to his perdition. In this sense he must try to fulfil the difficult mandate, "Love your enemies, and pray for them that persecute you, that ye may be sons of your Father which is in heaven."

66

The figure of Jehovah's Servant and the figure of Jesus are both reflected in the Beatitudes," which delineate the Christian lot and character. Blessed are those who are poor in spirit, who hunger and thirst after righteousness, who are merciful, pure in heart, peacemakers, and persecuted for righteousness' sake: theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven; they shall obtain mercy, they shall be comforted, with righteousness shall they be filled; they shall see God and be called the sons of God.

Christ brought God close to man-not a sparrow falls to the ground without your Father,-nay, the very hairs of your head are numbered! His life was a manifestation of the relationship with God which His words and acts set forth for His disciples. He taught no special mode of living, prescribed no fixed rules, set no limits to the full development of human individuality, provided it proceed in righteousness and unto the Kingdom of Heaven. The gospel afforded universal scope for life. It demanded a free choice, free obedience, and love freely given. It was a call to the exercise of the human intelligence and will in perfect freedom. A man must be born again, in the spirit of perfect freedom. The truth shall make you free."

The gospel of John discloses the spiritual height

and depth of this freedom in which man shall walk clothed with the truth of God. Through the truth he has entered into life; in the truth he hath eternal life. "And this is life eternal, that they should know thee, the only true God, and Him whom thou didst send, Jesus Christ."

"And the glory which thou hast given me I have given unto them that they may be one, even as we are one; I in them and thou in me, that they may be perfected into one; that the world may know that thou didst send me, and lovedst them, even as thou lovedst me."

It was not easy for man to attain the height and breadth of freedom, human and divine, presented by the Gospel. No one won his way to it with grander or more congenitally hampered genius than Paul. The Epistles to the Romans and Galatians reflect the tortuous arguments by which he had disentangled his feet from the fetters of the law in his struggle to attain the freedom of Christ. By the power of his religious genius, or through the revelation within him, this Pharisee reached the thought of Christ as the measure of the stature of the full-grown man, and became convinced that in Him was the fullness of the Godhead. In that Godhead which was in Christ will Paul live and move and have his being-and eternal life: "The free gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord."

Likewise through his grand humanity and his

religious genius Paul comes to his wise thoughts of charity in conduct and observance, and to his sense of love the best of all-the love of brother, the constraining love of Christ, the love of God which is our life and our assurance, since we know that to them who love God all things work together for good."

66

VI

THE MIDDLE AGES

The gospel of Christ was the freeing of the human spirit proffered to mankind. Through its transforming power a man or woman might become, like Paul, a new creature in Christ Jesus. Yet the world of man, on their side, transformed it to the measure of their understandings. As we all know, the modes of accepting and (God save us!) practising Christianity make the religious and the main intellectual history of Europe until the opening of the modern age.

The first manner of authoritative acceptance of Christianity by the Graeco-Roman world involved its formal transformation into the categories of Greek philosophy and Roman Law. Only through these modes of thinking, to which they were accustomed, could the educated men of the Roman Empire receive the Gospel. Accordingly the Greek and Latin Fathers of the Church, bending to the needs of their own processes of thought, translated

the Gospel into dogmas formed in the moulds of Hellenic philosophy and Roman law. In such forms, and at the same time trailing the current superstitions of the age, the Gospel passed over into the Middle Ages.

In the meanwhile a decline in the ancient civilization had taken place, and what is called the Fall of the Roman Empire. The courses of the material and intellectual phenomena of this decline and socalled Fall have been studied, and may be found set forth in many books. Intellectually the world seemed tired, its energies relaxed and degraded. Why, we do not know.1

We pass on into the early mediaeval disintegration and prospective regathering of the elements of civilization, and to the coming of fresh energies making for a renewed progress toward freedom. One must not think that the savage or the barbarian is free. He is more tightly pinioned by his customs and superstitions, and by the pressure of his needs, than his civilized brother is by laws and social conventions. The social freedom of man comes with the expansion of his mind and the attainment of a better order.

The Middle Ages present a novel emergence of humanity. They have been converted to Christianity, and about them lie the disjecta membra of the ancient civilization; or the old knowledge is held in scrolls which only gradually may be unrolled and 1 Cf. ante, Chap. II. iv. p. 74 sqq.

understood. Mediaeval progress lies through the vital appropriation of Christianity, through the recovery of the antique knowledge, and the reactions upon it of the mediaeval mind, and through human growth.

The Middle Ages received, and gradually made their own, the Christianity of the Church Fathers, with the Gospel still breaking through and stirring men's hearts. This patristic Christianity was in the main a construction of the mind. It had not yet become incorporate in the lives and emotions of men and women. But the Middle Ages received it from a revered and greater past. It was sanctioned by the saints who reigned above. As years and centuries rolled by, men learned to understand it, and made it their own. Its commands, its threatenings, and its promises had long been feared and loved. "Its persons, symbols, and sacraments had become animate with human quality and were endeared with intimate incident and association. Every one had been born to it, had been suckled upon it, had adored it in childhood, youth, and age. It filled all life; with hope or menace it overhung the closing hour."

There was little for the Middle Ages to add to the dogmatic structure of their religion. Intellectually they could but rearrange and apprehend anew. Their true religious function was the emotionalizing of the religion which they had received their renewal of the Psalmist's outpour

K