hazarded by the assertion, have believed and have persuaded even the Jews of Jerusalem to believe that Christ was risen, if nothing, absolutely nothing had been seen or known of him after his public execution? Christ had foretold his death and resurrection. The disciples had seen him repeatedly after his resurrection. He had promised the effusion of the Holy Spirit. They had assembled and waited and prayed for it. The promise was fulfilled. The fulfilment was of the most remarkable kind. Its effects were of the most public nature. The train of circumstances was such, the evidences so overwhelming, that even those who crucified him were convinced, and added to the disciples. Such events, so remarkable, so undeniable, so public, in the very place where opposition must have had a perfect triumph, and the credit of the disciples must have been completely ruined, by the demonstration of the untruthfulness of their testimony, if Christ had not risen, were a fit preparation for the grand inauguration of Christianity as the religion of all mankind. We do not know exactly what that baptism of the Holy Ghost was, those peculiar operations of the Spirit, those diversities of gifts. But we do know that the expectations of the disciples to whom the promise had been made were more than realized; that their faith was so confirmed as to give them great boldness and to put all their previous doubts to flight; that during the lifetime of their Master they had never had such confidence in their cause, or such courage in maintaining it; and that this enthusiastic ardor did not pass away as a transient day-dream, but became the effective and enduring cause of the rapid spread of the new doctrines and of the manifestation of the rarest and most exalted virtues which for three centuries irradiated the world in the midst of the most appalling scenes of persecution. There is no other satisfactory explanation than the one above intimated of the spread of Christianity under the ministry of the apostles, dating from such a time as the period immediately following the crucifixion, and beginning at such a place as the very scene of the crucifixion, among those who were witnesses to it. The vigor of Christianity, as shown then and in all succeeding ages, its power as the great civilizer of the world, its vitality, which throws off the corruptions of centuries, and perpetually renews itself, its exalted character as the precursor of the mightiest achievements of the human intellect, its unrivalled potency in producing a sterling and substantial morality, its power to solace human griefs, all demand an origin more substantial than myths and sagas, more vital than the dreams of an enthusiast, or the superstitions of an ignorant, credulous populace. The early propagation of Christianity rested preeminently upon an extended group of the most astonishing, and yet the most incontrovertible facts. If the essential facts are not true, the doctrines founded upon them are not true; and both these being abandoned, the splendid fabric of a historical Christianity,

the most potent moral agency in the world, remains without an explanation. It would seem that, in an age so imbedded in false views of morals and religion, with a literature, philosophy, art, and government so alienated from the truth, and a life so given over to sensuality and gross immorality, there was need that a nascent Christianity should have a fresh, vital beginning; that, wanting a history and the demonstration of its moral tendencies from the trial of centuries, and all that accumulation of evidence which time has now given, it should be ushered in with a special divine energy, and be advanced by means of extraordinary gifts and aids. Gushing thus as from an overflowing fountain, the stream, which is now spread out into an expanded even volume, might, in its narrower compass, form a deep boiling current, as if rushing from a mighty cataract. As with the individual the first stage of a religious life may be accompanied with feelings intensely fervid, and with an enthusiasm and zeal which are then necessary to surmount great discouragements and obstacles, so Christianity as a whole might properly have a concentration and intensity of power at the outset, for which the far wider though gentler influences of later ages are a sufficient compensation. If the primitive Christians had some aids and evidences which we have not, we have very many which they had not. It was not, however, merely the extraordinary gifts of the apostles and the extraordinary events connected with their ministry that caused the dissemination of the Christian faith. What arrested equal attention and produced equal effect was the character of the professors of the new religion. The purity of their lives, their strict integrity, their firm adherence to the loftiest principles of morality, their disregard of consequences when urged to violate their conscience or their religious vows; their patience under injuries, their forgiving spirit, their magnanimity, their love to each other and even to their enemies, and their benevolent, self-renouncing, and self-denying spirit, made it impossible for the ingenuous among the heathen to withhold their admiration. The Christian life, in contrast with heathenism, was one standing miracle. Christianity itself contained nothing more wonderful or more convincing to its adversaries than the Christlike spirit of its adherents. Though they were all imperfect, and though some of them fell into errors and into sins, yet we learn not only from the apostolic writings, but from the testimony of pagans, that their attachment to truth, and to the purest principles of morality, and to all the virtues of a truly Christian walk, was such as to present the most striking contrast to what was observed among other people. Connected with this moral devotion of spirit was the earnestness with which every disciple espoused the Christian cause. Every one was a propagandist. That religion which was all things to them, they wished to communicate to others. They saw men living without God

