See the seventh book particularly.
His first and greatest difficulty was the Origin of Evil (Confess.
vii. 3):-Sed rursus dicebam, Quis fecit me? nonne Deus meus, non
tantum bonus, sed ipsum  bonum?  Unde igitur mihi male velle
et bene nolle, ut esset cur juste pcenas luerem? Quis in me hoc
posuit, et insevit mihi plantarium  amaritudinis, cum totus fierem
a dulcissimo Deo meo?  Si Diabolus auctor, unde ipse Diabolus?... (c. 5.)  Et quaerebam, unde malum: et male qucerebam: et
in ipsa inquisitione mea non videbam malum.... (c. 6.) Jam
etiam mathematicorum fallaces divinationes et impia deliramenta
rejeceram... (c. 7.) Jam itaque me, adjutor meus, illis vinculis
solveras, et queerebam unde malum, et non erat exitus.... (c. 13.)
Et primo volens ostendere mihi, quam resistas superbis, humilibus
autem des gratiam, et quanta misericordia tua demonstrata sit
hominibus via humilitatis, quod Verbum  tuun caro factun est, et
habitavit inter homines, procurasti mihi per quendam hominem immanissimo typho turgidum, quosdam  Platonicorum  libros....
et ibi legi, non quidem his verbis, sed hoc idem omnino multis ct
multiplicibus suaderi rationibus; quod in principio erat Verbum,
et Verbum  erat apud Deum, et Deus erat Verbum: hoc erat in
principio apud Deum; omnia per eum facta sunt.... (c. 14.)
Item ibi legi quia Deus Verbum, non ex came, non ex sanguine,
non ex voluntate viri, neque ex voluntate carnis, sed ex Deo natus
est.  Sed quia Verbum carofactum est, et habitavit in nobis, non ibi




NOTES.                          255
legi.. Q. uod exin ante omnia tempora, et supra omnia tempora
incommutabiliter manet unigenitus Filius tuus coeternus tibi, et
quia de plenitudine ejus accipiunt anime ut beate sunt, et quia
participatione manentis in se sapientiae renovantur ut sapientes
sint: est ibi.  Quod autem secundum tempus pro inpiis mortuus
est; et Filio unico tuo non pepercisti, sed 2pro nobis omnibus tcrdidisti eum: non est ibi.  Abscondisti enim hlec a sapientibus, et
revelasti ea parvulis.... (c. 10.)  Et inde admonitus redire ad
memetipsum, intravi in intima mea duce te; et potui quoniam
factus es adjutor meus: seqq.
Of the process of thought by which such inquirers were led
to Christianity, Neander says (Hist. of the Church, iii. 135):-'Many educated Pagans were conducted to the Faith, not at once,
by means of some sudden excitement, but after they had been led
by particular providences, by the great multitude of Christians
around them, to entertain doubts of the Pagan religion they had
received from their ancestors, and to enter upon a serious examition of the several systems of religion within their reach.  They
read the  Holy Scriptures and the writings of the Christian
Fathers; they proposed their doubts and their difficulties to
Christian friends, and finally made up their minds to go to the
bishop. Many came, by slow degrees, through many intervening
steps, to Christianity; and the Neo-Platonic religious idealism
formed one stage in particular by which they were brought nearer
to Christian ideas, as is seen in the examples of a Synesius and an
Augustine.  This system  made them  familiar with the doctrine
of a Triad.  Although this doctrine, in its speculative tendency,
was altogether different from  the Christian doctrine, which is in
its essence practical throughout; yet they were thereby made attentive to Christian ideas.  They were conducted still nearer to
practical Christianity by the doctrine that man needed to be redeemed and purified from  the might of the viv, which not only
fettered and clogged, but corrupted that element of his soul which




