the physical power which belonged to Rome by name and by commission, but possessed of the spirit and power of Elias-a mysterious, healing power, a power of peace and not of war-it enrobes itself with a new and higher order of authority, and lays the foundation of a Spiritual Empire, with a feminine basis; i. e., a spirit of non-resistance, endurance and patience, the spirit with which it gains its greatest victories, and the spirit with which it first subdues the great Empire of Rome. The doctrine of Divine Unity, beaten without a body by the sword, but pre-ordained to triumph, takes up the spirit for a weapon, and the body for a residence, and abandoning the whole Dispensation of Moses as the butterfly does its chrysalis, it enlarges at once the sphere of its action, to grapple with its enemy in every corner of the Empire. God is now no longer a spirit only, but a man also. Jerusalem is now no longer a locality, but an omnipresent city that hath eternal foundations, on the Rock of Ages, in the Kingdom of Heaven which is within us. The Temple is no longer the work of men's hands, but the bodies and souls of men, the arch of the blue heavens whose Architect is Divine. Sacrificial offerings are no longer cattle or beasts, but the Divine Humanity itself, as well as the evil passions of men, and their living bodies purified from evil. The people of God are no longer the children of the faithful Abraham by blood alone, but his children by faith. The law is no longer ceremo

nial, but moral. Doctrine is no longer ritual, but spiritual. Everything that was, remains in existence, but its character is changed. It is translated into another meaning, enlarged, refined, sublimated, evaporated; but as all these processes are natural and legitimate in the works of creation, they are equally so in the works of Providence, which is Nature; and it is as essential to the progress of Religion and Politics to sublimate an old dogma or an old law, as in science and art to sublimate a solid by heat into vapour. That sublimation, moreover, increases its power; for, as the vapour of water is more elastic and powerful than water, so is the sublimated form of the Old Roman, Greek, and Jewish Economies, in the New Christian Trilogy, compounded of the three, more powerful than either in their ancient condition; and so also will a still farther sublimation of civilisation be more potent than this, when at last it is effected by the Universal Solvent.

The new idea was admirably adapted for drawing into itself, as into a vortex, the power of the world that then was. Not the whole of it, however, for the doctrine was not yet perfect; it grew from imperfection or immaturity upward, as its founder grew in wisdom and knowledge; and it also foretold its own mature successor in the latter days. It had a Mediterranean and Western, not an Oriental and universal mission. Its undefined and ambiguous character prevented uniformity, and thus

characterised it as a Gentile mission; and it was so susceptible of numberless meanings as to render it possible for every diversity of religious dogma to claim affinity with its leading principles and recondite interpretations. In this very ambiguity lay the chief power of the vortex. In this lay the force of assimilation and the source of controversy, the great medium of human instruction; and by this means Paganism itself was absorbed without being annihilated. What was the intention of Divine Providence in respect to Christianity, or anything else, no man can tell except by the facts of history, and by merely taking it for granted that the plans of Divine Providence were never defeated. These facts of history show us a gradual drawing in of the elements of Paganism by Christianity, and a triune combination at last of the preponderating features of the three great missions.

In doing this the new idea arranges itself in the form of a Drama, beginning with its Genesis, in bondage to Roman Law, and actually going down into Egypt, in the capital of which, the city of Alexandria, the original doctrines of the Church were chiefly elaborated; but at the same time making a veritable Egypt of the whole Empire, in which it undergoes the most fearful test of sincerity to which human nature can be subjected in its primitive or passive (that is, feminine) struggle with the religion of Paganism. Branded with a Jewish name and character-despised, as everything

Jewish was, and treated by philosophers and an age that was tolerant of every religion but one, as "a malignant superstition," by nature intolerant, and morally and spiritually aggressive, and therefore persecutive-it speedily provoked that persecution of itself which it was evidently disposed to practise upon others. But before it was invested with power to enforce, it was ordained to show that, of all other religions, it was best fitted to endure what it was best inclined to inflict. Tortured with equuli, or wooden horses—the Roman racks—with iron pincers and hooks; beaten with rods and leather thongs, with scorpions or whips, and sinews twisted into whips; scorched with torches of pine-tree or pitch; pricked with goads, and burnt with hot iron plates; boiled in caldrons; stretched on hot iron beds; inclosed in burning limekilns; sawed asunder, tied upon wheels with iron spikes, and stretched on pavements set with spikes; condemned to fight with wild beasts in the Amphitheatre for the amusement of the people; imprisoned, confiscated, degraded, and driven into catacombs to celebrate their worship; their churches demolished, their books destroyed-the Christians increased and multiplied like Israel in Egypt, and looked for an Exodus till an Exodus came and enabled them to use, in due season, almost all these instruments, and many others, with tenfold ferocity against one another; in delirious attempts to establish their own peculiar aspects of the riddle and all-sided mystery of the

new revelation. The Church conquered by endurance, like a woman as it was, until its establishment, when it married a lawyer and a soldier, and took up the sword of steel to assist the sword of the spirit.

Under the pressure of Pagan persecution, which, however, was short, and at very long intervals, the power of passive resistance was great, but it was not indomitable. Compromise early began to play its part; but feebly at first, for at first it was useless. But in proportion as it became expedient, it was gradually adopted; and accordingly, in very early times, we see the new religion clothing itself in the vestments of the old, and preparing to accept almost all its ingredients. The Divine Humanity was a Gentile idea, to begin with. The saints very soon began to assume, though timidly and modestly, the place of the gods, as a feeble and imperfect development of the germ of the Sonship of Christ, of whose divinity we are all partakers, by being made members of his mystical body. Images and pictures began to be respected, symbols to be venerated, worship complicated with forms, relics revered, Pagan fasts and feasts transformed into Christian holidays. Many condemned; the Fathers reproved, bewailed, and entreated; but popular feeling was too strong to be resisted; and, though checked and restrained by eloquent remonstrance, it did not fail in effecting a compromise, even under the persecutions, much greater afterwards,