in the world. The same compassion which moved Christ to devote his life to the salvation of men, prompted his followers to render that salvation as availing to all their fellowmen as possible. Wherever a Christian went, Christ was preached, and the faith was propagated. A Christian captive was sometimes the means of converting whole communities and nations. The spirit of its founder animated the church, and conversions from idolatry were rapidly multiplied. The age of Christ and of his apostles is the turning point in the world's history. There is no other epoch of equal importance in itself or of equal influence upon mankind. If we ask what has made the moral history of the world gradually improve from that date, no cause so powerful can be named as Christianity. As the industry of man has given a new face to nature, so the spirit of Jesus Christ has given a new aspect to human society. Its influence is so all-pervading that it is difficult to specify particulars. It new models the individual morally, and elevates him intellectually. It acts upon the family in modifying and ennobling all its relations. The wife and mother is exalted to a nobler sphere, and her position of newly acquired honor enables her to shed a most benign influence upon the family and upon society. The husband and father is a priest in his household, and has more sacred feelings of humanity and tenderness to those whose happiness and fortunes are placed at his disposal. The child, first secured against infanticide, then elevated as a moral being, and educated to Christian virtue, makes the love and respect of parents a part of his religion. And so the whole domestic relation is improved and sanctified by the example and teachings of Jesus. That exaltation of nature which blesses the individual and the family reaches also the state, and teaches it to respect the rights and to seek the well-being of the individual. It no longer makes itself the end and men the means, as in ancient pagan times, but is itself a minister to man as a social being. It recognizes the rights of other nations, regards itself as an instrument for promoting the interests of mankind, and acknowledges a higher aim than its own selfish purposes. Though the state is the last to feel the direct power of Christianity, it is beginning to consider itself commissioned by the genius of Christianity to do something noble as well as just for the whole brotherhood of man.-It remains for us to sketch the working of Christianity from the time of its establishment to the present. This is not the place to give the details of ecclesiastical history; and yet the influence of Chris tianity upon the world cannot be portrayed without involving what is most spiritual and vital in the history of the church. It will be convenient to divide the Christian age into three periods: the early period, when the church was oppressed and persecuted, reaching to the time of Constantine; the medieval period, when the church was recognized as catholic, and was

for the most part dominant; and the Protestant period, during which Christendom has been divided into two great parties, and the authority of the church over the state has been greatly diminished. Though the 2d period has a duration about four times as great as either of the others, in their relative historical importance they stand nearly on a level with each other.The first period extends to the year 311. At the time the apostles were zealously propagating the faith, the age of classic antiquity was nearly gone by. Neither Greece with its individuality, liberty, and intelligence, nor Rome with its stern rule and power of conquest, had furnished any thing which could perpetuate social progress and preserve nations from decay. Unless a more potent conservative element could be thrown into society, the prospect was that all nations would share the fate of the great monarchies of the East, every period of great civilization being followed by a relapse into barbarism. Judaism, which was never designed to be universal or perpetual, had done its work, and was already effete. It was easy to see, within a very short time, that if there were any regenerative power which could arrest the tendency to decay, it must be found in the inspiring youthful enthusiasm of the new religion. Instead of the prevailing scepticism, the Christian had a positive faith. Instead of limiting his views to a mere earthly existence, and living after none but selfish principles, he lived for another world, and after another's will. His character and life were hereby ennobled. He knew the worth of the human soul, and would not violate its obligations nor jeopard its interests to please men. He had the loftiest style of character, and was capable of the highest and most difficult virtues. Herein lay the vigor of the Christian cause; and the want of all these things made the whole fabric of the Roman empire but a hollow shell. Hence in the protracted struggle of three centuries between paganism and Christianity, the one was continually sinking while the other was steadily rising. The class of men of whose existence in any political relations Trajan needed to be informed, gave character to the whole empire under Constantine. Within of a century after the death of all the apostles except John, that is, at the close of the 1st century, Christians were found in nearly all the countries bordering on the Mediterranean sea, especially in Asia Minor, Greece, Italy, and the north of Africa. In the next two centuries not only did churches become numerous in all these countries, but they sprang up, here and there, in nearly all the other provinces of the empire. During this whole period Christianity was opposed, sometimes by unrestrained popular violence, sometimes by the government, and sometimes by men of learning. After the destruction of Jeru salem, Christians being no longer confounded with the Jews by the emperors, and their numbers being now mainly increased by converts from paganism, persecutions were directed