256                        NOTES.
stands related to God. It is true, they believed only in a general
redeeming power of God, which was imparted to individuals in
proportion to their worth; or the communication of which was
connected with various religious institutions under different
forms.... Yet when those to whom Christianity appeared at
first as one particular revelation of the divine, coordinate to other
forms of manifestation, and not as the absolute religion of humanity, were induced to read the Holy Scriptures, and so attend
divine worship in Christian churches.... they might by
their own study of the Scriptures, and through numberless impressions derived from the Church life, be let more deeply into
the Christian truth, until at last they found the redeeming God
only in Christ.... Thus Synesius, for example... thus it happened to Augustine...'
NOTE E E, page 154.
Plin., Hist. Nat., ii. 1: —Mundum  et hoc quod nomine alio
ccelum appellare libuit, cujus circumflexu teguntur omnia, numen
credi par est, geternum, immensum, neque genitum neque interiturum unquam. The philosopher seems to identify the universe of
things with the heavens, or vault of oether, embracing all things,
by which the globe is surrounded. Cicero recites well-known
passages to the same effect from Ennius and Euripides: Aspice
hoc sublime candens quem invocant omnes Jovem....  Vides
sublime fusum immoderatum nethera, qui terram tenero circumjectu
amplectitur. Hunc summam habeto Divfm, hunc perhibeto Jovem.
The Stoic Chrysippus had advanced the same exposition of the
Godhead: Chrysippus disputavit oethera esse eum quem homines
appellant Jovem. Cicero, De Nat. Deor., ii. 2, 25. Lucan, following an ampler explanation of the same school, affirmed Jupiter to
be not only: quodcunque vides, the whole material universe, but:




NOTES.                        257
quocunque moveris, the whole of our moral nature. But such
authorities as these had condescended to use at least the popular
name of the Supreme Deity, and to speak of Him  as a personal
existence. Pliny disdains this economy. After discussing various
theological views, he concludes himself: Deus est mortali juvare
mortalem, et hwec ad aeternam gloriam via, i. e. God is the mere
abstract principle of virtue; and this leads him round to the
starting-point of the Pagan mythologies, the pretended deification
of the wise and good among mortals: Hac proceres iere Romani;
hac nunc ccelesti passu cum liberis suis vadit maximus omnis evi
rector Vespasianus August us fessis rebus subveniens. Hic est
vetustissimus referendi gratiam  bene merentibus mos, ut tales
numinibus ascribant. Quippe et omnium aliorum nomina Deorum... ex hominum nata sunt meritis. And hence by an
easy lapse to the denial of a Providence: Irridendum vero agere
curam rerum humanarum  illud quicquid est summum. Such is
the vicious circle described by Pantheism and Atheism.
NOTE F F, page 157.
With regard to the means of obtaining peace and favour with
God, the main object of our religious affections, the notion of the
ancients fluctuated, much like our own, between the principles of
Sanctification and Justification, of gaining the reward by personal
acts or merits, or by free acceptance in consequence of some act or
merit of another. Under the first head are comprised ceremonial
purifications, as well as works of justice or charity; all godly
living as well as righteous observance; acts of personal discipline
and self-denial; means of removing inward or outward hindrances
to acceptance with the Deity. Thus man is supposed to work out
his own salvation, whatever aid may be given him from above,
whether by the opus operatum  of ritual lustrations, or by the
infusion of divine grace to prevent and follow him in all his
17




258                          NOTES.
thoughts and actions.  Under the second principle is comprised
the notion of satisfaction to God, of reconciliation with Him, of
atonement effected by a prescribed religious service, such as
sacrifice; whether the offering by the worshipper of an object
precious to himself, or the self-devotion of an object precious to
God, for the love it bears to the worshipper.
In the early ages of Christianity we find both these ideas of
religion, both these ruling principles of divine worship, recognised
equally among the heathens. Lustration and Expiation, Purification and Propitiation, the Mysteries and the Sacrifices, were in
perhaps equal vogue and estimation among them. By the one
they hoped to wash away the stains of guilt, to elevate the moral
character, to cast off the slough of human corruption, to purge the
mental vision and obtain a higher and truer conception of the
Divine, or nearer communion with it; to abjure our frail humanity
and assume a portion at least of divine illumination, purity, and
sanctity; to raise man to God.  Such was the object of the
Mysteries, or Initiation into the secrets of moral nature; such the
promises held forth  by the Hierophants of various religious
systems, especially of those derived from  or connected with the
East, and assured through the instrumentality of occult ceremonial observances, and most potently by the use of magical arts
and appliances.
But such were the aspirations, and such the resources generally
of the more refined and intelligent worshippers; this notion of
lustration as the one thing needful was, in a great measure, a
reaction from the grosser superstitions of the vulgar; from the
popular conception that God's favour was to be attained directly,
and without any personal effort, by the means of offerings and
sacrifice. To pour forth before the throne of grace gifts-precious
gifts, gifts ever ascending in value, gifts of life, of the life of
animals, and lastly of man himself, of our friends, of our offspring,
of ourselves-such was the most popular, the most ancient, the




