CHAPTER XVIII.

CHURCHIANIC.

"Oh, never rudely will I blame their faith
In the might of gods and angels!"

"Sometimes there glimpses on my sight

Through Christian wrongs the eternal right;
And step by step since time began

I see the steady gain of man."

Christianity, heretofore spiritually spontaneous as taught by the Nazarene, became sectarized and nationalized-a court-religion under the reign of Constantine.

Not a vestige of similarity is traceable between the natureteachings and pure, sweet life of the gentle son of Joseph and Mary, and the worldly Christianity of the 19th century. From this fatal Constantinian era, its purity more rapidly paled, until an eclipse of spiritual midnight brooded over its blinded devotees. Fossils neither flash nor flame with vigorous life. Few blossoms of inspiration come from a leafless, sapless, withered trunk. When doctrines, however beautiful, crystalize into creeds, they die and rust away into Lethean forgetfulness.

Roman Catholicism, imitated by her schismatic daughter, Protestantism, adopted, in her externals, a paganized Judaism, combining the ceremonials of the Mosaic and later classic, with their sacerdotal, hierarchal paraphernalia, the better to seize and appropriate the more cultured religious theses taught in the mystic temples of the orientals, for priestly

power and worldly aggrandizement. As every midnight has its stars, and every stormy ocean its pearls, so, under the cold. drapery of the royalized church, were genuine silver-glimmerings of the aspirational and spiritual.

GUIZOT, in his recent work entitled, "Meditations upon the Religious Questions of the Day," in which he evidently uses the word supernatural for spiritual, says: "Belief in the supernatural is a fact natural, primitive, universal and constant in the life and history of the human race. Unbelief in the supernatural begets materialism, materialism sensuality, sensuality social convulsion, amid whose storms man learns again to believe and pray."

CONSTANTINE, having espoused Christianity, and being menaced in consequence by its enemies, was compelled to take up arms for self-defence. Eusebius states that he heard Constantine declare, under oath, that "when he was going to attack the tyrant Maxentius, and was full of doubt, as he was resting in the middle of the day, and his soldiers about him, he and all the soldiers saw a luminous cross in the heavens, attended by a troop of angels, who said, 'O, Constantine! by this go forth to victory!' At night, Christ appeared to him in a dream, having the same cross, which he ordered to have wrought upon his banners, with the words, 'BY THIS Conquer!'" Under this inspiring symbol he did conquer.

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LACTANTIUS Corroborates the statement, that the sign of the cross on the shields of the soldiers, was put there in consequence of a vision or dream. Socrates, Philostorgius, Gelasius, Nicephorus, all testify to the appearance of the cross in the sky. It was a most magnificent psychological presentation, produced by ministering spirits.

SOZOMEN, a church historian of the 5th century, informs us "that when Julian was killed in Persia, his death was

seen in Asia by one of his officers, at a distance of twenty days' travel; and by Didymus, a blind Christian, in Egypt.” He relates an incident of Eutychian, a Bithynian monk, a friend of Constantine, who desired the jailers to remove the fetters from a prisoner sorely tortured; but, on being refused, he went to the prison, attended by Auscanon, a venerable presbyter of the church. At their approach the doors of the prison opened, and the chains fell from the prisoner's limbs.

This finds corroboration in the case of Peter, who was released from prison by an angel, and of the Davenport Brothers, who were helped to make their escape, by angel power, from prison walls, in Oswego, N. Y., thrust therein at the instigation of the church.

AUGUSTINE, a famous Latin Church Father, living in the 4th century, gives some very beautiful expressions of joy respecting angel guardians:

They watch over and guard us with great care and diligence in all places, and at all hours assisting, providing for our necessities with solicitude; they intervene betwixt us and Thee, O Lord, conveying to Thee our sighs and groans, and bringing down to us the dearest blessings of Thy grace. They walk with us in all our ways; they go in and out with us, attentively observing how we converse with piety in the midst of a perverse generation; with what ardor we seek Thy kingdom and its justice, and with what fear and awe we serve Thee. They assist us in our labors; they protect us in our rest; they encourage us in battle; they crown us in victories; they rejoice in us when we rejoice in Thee; and they compassionately attend us when we suffer or are afflicted for Thee. Great is their care of us, and great is the effect of their charity for us."