against them as Christians. Under Domitian, Christians were punished as traitors. Trajan moderated persecution; Hadrian and Antoninus Pins required that it should be conducted under forms of law; Marcus Aurelius gave a loose rein to the popular fury. Then ensued a period of 70 or 80 years, during which the emperors manifested little interest in the subject, and individual magistrates were left to follow their own inclinations. So much the more severe was the persecution of Decius, the first that extended throughout the empire, to the Christians who had become accustomed to a comparatively easy and tranquil life. After 50 years of interrupted or mitigated persecution, followed the second general persecution under Diocletian, which ended with the change of the empire from a pagan to a Christian state. While many men of literary eminence appear to have used their influence against Christianity, Celsus and Porphyry, the former near the middle of the 2d, and the latter toward the end of the 3d century, are the chief antagonists who appeared as authors. The Christian apologists, Justin Martyr, Tatian, Athenagoras, Tertullian, and Origen, put an end to the false and puerile accusations brought against the Christians, and led to this result, that the great question between the two parties now struggling for existence henceforth turned on its real merits. In this period, a distinction appears between the clergy and the laity, as also between presbyter, bishop, and metropolitan; the sees of Rome, Alexandria, and Antioch hold a preeminence above others, and provincial synods are held. The writers of the church directed their attention chiefly to what were denominated heresies. Among these, the various forms of Gnosticism were prominent. Other questions which began to agitate the church were amply discussed in the next succeeding period. The authorities relied on were Scripture and tradition. A lower tone of morality, both in the clergy and in the laity, had in too Imany instances begun to prevail.-The second period, from the time of Constantine to that of Luther. There are three things of most extensive influence that mark this period: the new world of thought opened to the speculations of an undisciplined age, the new attitude of Christianity as the religion of the court and of the state, and the new character of the population of the empire, introduced by the invading armies of the barbarians. These three circumstances enter largely into the causes which gave to the middle ages their peculiar character and condition. The first had operated before. But as the former period was chiefly of a practical character, with but here and there a speculative mind in the first two centuries, and with undeveloped tendencies rather than completed results in the 3d century, there will be more unity in the treatment of the subject, by viewing the whole movement together. Nothing ever so extended the field of human thought, or so aroused the capacities of the mind, as the revelation of Christian truth. It came at a time when almost all

systems of philosophy were broken down, when men despaired of ever arriving at certain truth, when the age of profound thought had gone by, and every thing tended to intellectual weakness, to decay, and finally to gross barbarism. Still, in such untoward circumstances, it gave an astonishing impulse to the human mind. What are all the stupendous systems of Gnosticism, but attempts of minds still pagan in a greater or less degree to strike out theories of the universe that should comprehend the mediation between the finite and the infinite, after the idea contained in the incarnation of the Son of God? The new Platonic philosophy itself might never have been developed in Alexandria, had not Christianity rendered a new philosophy. absolutely necessary. On minds essentially sound and Christian, we see the new scope which Christianity gave to thought in Justin Martyr, Tertullian, Clement, Origen, and Augustine. If it be the province of Christianity, not only to overcome all absolute evil, whether as opposed to truth or to the right, but to bring out and cure all partial evil where error has with it some admixture of truth, and wrong associates with itself some things that are right, we shall not be surprised that in the beginning, when Christian philosophy was as much in its. infancy as Grecian philosophy was in the days of Thales and Pythagoras, there were ten heresies for every truth, and that the church was like a shrub from which shoot out bristling thorns at almost every point. We have not space even to name every shade of heresy recorded in the annals of the early church. To say nothing of the Cerinthians, Carpocratians, Valentinians, Ophites, Patripassians, Artemonians, Montanists, Manichæans, Noetians, &c., of the former period, we have a host of parties more or less connected with the Arian controversy, not only the Arians and semi-Arians, but the Eunomians, Aetians, Apollinarists, Adoptians, Nestorians, Eutychians, Monophysites, Monothelites, and many others. In the midst of these controversies broke out the Pelagian and semi-Pelagian heresies, as they are called. Constituted as the human mind is, it would be impossible that two such points as that of the Son of God dwelling in-human flesh, and that of the Spirit or grace of God dwelling in the human mind, should not lead to much speculation and discussion in respect to the mode of the union. The scholastic theologians added little on these points to the doctrines taught by Athanasius and Augustine. Indeed it was their office not so much to discover truth as to confirm the decisions of the church. What most characterized the scholastic age in respect to doctrines was the standing controversy with speculative mystics on the one hand, and numerous sects of separatists on the other. There was scarcely a time when both of these tendencies were not ably represented. When Christianity became the acknowledged religion of the state, the whole outward condition of the church was changed. Politics and religion were henceforth combined. Sometimes the state