NOTES.                        259
most wide-spread notion of religious service. The idea seems
to have commonly prevailed, that such sacrifice was accepted
insteZa of the suffering due from the worshipper himself for his
sins, or the disfavour, however caused, in which he imagined himself to stand with God. Hence, the more precious the victim to
Him, the more hope that the vicarious substitute would be
accepted. Of the extent to which human sacrifices were offered
in the heathen world I have spoken in a previous note, and of the
ineradicable feeling which prompted them, and which reappeared
again and again under the pressure of terror and disaster. But
even in the heathen mind this idea of the value of sacrifice
assumed here and there another and a higher form. Indications
are not wanting in the Pagan mythology of the conception of a
spontaneous offering made to God for man by a being himself
partaking of the divine nature, and having, from such participation, a certain claim upon the favour and consideration of the
Deity. The highest and holiest idea of sacrifice, as the offering
by God Himself of something precious to Himself for the sake of
man, and in order to reconcile man to Himself, is not wholly alien
even from the mind of the heathens.
The Greeks and Romans might learn, on  inquiry, that
Christianity offered, a view of religion founded, like their own,
on the ideas both of purification and of propitiation. They might
learn that Baptism was regarded by the Church as an initiatory
rite, leading to a new life of purity and godliness, the great
hindrances to which, in natural and acquired corruption, might
be removed by the grace of the Holy Spirit infused into the hearts
of the believers, and manifesting itself in their conversion to God,
and their amendment of life and conversation.
Again, they might learn that the death of Christ upon the
cross was declared to be a sacrifice, consummated once for all, the
crowning sacrifice of which all earlier offerings were but types, the
offering, not of man's dearest as a ransom for himself from punish



260                              NOTES.
ment due to his own sins, but the offering of God's dearest for the
sake of man, as the means discovered by the Most High to satisfy
His justice, and at the same time to illustrate His love.
They might learn, further, that the Christian mind still fluctuated, like their own, between these two conceptions; that sometimes, and in some minds, the one, in some the other, gained the
predominance; that, as in after times, so even then, there were
some teachers who put forward the one view as the main essence
of religion, some the other; that in some schools it is the life of
Christ, with the lessons and example of godly practice which it
has taught us; in others, the death of Christ, the cross of Christ,
the atonement of Christ, that is the one great revelation of the
Gospel.  There is still, as there ever has been in Christianity, as
there ever has been in Heathenism, Purification  on one side and
Propitiation on the other; Sanctification in one scale and Justification in the other.
Thus they might read  in  Justin Martyr that the work of
Christ is victory over the power of evil spirits prevailing in us:
Trbo yap rTJv daqiooviv, a  artlv aio6rpta TV  evaepeiag TOV  OeoV, og iraalat
7rpooelrvvoviev, TOV Oeav aeh 6da'I7rO  po0 Xp T  VTaro  irprlOivalt rapaicaliovrev,
tva Lera rT  krtaTrpePaL rpbo  Oeov ajurlot  u0pev  po870rv yap etclvov Kat
2vrp&rg7v Kcauoviev. By Justin, Ireneus, Tertullian, Clement, Origen,
and others, it is very commonly referred to the change He effects
in men's lives on earth, and the sanctifying influence of His teaching and example.  Thus Irenoeus, Adv. lcer. iii. 18: Filius hominis factus est, ut assuesceret hominem  percipere Deum, et assuesceret Deum habitare in homine. In ii. 22: Omnes venit salvare...
infantes et parvulos et pueros et juvenes et seniores: ideo per omnem  venit  eetatem, et infantibus infans factus, sanctificans infantes, &c.  Clemens Alex., Cohort. ad Gent., p. 6: -raon rot  ei e
ot rC a&vopia9 voi rOTre, d6i TrV 0tLavOpuwriav ro6 2dyov vTv  vloi yeyovapev
Tro  OCeo. Pcedag. i. 2, p. 100: eCarv oVv o raltdayoyaog   6)Ov 26;yoc dla
rrapalvaeoev 0epa-revrlKot  rTv 7rapa v5Ctiv Trf "bvxc iraeOSv... Z6yo
6e 6 qrarpluco  F6vo- ebriTv ivOpUwirvwv tarpoc appUroiar6rTov 7ratluvtoc Kcal




