ing. His dreams came direct from heaven; a new system of Christian omens succeeded the old; witchcraft merely invoked Beelzebub or Satan instead of Hecate; hallowed places only changed their tutelary nymph or genius for a saint or martyr. It is not less unjust to stigmatize in the mass as fraud, or to condemn as the weakness of superstition, than it is to enforce as an essential part of Christianity, that which was the necessary development of this state of the human mind. . . . . . The clergy, the great agents in the maintenance and communication of this imaginative religious bias, the asserters of constant miracle in all its various forms, were themselves, no doubt, irresistibly carried away by the same tendency."-p. 500.

This is the philosophy of the legends, of the saint-worship, of the manifold idolatry of a fallen church. This is Mr. Milman's apology for those who beguiled the people of God of their reward in a voluntary humility and worshipping of angels, intruding into those things which they had not seen, vainly puffed up by their fleshly mind. This is his account of the rise of that power whose coming was after the working of Satan, with all power and signs and lying wonders; and with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they night be saved. All was nothing but "the necessary development" of the human mind!

There is in this whole mode of representation, which pervades the book from the first page to the last, as we have already repeatedly remarked, a forgetfulness of Christianity as a recorded system of divinely revealed truth, which cannot be altered to suit the temper, the opinions, and passions of different ages; which has its form as well as its substance; and which for the wise and the unwise is the wisdom of God and the power of God unto salvation. When the gospel says, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve; may we to humour polytheists allow the worship of saints and angels? When the gospel says we must be renewed by the Holy Ghost in order to salvation, is it merely a condescension to teach that the washing with water will answer the purpose? When the gospel says we are freely justified by faith in the blood of Christ, is it a pardonable accommodation to teach that we are justified by alms, pilgrimages, or self inflicted pains? When Christ says, come unto me all ye that are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest, is the priest to be ex

cused who assumes the right of saying who shall and who shall not obey that call? To say that Christianity must accommodate itself to the speculations of philosophers in one age; to the superstitions of the ignorant in another; to the fanaticism of the excited in a third; to affirm that it must "darken with the darkness, and brighten with the light of each succeeding century," in order to maintain its existence, is to affirm that it must deny itself in order to continue to exist.

This is not a mere confusion in the use of terms, taking Christianity sometimes for the real religion of Christ as taught in the scriptures, and sometimes for the aggregate of the religious doctrines and usages of any particular age; for it is of Christianity in its primitive simplicity and purity that Mr. Milman asserts, that it could not sustain itself among the conflicts and revolutions of the world. It must, according to him, cease to be pure, and rational, and such as Christ revealed it, in order to maintain its power or its being. It is no doubt true, that when large bodies of men, whether philosophers or savages, are brought by external influences to profess faith in Christianity, without knowing its doctrines or experiencing its power, it is necessary, in order to keep up that profession, to accommodate Christianity to their peculiar views. That is, as they neither know nor believe the doctrines of the gospel, to make them say and think that they believe them, you must represent it to be whatever they may happen to believe. And it is too true that in this way nominal conversions to the religion of Christ have often been made. But what ignorance of the true nature of the gospel, or what a lack of reverence for its divine origin, does it imply, to assert that this is the only way in which conversions can be made. Was this the way in which the apostles converted the world, Jews and Greeks, Barbarians, Scythians, bond and free? Does experience show that the gospel must be degraded into superstition in order to give it access to the ignorant, or evaporated into speculations to make it acceptable to philosophers? Are not the very same doctrines believed, and understood, and felt by the pious African and by the pious Englishman? It is the very glory of the gospel that it is, in its purity, equally adapted to all classes of men, civilized or rude. It is a simple form of truth, made by the teaching of the Spirit, as intelligible to the savage as to the philosopher; and when thus understood by the former, he ceases to be a savage; he is intellec

tually an enlightened man, as well as morally renewed. His views of his own nature, of God, of duty, of eternity, are purer, more just, more adequate than those Plato ever attained. The entrance of thy word giveth light." The gospel being the wisdom of God, makes those who receive it truly wise. Where is the wise of this world? Where is the scribe? Where is the investigator? Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe. For the Greeks require a sign and the Greeks seek after wisdom; but we preach Christ and him crucified, unto the Jews a stumbling block and to the Greeks foolishness; but unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the wisdom of God and the power of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men. It is this system of divine wisdom which Mr. Milman would have us believe must become a system of mythology to be received by the ignorant, and a system of refined speculation to suit the philosopher; that it must darken with the darkness, and advance with the advancement of human nature.

