than the Greek or Roman treating on such subjects would have been.

Cicero, as we have seen, in his treatment of moral virtues, excludes the relation of man to God. The relation of man to his fellow-men, to society, is given instead. But the basis of morals to a Christian was, that he was a creature of God, and further, a redeemed creature; and further yet, a redeemed creature intended to live for ever, his present sphere in time and sense being but the opening of his life. It followed therefore that all moral virtue was to him a matter between God and the soul. Two objects were continually before his mental consciousness-God and his own soul. It was in this sense that his Master had said to him, "The kingdom of God is within you." To the four moral virtues which comprehended the whole moral world to the heathen eye, and which have for their sphere of action the relations of men with each other, to prudence, temperance, fortitude, and justice, there had been added the three virtues, faith, hope, and charity, the object of which is God. That was a revolution of the whole man. It reunited the bond of the creature with the Creator, which heathenism had snapped asunder; it wound this bond all about the heart of man, by showing him the Creator as at the same time Redeemer, with the cost of unspeakable suffering endured in His own Person. It proposed to him in an infinitely lovely object an infinite reward. The car

dinal virtues were the highest reach of the heathen mind. But the fulfilment of them to the heathen was like the labour of the Israelites in Egypt, making bricks without straw, because the thought of God was detached from them. But with the theological virtues this object was restored to them also. The practice of the former became easy and cheerful under the eye, not of a taskmaster, but a loving sovereign; and the Christian building rose like the temple of Jerusalem, whose workmen felt not the toil because it was a labour of love, where every stone had been shaped to its place, and the whole design furnished by God, and the structure raised to His honour. Thus the cardinal virtues were transfigured by the relation towards God which was given them. And no less every part of Christian conduct was interpenetrated with this idea. The soul of the heathen unconscious of itself walked under a shadow; the soul of the Christian was warmed and illuminated with this abiding presence. Virtue had been to the heathen an outward thing, because dealing with outward relations, of which human law was the standard. But it became to the Christian the most inward thing, because its basis was laid in the inner realm of his thoughts. He prized himself exactly at what God prized him; and thus the individual man was the domain of which the kingdom of God took first possession.

I have hitherto considered four qualities as ex

hibited in the life of a multitude of men and women appearing in all parts of the Roman empire: that is, a contempt of death, even when accompanied with torments, in defence of their belief; a great preference for virginal purity; a disregard of worldly honour, wealth, and pleasure; and an inward character of virtue, which led them to place it entirely in the disposition of the heart towards God. In all these things they offered a very striking contrast to the mass of people among whom they lived; and in all of them they were imitators of a certain model which all had equally before their eyes, though the degree of imitation differed in each. Had these doctrines been merely contained in a book, had they been merely discussed in the Porch or Grove, they would probably have excited little more notice in the world than the doctrines of Grecian philosophy. Their force, their attractive and assimilating power, consisted in their being acted out by living examples. He whom they severally imitated had begun "to do and to teach;" and His followers in like manner taught because they first did. The life of their Master, His actions, and above all His death, formed the great series of facts on which they rested; the cause of their life; and their own lives in like manner became the great instrument of persuasion to others. The propagation of their doctrine proceeded at the beginning from personal influence, and to personal influence its progress was likewise

due. For they had always been a society. The revelation itself consisted in a change, a purification, a renovation of the individual man, taking rise altogether in the secret domain of his thoughts, and then exhibited in word and deed; and yet these individual men never acted as disconnected atoms, but as members of a society so close in its cohesion that the like had never been seen before. I will now draw attention to the influence which they exerted as a society on those around them; and to see this we must consider in what consisted their government.

Now this again, like the virtue of the individual, emanated directly from the Person of their Founder. For the government of the Christian people existed before the people itself. The commission, "Feed My sheep," was given when as yet there were scarcely any sheep to feed. So little did this government proceed from the consent of the governed, or rest upon it, that it anticipated their very existence. The discipline was complete, while the disciples were yet to be made. For all was a direct creation of the Founder, the power to govern a transmission from His person; the fashion of government an imitation of His conduct; the qualities of the governors transcripts of His qualities. I am now then to consider the one indivisible Sacerdotium of the Church in its action upon the heathen world around.

And first of all it was one and indivisible, one

in its source, indivisible in its exercise, the same in its character every where. There were Christians from Britain to Persia, from Morocco to India, in every country; but in every country, much as they might differ in language, social habits, political constitution, the Christian Sacerdotium was one

and the same. Whatever forms of false worship it might encounter, and all these countries had diversified forms, whatever mixture of national temperament, and none could be more distinct than the Greek and Latin, the Persian, the Indian, the Semitic and Chamitic character, the Christian Sacerdotium remained, in and through all these, after intimate contact with them through centuries, true to itself, one, unchanged, uniform. No nation had been without a native priesthood of its own, in some shape or other, entwined with its first roots of growth as a race; but these priesthoods differed widely according to the rites which they administered, the people which formed their material, the degree in which they had been faithful to the original tradition. On the contrary, the Christian Sacerdotium, springing from one seed, growing on one root, and developing into a tree, the branches of which came to overshadow the whole earth, had the same sap running through all its veins, and producing similar fruits over the whole. It met the Roman statesman in his disguise of Augur or Pontifex, declaring that religion was not a special statecraft intended to preserve and