NOTES.                              261
snr6b o ay'toC voaova7c  PvX7iC.  Origen sees in the union of the divine
and human in Christ's nature the commencement of a connection
between man and God (Cont. Cels. iii. 28): oit ar; iKEdvov ~peaTo Oeia
K   avOpwrw'iv 7 avvvaailvec0ae ~tC(' vi' rW avOpworivT 7r irpog rb Oeiorepov
colvwia Vt yEvyrat Odea OVKc ev  o'6v  r7O'IaEov, a22a tca T rra  T rof #er7a rce
rt6arevetv avaea/tpavovat P/iov, Ov 6'I7ovc 1didaaev.  The same writer
compares the death of Christ with that of Socrates, as a means
of confirming the courage of his disciples. See Contr. Cels. ii.
14, 40.
Again, Lactantius refers the work  of Christ expressly to the
effect of His baptism  (Divin. Instit. iv. 15): Tinctus est a Johanne
in Jordano fluvio, ut lavacro spiritali peccata non sua, quae utique
non habebat, sed carnis quam gerebat, aboleret.
These views, however, did not necessarily exclude the other
notion of the efficacy of Christ's death for man's justification.
The heathens might trace in patristic teaching many distinct assertions of the remission of sins through the merit of our Lord's
sacrifice.  Comp. Barnabas, c. 5: Propter hoc Dominus sustinuit
tradere corpus suum  in exterminium, ut remissione peccatorum
sanctificemur, quod est, sparsione sanguinis illius.  Clemens Rom.
ad Corinth. i. c. 7: a&rviovCuev ec roT aljta TOV Xpliorov Kail iSoiev 6f
rTiLov r6 O0e5 (a'lua) avrov, OrL icat J0i rTv  /uTer'pav aTorpiav icXvOev ra-vrT
r, tc6  [JluerTavoiac Xptv 6rnVveycev.  Tertullian, Adv. Judceos, c. 13:
Christum  oportebat pro omnibus gentibus fieri sacrificium, qui
tanquam  ovis ad victimam  ductus est.  Origen, In Levit. Horn. 3:
Ipse etiam qui in similitudinem hominum factus est, et habitu repertus ut homo, sine dubio pro peccato quod ex nobis susceperat,
quia peccata nostra portavit, vitulum immaculatum, hoc est, carnem  incontaminatam, obtulit hostiam  Deo.  Again, In Nunzer.
Horn. 4: Si non fuisset peccatum, non necesse fuerat filium Dei agnum fieri, nec opus fuerat eum in carne positum jugulari... peccati autem necessitas propitiationem requirit, et propitiatio non fit
nisi per hostiam.  In Maltth. c. 16, tract. 11: Homo quidem  non