JULIAN, Emperor of Rome, nephew of Constantine, famous in history for his effort to re-establish the shrines of oriental worship, aud stigmatized "Apostate," because, being a Christian, he patronized the Neo-Platonic Philosophy. When a boy, he was strongly charmed by the sunlight, and considered it an unconscious longing after the God with whom he was related. The sun was to him a beautiful symbol of the God of the universe. Accordingly, "the private chapel in

his palace was consecrated to the sun; but his gardens were filled with altars and statues of the gods and angels." He maintained that there were messengers between God and men, and sometimes, for special purposes, resided in earthly temples-haunted houses. No wonder the church called him "Apostate!"

"When Julian and his brother Gallus were induced to undertake the labor of erecting a chapel over the tomb of the martyr Mammas, the work went on rapidly under the hands of Gallus, but the stones which Julian laid were constantly overthrown as by some invisible agency. Gregory of Naziangen says that he had this from eye witnesses; and he seems to regard it as a prophetic miracle."

The Greek Church of Russia, receiving her apostolic hierarchy and priesthood frem Greece, has carefully maintained the integrity of the primitive Church with less innovations, doubtless, than the Catholic, and is, therefore, more authoritative in respect to what the Apostolic Fathers taught. The doctrine of ministering spirits, working miracles through their patron saints, is plainly set forth in their religious histories.

M. MOURAVIEFF, a church historian, tells us that "his or her 'angel' is the customary phrase in Russia for the patron saint after whom any one is named; but that they also believe in guardian angels appointed to each baptized person. The church counts, as its chief guardians and intercessors, a considerable number of saints. The Russian Church believes firmly in 'the doctrines of the holy Icons (pictures of saints and the Virgin), in relics, the sign of the venerable cross, of tradition, of the mystery of the most pure blood and body of Christ, of the invocation of saints and angels, of the state of souls after death, and of prayers for the departed.'

Howitt, in his "History of the Supernatural," adverts to the fact, that "in the time of Peter the Great, the Anglican Church made application to be admitted to unity with the Ecumenical Church, and desired the Russian patriarch to

transmit their prayer to Constantinople; but the Russian prelates, having consulted, declined, because the Anglican Church had heretically renounced the traditions of the Fathers, the invocations of saints, and the reverencing of Icons-sacred pictures."

ST. BERNARD, a healing and most benevolent priest, thus alludes to the divine care over us:

"We owe to our guardian angels great reverence, devotion and confidence. Penetrated with awe, walk always with circumspection, remembering the presence of angels, to whom you are given in charge, in all your ways. In every apartment, in every closet, in every corner, pay respect to your angel. Dare you do before him what you dare not commit if I saw you?"

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"Consider with how great respect, awe, and modesty we ought to behave in the sight of the angels, lest we offend their eyes, and render ourselves unworthy of their company. Woe to us if they who could chase away our enemy, be offended by our negligence, and deprive us of their visits."

GREGORY VII., (Hildebrand) of the 11th century, was a noted thaumaturgist or seer. When Rodolph marched against Henry IV., this pope was so certain of success that he ventured to prophesy, both in speech and writing, that his enemy would be conquered and slain in battle, and would transpire before St. Peter's day, which prophecy was literally fulfilled.

ROGER BACON, of the 12th century, a Franciscan Friar, the accredited inventor of the telescope, and a profound scholar, who much disturbed the church by his seership and science, under the controlling intelligences of the spirit-world, penetrated into the mysteries of life, and, piercing the cloudy sun-mists of intervening ages, seized upon the occult forces that bowed as servants to his beck and adapted them by invention to practical uses.