development of the Christian Church, the Christian man, it is the same. God has been infinitely merciful to us, in leaving us free agents. Man is (so far as we can see) the only creature of His hand who can rise and can fall to a higher or a lower estate. And for the rise or the fall, man himself is altogether responsible.

Now, History is the study of the painful development of man's nature and character, as it influences and is influenced by its surroundings. And according as ideas, spiritual life, living thought, are strong or weak, so do nations and men have glorious or uneventful, triumphant or servile, histories. Nothing in History is so remarkable as the way in which gifted races have risen to eminence, and then have either remained stationary-as we see in the case of the Chinese or the Hindu civilisation, and perhaps still more in the Mohammedan-or have grown, culminated, and then decayed away, after the analogy of the life of individuals, as we have seen in the cases of the Greek and the Roman, and of some other nations of Europe. There are those who tell us that the confusions of our present life in England, and the corruptions which from time to time show themselves in our civilisation, are so many clear signs of decadence, proofs that we are past our prime, warnings that we must expect our doom.

Let us read it otherwise; and let us understand that as the Christian soul is the salt of the earth, so the Presence of Christ in His Church and therefore in the world is the undying power of life to men and states. We may say that all decay of states is due to our failure to build on the One Foundation.

And the reason of it? Is it not clearly this-that the Gospel of Jesus Christ has in it Life?

It brings us directly into relation with God, as a merciful Father of the world. It teaches us the highest ́altruism,' the duty of living for others, not for ourselves; and it knits us into a true brotherhood in the Church, wherein we gain fresh strength. Where the muscular force of Antæus was renewed by every touch of Earth, our spiritual force is revived by the constant touch and presence of God in Christ our Lord.

And out of these blessings springs our power of influencing the personal and civil life of mankind, and of instilling fresh vigour in flagging forms. For we must, if we be true Christians, believe in the possibilities of the human race, and in the highest development of the nature of man. And having before us the ideal of Christ, we shall be able to do our part in stemming the falling current.

At no period of the history of Christendom was

this so marked as in the centuries before the days of Constantine. In those primitive days-would that we knew more about them, and followed them more faithfully-the new power of Christ's Gospel met the corrupt volume of the Roman Imperial Life, and saved it from entire decay. It is from this collision of the old and the new that the mighty fabric of the Papacy was born-a fabric so strangely compacted of spiritual life and worldly corruption.

The Hebrew (and to some extent it may be the Druid also) had preached the Immortality of the Soul, and the essential doctrine of the One God; the Greek had preached a religion of taste, and intellect, and civic oligarchy; the Roman had imposed on the world a terrible reign of Law and Order. Then came the divine Christ of God, and infused into these different elements a new Life, a larger Freedom, a new and genuine theory of Equality-an Equality of man and of woman, of rich and poor, of bond and free. History tells us that one of the first Christian Martyrs of Gaul was Blandina, a woman and a slave.'

Then the World caught hold of the skirts of Christ's robe. Under Constantine Christianity became a handmaid and an adjunct to the civil power: it certainly was not 'Church and State'-it was 'State and Church.' From this time the movement of the

Christ in History, admirably adapted for the coming impact of barbarism, and destined to help immensely the civil development of the modern world, loses its spiritual force. The power is still there: but it is hardened and corrupted by the power of this world. Christian persecution begins towards the end of the fourth century. Still, it was through the living power still existing in Christianity that something of the civilised life of Rome survived through the barbarous ages of the West-survived even the Christianity of the Sword,' which became the characteristic mark of the Gospel during the whole mediæval period.

We cannot overstate our obligation to the Monastic System of the sixth century. It was the germ of a revived Christianity. The principles of Christ's Gospel seemed at last to have met with recognition. Here were communities, social entities, with no private aims, nor personal wealth; a beneficent activity pervaded the whole body; for the first time for centuries the sacredness of toil was acknowledged, and the duty of men to labour with their hands and subdue the earth, to be pure in spirit, to live humbly and simply, to be in charity with all, to give their bread to the hungry, to be at peace within and without, to praise God continually, to show forth the Lord's death till

He come-all this was cognised and acted on. a New Life spread across Europe, and it seemed as if the Redeemer's work was at last bearing heavenly fruit. But, alas for poor human nature! No long time elapsed before the World around began to tinge and thicken up the pure Life in Community. The monks became feudal lords, they ceased to labour with their hands, they began to own private property, they had their own serfs, and in the end the Monasteries were the fortresses in which old bad customs longest survived. So, again, the principles of the Christian faith were defeated by the failure of Christian men. And all the while the alliance between the Episcopal Christianity outside the Cloister and the Feudal World grew stronger and stronger: the Church and the Franks made alliance on the warpath; and a little later the Church took the lead in the sanguinary ferocities of the Crusading epoch. Yet even after this Christ was not without a witness in the splendid effort of the Preaching Orders, especially in the appeal of the Franciscans to the working world. These devoted men were, in the outset at least, witnesses to the Brotherhood of the Gospel of Christ.

splendidly and faithfully re

From these monastic centres

After them there was but little Life left in the Church. In the fifteenth century the ideals of Chris

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