who raised up the Lord, shall likewise raise us up through His power. Know you not that your

bodies are members of Christ?-Now he who adheres to the Lord is one Spirit with Him.-Know you not that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have from God, and are not your own: you have been bought with a price. Therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God's."* This is the everabiding source of Christian purity; and the fixing of this doctrine with all its consequences in the minds and hearts of men was of itself a moral revolution. It is a direct result of the Incarnation, and not only grew out of it at first, but rests for ever upon it.

Pass next to the first and tenderest relations of the family. The love of husband and wife is placed on the basis of Christ's love to the Church, and the obedience of the wife to the husband on that of the Church's obedience to Christ. Thus these duties, forming the ground-work of natural society, have a supernatural motive given to them. "Wives, be subject to your own husbands as to the Lord; because the man is head of the woman, as Christ also is head of the Church, and He is Saviour of the body: but like as the Church is subject to Christ, so also let wives be to their own husbands in every thing. Husbands, love your own wives, as Christ also loved the Church, and

1 Cor. vi. 13, 15, 19, 20.

gave Himself for her."* And he proceeds to exalt marriage by representing it as a type of the most sacred and intimate of all conceivable unions, the union of the Incarnate God with His Church. What a doctrine to be promulgated out of the midst of that Rome whose emperor at the time had murdered an innocent and virtuous wife, and had taken the profligate wife of another, to become presently her murderer likewise: of that Rome, where the satirist says, that wives counted their divorces by years of their marriage.

the

We have touched on the Christian treatment of man as an individual, and in the society of home. Let us now continue the delineation of that treatment as it affected man in civil society. We will begin with the deepest humiliation of man as viewed in his natural rights. What did the Apostles say to this outcast of Roman society, this refuse of the heathen world, the slave?

Slaves formed, it must be remembered, a probably large majority of the human race: and, moreover, the institution made an essential part of Greek and Roman civilisation, which simply could not exist without it. For society is built upon manual labour, and such labour was deemed unworthy of freemen. And the character of the institution itself was, that men were regarded not as persons but as things. Did the Christian teachers set themselves to reverse directly this enormous wrong? Ephes. v. 22-6.

Did they urge upon the slave to claim and to recover his indefeasible rights as man? The way in which they dealt with this remarkable difficulty, which met Christianity at the threshold and encountered it everywhere, offers a striking illustration of the entirely inward genius of the Christian faith, and how completely it sought to restore society by remoulding individual man. "Slaves," was the command, "be obedient to your masters after the flesh with fear and trembling, in simplicity of your heart, as unto Christ; not with eye-service, as men-pleasers, but as slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart with good-will, as being slaves to the Lord and not to men; knowing that whatever good thing any one may do, this he shall receive from the Lord whether he be a slave or a freeman."* Thus it feared not to consecrate the most unhallowed relation of man to man by representing that the slave's obedience to the master, if performed with pure intention, was an obedience to Christ Himself. The Prince of the Apostles extends this duty specially to unkind masters, supplying the supernatural motive. "Servants, be subject in all fear to your masters, not merely to the good and kind, but to the perverse. For this is praiseworthy if for conscience-sake towards God any one endure pains, suffering wrongfully. Since what glory is it if, when committing faults and being buffeted for them, you endure it: but if you suffer for doing good, and endure it, this is pleasing

Ephes. vi. 5-8.

before God. For unto this you were called, inasmuch as Christ also suffered for us, leaving to us an example that you should follow upon His footsteps. But the most instinctively and sublimely Christian recommendation concerning slavery is perhaps that given by St. Paul, when he says: "Let every one remain in the calling in which he was called. Wast thou called being a slave? care not for it: but even if thou mayest become free, use rather thy slavery; for the slave that is called in the Lord is the Lord's freeman; and so he who is called, being a freeman, is the slave of Christ. You have been bought with a price: become not the slaves of men." Now, bearing in mind what slavery was; to what perils and sufferings it exposed both man and woman, and how at any moment it might require the sacrifice of life itself for the preservation of moral purity; could any religion use this language unless it came directly from God, and felt itself able to renew human nature from its very heart's-core, by the supply of a boundless grace from its Author? These words bear witness to the implanting of an inward and spiritual freedom in the slave's inmost heart. Whatever he might suffer, he could put himself in the place of the Lord of heaven and earth suffering unjustly before Pilate and Herod; and he had the conviction that every one who suffered with Him and for Him should likewise reign with Him.

The exhortation given to masters is the coun† 1 Cor. vii. 20.

1 Pet. ii. 18-21.

terpart of that given to slaves. "Masters, afford to your slaves that which is just and fair, giving up threats, knowing that you also have a Master in heaven, and with Him there is no respect of persons.

Thus Christianity did not command the slaveholder to enfranchise his slave, but it commanded him instead to treat that slave as a brother: that is, leaving the legal bond as it was, it imposed a moral check, making the slave a person, not a thing, in the eye of his master; and a person equally dear as himself to the common Master; a person for whom account was to be rendered by him to the common Master; and a person likewise to whom a kindness done would be interpreted by Christ as done to Himself.

Such was the doctrine which the Cross, the punishment of slaves, brought into the Ergastulum and the Pædagogium of the Romans. How long would the underground prison-house, and the still fouler den of infamy in the palace, last before it? As we hear these words of St. Peter and St. Paul, we feel that the bright light of heaven had shot into the darkest nook of earth, and kindled a neverdying flame of faith and hope in breasts long condemned to a misery without relief. An imperious Fabiola would henceforth be no match for a loving Syra. The mistress of Christian slaves might, indeed, make her apartment a place of martyrdom;

* Col. iv. 1 and Ephes. vi. 9.