262                           NOTES.
potest dare aliquanl  commutationern pro anima sua, Deus autem
pro animabus omnium dedit commutationem pretiosum sanguinem
filii sui.  Cyprian, Ad Demetr. c. 22: Hanc gratiam Deus impertit.....redimendo credentem  pretio sanguinis sui, reconciliando hominem Deo patri.  Lactantius in the verses ascribed to
him, De Benefciis Christi:Quisquis ades, mediique subis in limina templi,
Siste parum, insontemque tuo pro crimine passum
Respice me.
These are a few only of the passages of the Fathers on this
subject, collected by Grotius, De Satisfactione Christi, and later
writers.  An ample catena, embracing almost every known name
among the Christian writers of the first three centuries, is given
by Professor Blunt, Lectures on the Use of the Ecrly Fathers,
p. 518 foll. I do not, however, discover in them any expressions
opposed to the distinction thus stated by Hagenbach (History of
Doctrines, i. p. 172, Engl. trans.) in discussing the opinions of the
primitive Church:-' The tendency of Christ's appearance  on
earth, as such, was to redeem'men from sin, and to reconcile them
to God, inasmuch as it destroyed the power of the devil, and restored the harmony of human nature.  But, in accordance with
the doctrines preached by the apostles, the sufferings and death
of Christ were from the commencement thought to be of principal
importance in the work of Redemption.  The Fathers of the
primitive Church regarded His death as a sacrifice and a ransom,
and therefore ascribed to His blood the power of cleansing from
sin and guilt, and attached a high importance, sometimes even a
supernatural efficacy, to the sign of the Cross.... Yet that
theory of satisfaction had not yet been formed which represents
Christ as satisfying the justice of God by suffering in the room of
the sinner the punishment due to him.' Nevertheless the writer
admits, what appears plainly enough, that'the design of the




NOTES.                         263
death of Christ was to reconcile man to God was an opinion held
by more t1han one of the Fathers.'
On the whole, we must allow that among the Christians, as
among the Heathens of the primitive age, there was much fluctuation of opinion respecting the foundation of religious feeling;
that some were inclined, sometimes at least, to lean more to the
purifying and elevating effect of Christ's mission, some to the propitiatory character of His sufferings.  Some looked chiefly to His
life, others to His death; some to what He did for men, others to
what He suffered for men; some to His sanctifying influence, others to His justifying merits.
It may be conceded, perhaps, that the former, in accordance
with the prevalent religious sentiment of the time, and in the absence of any ruled decision of the Church on the subject, was the
more common inclination of the two. The notion of purification
and exaltation of the human soul by virtue required or imparted,
by the overthrow  or extinction of evil powers and dispositions,
was fondly entertained by the purest of the heathen philosophical
systems; such was the aim of the most popular superstitious observances of the time. It is possible that the Christians themselves
may have been so far affected by the habits of thought around
them, as to look more to this side of Christian doctrine than to
the other.  Of the Nicene creed, we may observe that while proclaiming the saving efficacy of our Lord's whole career,'Who for
us men and for our salvation came down from heaven,.. was incarnate,.. and was made man, and was crucified also for us....
He suffered and was buried,.  and rose again,' it places the
death of Christ on the same line with every other leading incident
in it, and does not exalt it, as later systems of theology would
generally do, to the grand and cardinal place above them all. If
it speaks of the sufferings of Christ, it says nothing of His Satisfaction or Atonement; the Remission of Sins it ascribes rather to
His Baptism than to His Crucifixion.




