in any way indifferent to good and evil is to belie all that we are taught by revelation, or by nature rightly understood. But we may as Christians readily confess that what seems to us good or evil may often wear a very different aspect in God's sight; that there is often evil which we have not perceived corrupting what seems to us purely good; and again, that there is a soul of good in things evil.'

The importance of these remarks will be evident if we cast a glance upon the history of the conversion of the Roman empire. For, first, we find that the Church is in contact with a system of life which it is impossible to stigmatize as absolutely evil. Secondly, that influences such as the Alexandrian philosophy, the Roman law and administration, Oriental mysticism and asceticism, were taken in to the exposition of Christian doctrine and the development of the Christian society— some of them from the very earliest days: and necessarily so, for they were wrapped up in the human language which Christianity must use, and in the human life with which Christianity must blend. But, thirdly, what is far the most important, we find the Christian ideal itself varying from age to age. To the Church of the earliest centuries it meant a childlike submissiveness and fidelity: to the age of the great fathers and their successors, from the fourth to the eighth century, it meant mainly asceticism; from Charlemagne to the end of the Crusades it meant mainly the spirit of chivalry; and from thence to the Reformation it meant mainly the clerical virtues. In the Eastern Church the ideal has been that of correct doctrine; in the Western,

good discipline. I have put this as strongly as possible, so as to mark how great the change has been at various times in the moral ideal itself, which is the living kernel of the whole system. Such a statement needs, indeed, to be modified by the acknowledgment that, through all these forms of the moral ideal, Christian love, and faith, and beneficence (this last the most constant factor) were presented to the world. But, if we compare the ideals of life presented by an apostolical father like Polycarp in the second century, a monk like Macarius or Hilarion in the fourth, a hero like Charlemagne in the eighth, a clerical administrator like Pope Innocent III in the thirteenth, and a promoter of liberal learning like Gerson in the fifteenth, it might almost seem as if we were reviewing a series of different religions, rather than different forms of the same. Yet each of these appeared to the men of their own day as the model of Christian excellence. Christians would have pointed to each in turn and said to mankind, That is what we wish you to become. These observations should make us, in the first place, very tolerant of diversities, even as to that which seems most important and central; in the second place, it should make us feel that our own conception of Christianity is probably far from complete, so that we must not dogmatize as if we and our age had nothing more to learn. Thirdly, it should make us feel that Christianity can leave full liberty to moral science and gratefully encourage its researches. The impulse which the Gospel gives, the desire to fulfil God's will in union with the sacrifice of Christ, may be all its own. But what is the will of God has not been disclosed all

at once, but is left to be ascertained more and more. as human knowledge and experience clear the pathway before us. And, lastly, we should look upon the whole Christian development as a striving upwards, a fuller perception from age to age of the scope of redemption, a gradual assimilation of the various elements of social life; a process which is subject at times to at least apparent stagnation, and even to retrogression, but, which is never for any long period turned back in its progressive course.

We take self-sacrificing love as the nearest expression we can give of the Christian ideal; and this, though clothed in many forms, has been constantly present. It must indeed be admitted that it is much easier to see the differences in the ideal of life in different ages than its constancy in reference to this standard. Who would take as an expression of love an ascetic of the fifth century, or a crusader of the twelfth, or an ecclesiastic like Hildebrand or Becket, or one of the schoolmen ? Yet it is certain that each of them had in some way before his mind the image of Him who said, ' Hereby shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.' A second constant factor of the Christian ideal is faith in a fatherly and redeeming God; but this also is subject to vast changes. God is at one time the redeemer of Israel; then of those within the Church's pale; only in a vague uncertain manner of the world. He is the redeemer from His own jealous wrath, or from a world which is itself left to perish. He is the redeemer of the individual rather than of society. He is the redeemer from personal misery

rather than from sin. These divergences from the ideal, as we are able to conceive it, go very deep, and there are many others of a similar kind. Yet it would be quite untrue to assert that a Christian of the Israelitish type of St. James of Jerusalem, or one of the ascetic type of St. Jerome, to whom even the Christian family was a mere scene of worldliness destined for destruction; or again, of the type of Thomas à Kempis, whose only motive might seem to be to save his own soul from misery, was destitute of all perception of the universal love of God. A third factor, and one easy to recognize, is beneficence. This again has

varied in its forms. It was in the earliest times directed to the relief of distress within the church itself; later on to the redemption of captives and the alleviation of disease; then to the founding of monasteries as centres of Christian enlightenment; later again to the building of colleges, schools, and hospitals. At one time it has applied itself to the emancipation of slaves, at another to the conversion of the heathen. It has often been narrow and misguided, and has never frankly identified itself, as beneficence in Israel did, with the action of the general community: but it has, nevertheless, been at all times a reflexion of the divine compassion, an extension of the life of Christ. The differences we have traced do not make us lose the

sense of unity of purpose. We may say more. The inherent vitality of Christianity is shown in its capacity to survive the ideals in which it has represented itself. The ideal of each age passes. But it leaves something behind. It has presented some element of tenderness

or strength to the conscience, some substance and evidence' to the faith of mankind. Its body dies, but its soul survives. And therefore we may rightly, as we touch upon the various ages of Christian history, dwell mainly on the positive endeavours or attainments of successive generations, laying little stress the failures, which are only too evident, or upon the controversies by which those failures were exposed, but marking what progress was actually made, and what new elements of human life were assimilated by the Church.

upon

We may take the three factors which have just been mentioned, self-sacrificing love, faith in a redeeming God, and beneficence, as the central points of the Christian ideal. This ideal has been partly presented, partly made effective, by the memory of the life of Christ and by His spiritual indwelling: and the destination of the Church is to make this ideal universally operative, so that it may be accepted by the convictions of all, and may work itself out in the life of mankind ; to preside over the process by which it is to become the co-ordinating power of all society and of all human occupations, the stimulus of knowledge, of art, of industry, the sanction of all that is lovely as well as of all that is useful. But it must be observed that the Church has in each age been strangely unconscious of this destination. It has imagined that, if it could bring all characters within some special mould, it would have done its work; or it has taken hardly any care for the mass of mankind, and has been contented to save some few out of the general destruction; or it has thought