ruled the church, and sometimes the church ruled the state; but never were both kept strictly within their own bounds. We have only to look into the laws of the Christian emperors and the acts of the bishops to find abundant evidence on this point. At the beginning of this period the imperial court at Constantinople exercised a most decisive influence over the church. Not only were high ecclesiastics often dependent on the emperor, and subject to his will, but even councils were awed by his presence. At a later period, and in the West, the head of the church exercised authority over all Christian states. From the nature of the case, where there is such a union of the civil and ecclesiastical power, the one or the other must rule. There must be a last resort in all cases of collision. Thus, under Constantine, the church obtained protection and support, but in many cases at the expense of its independence. It rose politically and sunk morally at the same time. Piety and learning and missionary zeal retired more and more to the desert. Ambition both in church and state was renounced by the more devout, that in a life of meditation and prayer, and of poverty, after the example of Christ, they might live only for the world to come, and for the spiritual interests of mankind. Many of the greatest and best men of the early church chose this mode of life. In after times monasticism wore a very different aspect. The population of Christendom underwent great changes during the period introduced by Constantine and closed by Charlemagne. While paganism was completely extinguished, and Christianity was carried into Persia and even to India and Abyssinia, there arose a Mohammedan power in Arabia which blotted out Christianity from the map of Asia and Africa, of the eastern church left but feeble remains in Greece and Constantinople, seized upon a part of Spain, and threatened France, and indeed all the borders of the empire except the northern. Still more were the fortunes of Christendom affected from another quarter. The German races, a more vigorous stock, subdued the degenerate and feeble inhabitants of the empire. The ancient Christianity was almost obliterated, and the loose nominal Christianity of Visigoths, Ostrogoths, Vandals, and Burgundians swept murderously over the south and west of Europe. Afterward the Franks and Saxons, and other German tribes, came nominally into the pale of Christendom, regenerating and invigorating it politically, but pouring into the church a semibarbarous population which it required centuries to subdue and civilize. The church had enough to do to manage the half-heathen population which was thus poured into its own bosom. Its missionary work was almost necessarily limited to its own borders. In the conversion of these tribes, the monks of Ireland, England, and the east of France, had shown great zeal, and in prosecuting their work a large number nobly sacrificed their lives. But too many among these German tribes were converted either as soldiers

at the command of their royal leaders, or as subdued, enemies by authority of their conquerors. The banks of the Elbe were for two centuries wet with human gore by such contests between the German and Slavonic races. With a population so introduced into the church, it is not strange that the wild, tumultuous character of the middle ages should show itself as much in the church as in the state. Herein lies the cause, if not the justification, of the Roman hierarchy. The concentrated authority of all Christendom, backed by the awful sanctions of religion, was, by the ecclesiastics of the age, deemed necessary in order to hold these fierce spirits in check. Certainly in the first half of this long period the nations of western Europe were indebted in no small degree to the church for the order that prevailed in society. Many other causes, indeed, coöperated to elevate the hierarchy, and to complete its organization. The church, which in the time of the earliest heresies and of the persecutions strove after unity through the bishops and through synods, became in a higher degree a united catholic church under the influence of Constantine and of the general councils. Its organization more and more resembled that of the empire. Single churches governed by their bishops, the churches of a province governed by synods and metropolitans, and whole countries governed as patriarchates, all seemed to imply the highest unity in a single head similar to that of the empire. But all these parts of a general organization were not equally complete. The hierarchical system was somewhat variable. after times some things were retained, some went into disuse, and some received further development. The unity of the church was weakened by the jealousy between the eastern and western churches, and between the Greek patriarch and the Roman pontiff. The bishop of Rome was in the old capital of the empire, and the bishop of Constantinople in the new. The one capital had antiquity on its side, the other the presence of the Christian emperor and his court. When the division of the empire took place, and especially when the western empire fell and a new Christian empire was established in the West by the Carlovingians, the way was prepared for the complete separation of the Greek and Latin churches, which in the course of time ensued. The new Christian or German empire, called also the sacred Roman empire, increased the power of the bishop of Rome in many important respects, but was a check in other respects. The temporal power and authority of the pope were in general increased, but his influence over the clergy in Germany was thereby, in point of fact, restricted. Both the German church and the Gallican, in the course of time, had a more or less national character, supported by the emperor of Germany and the king of France, who often arrayed themselves in opposition to Rome. This was the great contest which lasted for centuries. From the 8th century to the 11th, the founda

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