been said above, we may thus state the moral progress made in the four centuries following the advent of Christ. The Christian faith had laid its hand upon the individual man, disclosing to him that he was a creature, whose end lay beyond the realm of the senses and the confines of the visible world in union with the invisible Creator. It thus recast his life, placing all virtue in the heart and inward affections, and setting before him a supreme model which had appeared in his own nature, as the Head of a new race, by virtue from whom it encompassed him with continual help, by means of sacraments supporting him from the cradle to the grave. Thus it bestowed a new unheard-of value on man's transitory life, as the passage to an infinite good. And this faith found entrance into the heathen mind by the very prodigality with which this life and all its goods were sacrificed by unnumbered martyrs of both sexes and every condition of society, for the sake of a future unseen good. And further, such a faith produced types of the highest excellence, after this new pattern, throughout every land. And the intellectual basis for this excellence was found in its doctrine uniform and universal, which gave life and interest to its worship, and was embodied therein, and by its solid force gradually displaced the corrupt rites of heathenism, disjointed from moral teaching, and the contradictory opinions of philosophy in perpetual fluctuation. While in inseparable connection with its doctrine

and its worship, there rose before the eyes of men a new thing upon the earth, a perfect rule of spiritual government, which disarmed opposition, because it was rather the exercise of a perpetual ministration, and an exquisite charity spending itself for the needs of others, than a dominion after the fashion of Babylon, wherein the kings of the nations lorded it over them.

Thus then we find the unity of man's nature established, and with it a common morality for the whole race, which over-rode the distinctions of conquering or subject nations, of freeman or slave. It was the first-fruit of the great Restorer's labour to make true the noblest words ever uttered by a heathen, in a sense far beyond what he imagined. What Cicero in some happy vision had sketched, men saw before their eyes. "The true law is indeed right reason, in harmony with nature, diffused over all, constant, everlasting; which by its commands invites to duty, by its prohibitions deters from wrong; whose commands and prohibitions, while they are not in vain to the upright, are without effect on the perverse. No right can amend this law; no privilege exempt from it; no force abrogate it as a whole. Neither by senate nor by people can we be delivered from its obligation; nor any where else may we seek its explainer or interpreter. Nor will this law be one at Rome, another at Athens; one now, another hereafter; but being one, everlasting and

unchangeable, it will enfold all nations for all time, and there will be one common teacher and absolute sovereign of all, God, by whom this law was invented, promulgated, and passed. And whoever will not obey Him shall fly from himself, and, abhorring the nature of man, shall meet therein extremest punishment, though he were to escape all other imaginable penalties."*

So much for the first step, the restoration of man in himself. We have next to consider his restoration in his external relations; first of the family, and then of civil society.

* Cic. de Rep. 3, quoted by Lactantius, Div. Ins. vi. 8.

LECTURE V.

NEW CREATION OF THE PRIMARY RELATION BETWEEN

MAN AND WOMAN.

THAT which in man is most divine, that wherein is placed his likeness to God, that which every man possesses, the least no less than the greatest, that, finally, which accompanies him through time into eternity, is his personality. It was the great revelation of the Christian Faith that this should be rewarded or punished everlastingly. Therefore it was that this faith laid its hold on the individual heart of man: of this it made its first conquest; from this it proceeded as its inmost fortress. It counted nothing worth but the possession of man's heart. In its eyes the outward work was mere hypocrisy without the inward intention. Such only could be a religion worthy of Him who made the heart. But the Christian Faith was intended to form a society; and it must therefore deal with man as a society. That it begins with the individual and makes him its unit of construction is quite compatible with its work being intended to create an organised whole. And much more than this. In the divine Idea, man-Adam-is a race, not merely an individual, nor a collection of individuals. In

the first man the whole race was summed up; in him supernaturally endowed; in him as a race fell; and in one Man again, of whom he was the first copy, was as a race restored. The divine government, therefore, as being one of infinite perfection, deals with man at once as an individual and as a race. It is part of its perfection to bestow on him an exquisitely just and merciful retribution as an individual, and yet at the same time to deal with him as a society. In the divine plan the one does not contradict or exclude the other.

Nor, again, can we in fact detach man from his fellows. As he comes into the world he cannot stand a moment by himself. He is touched on all sides by his brethren. Of all animals the infant man is the most helpless and dependent on others, and of all he remains so the longest in proportion to his life. Dependent at his birth, in his nursing, in his education, in his marriage, and then again in his children, in his social, civil, and political life, this highest as a compound of matter and spirit among creatures in this visible world is the least able to stand alone. His very eminence surrounds him with relations, supports him with them, but fetters him too.

I. The first of all these relations is that between man and woman. It may be said to be the root of all the rest. It makes the family and all its affections. It is the fruitful germ of the larger society. Therefore, to estimate the condition of man at any

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