We have dwelt the longer on this characteristic of this history, because it was this that struck us on perusal as its most prominent feature. It is to this the English reviewer probably referred when he said that Mr. Milman had adopted the spirit of Gibbon; not his sneering, satirical spirit, but the disposition to treat Christianity as a mere theory of government, or system of opinions, without objective truth or real authority, constantly and of necessity modified by the character of each succeeding century, undergoing a "slow, perhaps not yet complete, certainly not general, development of a rational and intellectual religion." It is this that throws an air of infidelity over the whole performance, and accounts for, if it does not justify, the severe condemnation which the work has received in England.

There is another characteristic of this work which is worthy of remark. Mr. Milman says the successful execution of his task as a historian required the union of "true philosophy with perfect charity," a "calm, impartial and dispassionate tone." He has however mistaken indifference for impartiality. No two things can be more unlike. No book is so impartial as the Bible, and none is less indifferent. The sacred writers always take sides with truth and

righteousness, against error and wickedness. They give every man his due; narrate without faltering or apology, the faults as well as the virtues of the people of God, but they never leave the reader for one moment to doubt to which side they belong. Mr. Milman's idea of impartiality is a sort of philosophical indifference. He places himself on an eminence, and looks down on the struggle between good and evil, light and darkness, without any apparent interest in the conflict. All appears to him under the form of " necessary development," as the "progress of the human mind;" nothing is to be greatly approved, nothing severely censured; what is wrong, could not under the circumstances have been otherwise, and what is right is so more from necessity than from the choice of men. He seems to feel quite as much interest in Julian as in Theodosius; in Arius as in Athanasius. You read this work without knowing what his real opinion is on any of the great subjects of controversy which have agitated the church; a few great leading principles, such as the supernatural origin of Christianity, are distinctly avowed; but whether he is a Trinitarian, or Arian; whether he believes in an atonement, in regeneration, and other equally important doctrines, it is difficult, or impossible to decide. There may be avowals on these points which have escaped our notice, in a somewhat careful perusal of the work; but should such avowals be found, they would not remove the ground of our present complaint, which is, that a Christian minister should write a history of the Christian church and leave it a matter to be determined only by minute research, whether he is himself a Christian.

The difficulty of ascertaining Mr. Milman's real opinions is increased by another characteristic of his book. For the sake of effect, he identifies himself with the actors in the events which he narrates; and tells his story as it would have been told by an eye witness. The consequence is that what is true and what is false is narrated in the same tone of veritable history. The events of the Saviour's life, his discourses, his miracles, the assertion of his claim to divine homage, are narrated as real events, and seem to be, in fact, so regarded; but on the other hand, the most fabulous occurrences are narrated just as if they were no less matters of fact. Thus, when speaking of the efforts made by the philosophers to confirm Julian in his purpose of returning to Paganism, he says, Eusebius described the "power of Maximus in terms to which Julian could not listen

without awe and wonder. Maximus had led them into the temple of Hecate, he had burned a few grains of incense, he had murmured a hymn, and the statue of the goddess was seen to smile.. Julian was brought into direct communion with the invisible world. The faithful and officious genii from this time watched over Julian in peace and war; they conversed with him in his slumbers, they warned him of dangers, they conducted his military operations." "Instead of the Christian hierarchy, Julian hastened to environ himself with the most distinguished of the heathen philosophers. Most of them indeed, pretended to be a kind of priesthood. Intercessors between the deities and the world of man, they wrought miracles, foresaw future events, they possessed the art of purifying the soul, so that it should be reunited to the primal spirit, the divinity dwelt within them." Speaking of Olympus, a heathen, he says, "In the dead of night, when all were slumbering around, and all the gates were closed, he heard the Christian Alleluia pealing from a single voice through the silent temple. He acknowledged the sign or the omen, anticipated the unfavorable sentence of the emperor, the fate of his faction and of his gods." Speaking of baptism he says, "It was a complete lustration of the soul. The neophyte emerged from the waters of baptism in a state of perfect innocence. The dove (the Holy Spirit) was constantly hovering over the font, and sanctifying the waters to the mysterious ablution of all the sins of the past life. If the soul suffered no subsequent taint, it passed at once to the realms of purity and bliss; the heart was purified; the understanding illuminated; the spirit was clothed with immortality." This mode of writing gives a graphic effect to the narrative, but when the writer identifies himself first with the hearers of Christ, then with the disciples of the heathen philosophers, and then with the Christians of the fourth century, narrating what is true and what is false in exactly the same way, he leaves his readers in the dark as to his own real position. We have no idea that Milman really sympathizes with the disciples of Maximus, or with those of Cyprian; but we wish we had more evidence that he sympathizes with the believing followers of the Redeemer.

This uncertainty as to our author's views is increased by his philosophical and ambiguous way of stating the most important doctrines. "The incarnation of the Deity," he says, "or the union of some part of the Divine Essence