264                              NOTES.
NOTE G G, page 166.
S. Augustin, De Civ. Dei, xxii. 30: Vera ibi gloria erit, ubi
laudantis nec errore quisquam, nec adulatione laudabitur: verus
honor qui nulli negabitur digno, nulli deferetur indigno: sed nec
ad eum  ambiet ullus incignus, ubi nullus permittetur esse nisi dignus. Vera pax ibi est, ubi nihil adversi, nec a se ipso, nec ab alio
quisquam patietur.  Praemium  virtutis erit ipse qui virtutem  dedit; eique se ipsum, quo melius et majus nihil possit esse, promisit.  Quid est enim aliud quod per Prophetam  dixit, Ero illorum
Deus, et ipsi erunt mnihi plebs; nisi, Ego ero unde satientur, Ego
ero quaecunque ab hominibus honeste desiderantur, et vita, et salus, et victus, et copia, et gloria, et honor, et pax, et omnia bona?
Sic enim et illud recte intelligitur, quod ait Apostolus, Ut sit
Deus omnia in omnibus.  Ipse finis erit desideriorum  nostrorum,
qui sine fine videbitur, sine fastidio amabitur, sine fatigatione laudabitur. Hoc munus, hic affectus, hic actus profecto erit omnibus,
sicut ipsa vita veterna, communis.
NOTE I I, page 173.
We may assume that the Christian apologists took care to present to their heathen readers the arguments which they knew would
have  the greatest force with  them.  That, from  the  superior
morality of the disciples, is eloquently set forth by Justin Martyr,
Apol. i. c. 14: ov rporov Kcai  peur  jlera ra TOz ri   6yo  7reltaO/vaCt, eKeivwv u1v
6arecarT ev, 0ed d(e 1t6v9 r  ayevvvr9,  da  ro    viov e&r6edOa' ol TraCalt pev
TropveicaS xaipovrer, vvv 6s c(oppooavvv Fi6v7yv a7raa6iuevot  ol d6 Ka Iuay' -
cac Terxvatl XpOj#evot, ayaO7 Kai a6yevvTOr  0e6   e'avrov7   avareOelK6rec6?XpUdraToV 6d Kcai KTcraTWdrov    oi r6opovc travrTo  JuatZZov arepyovreS, vvv Kai a
eXo/zev eSl KOcVOV (0 povre7  Kal 7rav  6Eoiev9cotv K voVVTre'    ol 0  tFa2X;2ot 6d
Kal al72,o2 6vo i Kal Trpag TOV(;  oOviX zoio'ovU 6tda Ta e0r Katl eCrias Koovat U1)
7rotOV/tevol, vVv Fiera Tv e7rtavetav roV XpLCTOVO 6UO6iaTOt ytv6#evot, ial




NOTES.                               265
iv7rp TiV eiXOpv ebX6vaevot, Kat rovi  aSidoS CltoovrTac reiOetv Trelpiuevot,
OT7rog oi Kacar  rag rov XplTaro  Kca2aCg vroOiooavtvac  pLUCavrec eU2Tit6e6 cat
aCv  /z,~V rsiv aivr)v Trapa Trov Ta vrwv 6eo('STovrof OVeo  rvxeWv.  Compare
Origen, Contr. Celsum, i. 67:'i roie   de6 Oavaaciav  rpao6r7ra Kcal  araaro2L/V  rov  ovc, cKal pltavOpurav Kal Xpaor6r7rTa TKaml ~epo6r'a ev rot' d/
dcia    pc t ru/LKac i rTvar Xpeia avOpwportcaK  v'rolcptpvaievolt, 2Ua 7rapadea/evolc yv7ui'S TOV T-Pepl Neov Kal XplT70OV Kal Trq ikJUopeivgr Kpiceuc 2o'yov.
At a later period, and under less favourable circumstances,
Lactantius could advance similar pretensions, though his rhetorical style commands less of our confidence (Instit. Div. iii. 26):
Dei autem prmecepta, quia et simplicia et vera sunt, quantum  valeant in animis hominum  quotidiana exempla demonstrant.  Da
mihi virum  qui sit iracundus, malecicus, effreenatus; paucissimis
Dei verbis tam  placidum  quam  ovem reddam.  Da cupidum, avarum, tenacem: jam  tibi eum  liberalem  dabo, et pecuniam  suam
plenis manibus largientem.  Da timidum  doloris ac mortis: jam
cruces, et ignes, et Phalaridis taurum  contemnet. Da libidinosum,
adulterum, ganeonem: jam  sobrium, castum, continentem  videbis.
Da crudelem. et sanguinis appetentem: jam  in veram clementiam
furor ille mutabitur... gratis ista fiunt, facile, cito; modo pateant aures, et pectus sapientiam  sitiat... Pauca vero Dei preecepta sic totum  hominem  immutant, et exposito  vetere, novum
reddunt, ut non cognoscas eundem  esse.
On the conversion of Pagans at the sight of the Christian
martyrdoms, see  particularly  Justin  Martyr, Apo. ii. c. 12:
Kcal yap aivTr  kyo, rTOZL ITiaMrvoC xaipov dtLayCuaOa, 6eCPa23aZojUvovc KcoVrOv
Xplotrtavov, oppv de a6opovc irpbc Oavarov Kcal rravra Tc aXaa vopoe6Feva
0oPepa,  vevevovv a6dvarov eIvat iv naKi a Kca2 tpdVovia vIradpxeev avTrov.
IC. T. 2.
This passage is cited by Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. iv. 8.  Comp.
Justin M.,.Apol. i. c. 25.  Dial. c.'ryph. c. 110, 119, 131.  To the
evidence thus afforded, the Pagans could only reply by imputing
the patience of the Christians to obstinacy or madness.  Tertull.,




