spiritual rule of purity, gentleness, and charity over the whole earth.

But whence had this despised foreigner received the double knowledge of God and of the soul so miserably lost-as we have seen to this brilliant Roman civilisation?

In the latter years of Augustus, when the foundations of the imperial rule had been laid, and the structure mainly raised by his practical wisdom, there had dwelt a poor family in a small town of evil repute, not far from the lake of the remote province where this fisherman plied his trade. It consisted of an elderly man, a youthful wife, and one young child. The man gained his livelihood as a carpenter, and the child worked with him. Complete obscurity rested upon this household until the child grew to the age of thirty years. Then he is suddenly found in the cities, villages, and fields of his native country, preaching a new kingdom, based upon a new doctrine. This doctrine proclaimed that hitherto the whole world had gone astray, calling evil good, and good evil, fixing its desires on wealth, honour, and prosperity, seeking for rest and enjoyment in visible things, and in this idolatry forgetting God, its Creator, and its End. But the new Teacher declared that every man possessing within himself an undying soul was made for something infinitely greater than the visible world contains. And He

further affirmed, in proof of His doctrine, that He Himself would suffer the most despised and abject of deaths in the sight of all men, abandoned and rejected: that, lifted up in scorn upon the cross as a malefactor, He would draw all men unto Him, and make all things new upon the earth.

For He would create a new society of men, founded upon the imitation and communion of His passion, the passion of a God-man. And He should Himself be the rule and model not only of the society in general, but of every member, according to His words: "if any man be willing to come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross and follow me. For whosoever wills to save his life shall lose it, and whosoever loses his life for my sake shall find it. For what is a man profited if he gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?"

What He had foretold took place. He suffered the death reserved to the vilest slave, whose life we have seen held of no account, and in so dying appeared the weakest, the most despised, and rejected of all men. This death the stranger we have mentioned above had witnessed, and likewise that resurrection which followed it: had witnessed both the man in suffering and the God in power. From His lips, when risen again, he had received authority to form this new society, resting on the Teacher's person and example: and in the strength

of this word alone, the self-sacrifice of God for man, revealing visibly the Saviour in the Creator, he had come to Rome to inaugurate, in the seat of the world's corrupt empire, the everlasting kingdom of charity.

LECTURE II.

NEW CREATION OF INDIVIDUAL MAN BY THE

CHURCH.

THUS the empire of Rome was the summary and

definitive conclusion of the ancient world. In it the old heathen civilisation culminated. It was the product of all man's labour, invention, suffering, and experience downwards from the division of the nations after the Flood, until the time when Rome gathered up and reunited so many limbs of the great human family. And it rested upon the slavery of the majority. Outside of the narrow range of citizenship man was a thing in the eyes of his fellow-man; an instrument, not a person. And even within the circle of citizenship the State treated the Individual as devoid of personal inalienable rights. For the false principle of disregarding man as man lay at the foundation of the human commonwealth itself. Slavery was its most result; but it ruled

offensive and most ruinous even the highest political relations of man with his fellow-man. The dignity and value of man as a reasonable soul, the image of God, were not known; but in their stead were substituted the dignity and value which he might possess as a mem

ber of the political body. But thus viewed the part is inferior to the whole. And so it came to pass that the state violated not only the interests of the stranger and the sojourner, but made even the citizen in himself and in his family, as well as in his property, a sacrifice to its unlimited sovereignty. And with the change from republic to empire, after the savage acts of successive proscriptions, this principle obtained still greater mastery; for whereas the old republic only debarred from fire and water, that is, drove into banishment, the most criminal, except in a very few cases, the emperor ceased to regard not only the goods but the lives of men. And as was the whole, so were the parts; for in the family the father was the master of wife and child, whose rights were not coördinate with his, but gave way to them and merged in them. The husband had an unlimited privilege of divorce. Cicero repudiated the mother of his children for a young and rich bride, and then, after a year's marriage, expelled her in turn; and the virtuous Cato divorced his wife in order to bestow her on his friend. For indeed all these miseries had a deep abiding cause. The fountain of all truth and right was concealed to men. The Judge of the earth was not seen to sit upon His throne. Men had in their thought broken up the Ruler and Rewarder of the world into numberless idols, whose range was limited and their rule conflicting: and the