having any special prophetic value. But it must not

much of sin, if they Sacrifice, even, nay criminal shapes, not

be forgotten, that such rites tell throw no light on its expiation. chiefly, in its most revolting and only the thousands of rams, the burnt offerings and calves of a year old, but the first-born offered for transgression, "the fruit of the body for the sin of the soul," like other forms of superstition and self-torture, gives unmistakable though distorted expression to man's instinctive sense of guilt, and his dread of punishment.1 Other meanings it might have besides, sa in the Oriental notion of absorption into the divine essence, or anima mundi, through self-annihilation; but still this feeling, however undefined, of remorse and terror is its most radical and universal explanation. The facts of nature and the experience of human history tended to confirm these impressions. Men could at best but feel after God, if perchance they might find Him, and "faintly trust the larger hope," though much in the outward appearance of things seemed to contradict their creed. To assuage this terror, and turn remorse into repentance, some act, so to speak, was needed on God's side, which might reveal the depths of His compassion and notify to men, not indeed that He would leave sin unpunished, but that for all who turned to Him with contrite hearts punishment was tempered by mercy. And such an assurance was given in the Incarnation and death of the Eternal Son. "Why Christ's death was requisite for our salvation,

'See Butler's Analogy, Pt. ii. ch. 5.

and how it has obtained it, will ever be a mystery in this life. But, on the other hand, the contemplation of our guilt is so growing and so overwhelming a misery, as our eyes open on our real state, that some strong act (so to call it) was necessary, on God's part, to counterbalance the tokens of His wrath, which are around us, to calm and reassure us, and to be the ground and the medium of our faith. It seems, indeed, as if, in a practical point of view, no mere promise was sufficient to undo the impression left on the imagination by the facts of Natural Religion; but in the death of His Son we have His deed-His irreversible deed—making His forgiveness of sin and His reconciliation with our race, no contingency, but an event of past history." It was the Divine response to the long and exceeding bitter cry of tortured humanity, deepening from age to age in its conscious or unconscious yearning for the advent of a Redeemer, as it rose from the sinning, suffering multitudes of the Patriarchal, or the Hebrew, or the Heathen world; O Adonai et Dux domûs Israel, O Rex gentium et Desideratus earum, veni et salva hominem quem de limo formâsti!

Such, then, are some of the inferences that may be drawn from the fact of the Atonement wrought by Christ, though we could not, I repeat, have used them beforehand as arguments to show that it was needed, or that it would be vouchsafed. They do not unlock the secret of the divine counsels, but they help to

1 Newman's University Sermons, p. 106.

explain its application to ourselves. We recognise, as through a glass darkly, an utterance of that "Wisdom that proceedeth out of the mouth of the Most High, and reacheth from one end to the other mightily, sweetly disposing all things;" but we do not pretend to understand it. We may not pierce behind the veil. So much our hearts will tell us, that in the Lamb slain before the foundation of the world, but offered in time on Calvary, we have the surest pledge and most perfect revelation of a love that cannot fail. From of old He had loved us with an everlasting love, and therefore, when we rebelled against Him, in the compassion of His sufferings He drew us to Himself once more; and He has vouchsafed to reconcile us by so excellent a method of atonement, that it is at once the source of sanctity to the fallen, whose nature He has assumed, and a perfect satisfaction for their sin. And, further, the voice of tradition combines with the surmises of reason to suggest to us, that the mystery of the Atonement is part of a yet deeper mystery in the eternal purpose of God. He had always meant to make His tabernacle among men, but He had not meant to die. Only in so far as we comprehend the charity of the Incarnation, can we hope to comprehend aright its consummation in the shame and self-sacrifice of the Cross.

NOTE TO CHAPTER VII.

ON CERTAIN CONTRASTS OF CHRISTIAN AND HEATHEN CIVILISATION.

THE view expressed in the last chapter as to the comparative absence from the old heathen civilisation of that gentler phase of humanity, which seems a natural outgrowth from the Cross, may not improbably be considered by many exaggerated or unreal. A few words, therefore, shall be added here, in explanation of what it is intended to convey. It is quite true, that a standard of excellence was attained under the Greek and Roman Republics, which in some respects has never been surpassed, while there are points in which the average morality of Christian States has not unfrequently fallen below it. To dispute this would be as little in the interests of Christianity, as of historical truth. Neither, again, is it to be denied, that many individual characters of heathendom present at least foreshadowings and instalments of the peculiarly Christian virtues, those, I mean, which were not only sanctioned but first distinctly inculcated by the Gospel. To use the words of Tertullian, we discover in many of them testimonium animæ naturaliter Christianæ. Such pre-eminently were Socrates, Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, and perhaps Seneca;1 such, in various degrees, were many more who might be named. God never left Himself without a witness among men. On the other hand, it must be confessed, that only in rare and almost exceptional cases is anything like the Christian ideal, as represented by the Sermon on the Mount, realised among ourselves.

1 Seneca must, at least, be placed on a far lower level than the other three. Even though we may reject the grosser charges of his enemies, there is but too abundant evidence in his own writings of his inordinate avarice, and of a servility as loathsome as it is grotesque. The reader may compare the estimates of his character-which do not indeed materially differ-in Farrar's Seekers after God, and the dissertation on "St. Paul and Seneca" in Lightfoot's Philippians. I refer the more gladly to Mr. Farrar's interesting volume, from the admirable illustration it supplies of individual and social contrasts in heathen and Christian life, as well as for the nobleness of its teaching.

It is a common remark, that very few lines need be altered in Juvenal's Satires, beyond what is purely local, to make them applicable to the London, or Paris, or Vienna of to-day. Yet it is important to remember, that, after all allowances, certain broad contrasts remain, which fix a moral gulf between the world of Juvenal and our own. We gaze in a rapture of admiration on that marvellous creation of genius, the Athens of Pericles and Socrates and Phidias, of the mighty orators and poets whose words have rung music in the ears of seventy generations of mankind. We do well to gaze; there has not been such another glory upon the earth. But we are apt to forget that the picture has a darker side, over which distance draws a veil; that, in the language of a writer little likely to undervalue its ideal grace, "if the inner life had been presented to us of that period, which in political greatness and in art is the most brilliant epoch of humanity, we should have turned away from the sight with loathing and detestation." The Plays of Aristophanes tell us something of that inner life; the pages of Petronius Arbiter reveal under the Roman Empire a yet lower depth of pollution. But the reality must have far exceeded anything our imagination can reproduce.

It is not, however, with the impurity but the cruelty of the old civilisations that we are now concerned, as contrasting with the tenderness of feeling, the scrupulous thoughtfulness for others, which has always been more or less a characteristic of Christian society, and never more so than in our own day. If many things were permitted to the Jews for the hardness of their hearts,' many more and worse were practised by the Gentiles. The usages of war and slavery have been alluded to in the text. The condition of women and children, and in fact the whole system of family life, which was treated simply as a subordinate department of statecraft, are also cases in point; so is the practice of human sacrifice, wherever it prevailed; and the absence,

They are summed up in the Essay "On the State of the Heathen World," in Jowett's Epistles of St. Paul, vol. ii., pp. 68, sqq.

2 Ib. p. 71.

3 Mommsen denies the practice of human sacrifice at Rome; others affirm it. In Greece it did not prevail in historical times, but the public taste was not shocked by legends which record it; nor was the Spartan cryptia looked upon with any special horror, though it would have been alien to Athenian habits.