266                            NOTES.
Apol. c. 27: Quidam  dementiam  existimant, quod cum possimus
et sacrificare in praesenti, et illresi abire manente apud animum
proposito, obstinationem  saluti prueferamus. c. 50: propterea desperati et perditi existimamur.  In the same place: Nec quicquam
tamen proficit exquisitior quceque crudelitas vestra; illecebra est
magis vitae: plures efficimur, quoties metimur a vobis: semen est
sanguis Christianorum... Illa ipsa obstinatio, quam  exprobratis,
magistra est.  Quis enim  non contemplatione ejus concutitur ad
requirendum, quid intus in re sit?  Quis non, ubi requisivit, accedit? ubi accessit, pati exhortat?
Compare Epict., Dissert. iv. 7: e-Ta V7ro /paviac jEv duvaTat Tri
OViG) dCaTeOvalt Tpbg rav-a Kal VT7ro eovc (f oi rTa2LXaiolt, vir' 26yov d Kcat
6arordeieOw oietEig ICvaTat. M. Aurel., Medit. xi. 3: uir Kcara'lati2v rapaTaLtv, 6c oi XplarTavoi.
In the Epistle to Diognetus, one of the pieces attributed to
Justin Martyr, the heathen is invited to remark, among other tokens of their moral superiority, that the Christians do not expose
their infants: ya.oVo~tv... Trevoyovotv Zv, a' oa pirov t pi av TOyevvSueva.
Among the heathen, this abominable practice, which grew probably more and more rife with the decline of society, was the result
often of misery, but more commonly of indolence and selfishness.
When we remember that the Christians, who denied themselves
this miserable resource, were excluded by their principles from
many of the employments and avocations of their fellow-citizens,
we can easily imagine how superior they must have been to the
mass of those around them in self-denial, self-confidence, and energy; in all the virtues, in short, which in the long run secure
success in life. I imagine that no cause contributed more to the
triumph of Christianity than the moral discipline to which its
disciples were necessarily subjected.




NOTES.                        267
NOTE K K, page 182.
The story is told by Sozomen, Ist. Eccles. i. 18, and is repeated
by most writers on Church history as a vivid illustration of the
temper of the times. Some may pay it the tribute of a passing
smile, others make an open jest of it. To me it seems to have a
deep and grave significance. I believe that among the most
thoughtful and logical of reasoners the final movement towards
conversion has often been one of sudden inexplicable impulse, and
I trace in this individual instance, whether actual or mythical, a
striking emblem of the way in which the last links which bound
the Roman empire to Paganism were mysteriously, providentially,
perhaps I may say miraculously, snapped asunder.








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Christian Ballads.  By the Right
Rev. A. CLEVELAND COXE, D.D., Bishop of Western New York.
Illustrated by John A. Hows.  1 vol., 8vo.  14 full page engravings, and nearly 60 head and tail pieces.  Price, cloth
extra, $6.00; mor. ant. or extra, $9.00; crushed levant mor.,
$10.00.
"These ballads have gained for the author an enviable distinction; this work
stands almost without a rival." —Clbristian Times.
" Not alone do they breathe a beautiful religious and Christianlike spirit,
there is much real and true poetry in them."-Home Journal.
Mount Vernon, and other Poems.
By HARVEY RICE.  12mo.  Cloth, $1.25; half calf, extra, $3.00;
full calf, extra, $4.00.
"Fresh and original in style and in thought. * * * Will be read with much
satisfaction,"-Cleveland Leader.